California's Dixie Fire Is Now the 2nd Largest in State History | Hacker News Reader

California's Dixie Fire Is Now the 2nd Largest in State History

npr.org

58 pointsTroisM51 comments

At least we saw it coming and made some preparations. I think climate change is a massive problem but we can't put it all on climate change because droughts are part of California history and we can put some of the blame on forest management practices.

100 million dead trees in the Sierra are a massive risk for unpredictable wildfires

https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/01/18/sierra-wildfire-risk/

Fire Suppression — And Climate Change — Is To Blame For California’s Megafires

https://www.capradio.org/articles/2020/09/12/fire-suppressio...

It's not just one or the other? Who knew things were complex and sometimes didn't align with one political ideology?

Like many things, the "blame pie" chart contains multiple reasons and no solutions.

I remember how it was a huge deal for weeks when our former president said something along these lines but to a large extent the administration was correct.

I hate the fact that these changes to forestry management are going to be delayed or shot down just because of partisan bullshit. I’d say we’re better than this but I’m not quite sure nowadays.

Most of California’s forests are managed by the Interior Department. Why wasn’t federal forest policy changed if the last administration believed that was the primary cause of fires?

Maybe the areas affected don't actually benefit anyone in power? Probably not enough graft coming out of the timber industry.

I think Interior tends to defer to state and local interests rather than following national policies.

That’s not how it works. This is, literally, land owned and managed by the federal government. It’s on them to manage it.

The former president was very inarticulate about it, which I'd say was the problem. He told us California residents that we needed to sweep our forests and didn't acknowledge that the majority of the public forests were the responsibility of the Federal Govt. A more knowledgeable Republican president could have made a better case that wouldn't get ridiculed.

Trump blames California for wildfires, tells state 'you gotta clean your floors'

https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08/20/...

Trump's suggestions have prompted head-scratching from experts who say his prescriptions — more raking, less water released into the ocean for environmental purposes — suggest he does not understand the science of wildfires. Critics also point out that most of California’s wildlands are federally managed.

Okay, now that he’s gone who do we pin the blame on?

The post you are replying to did not blame Trump for the fires, it said he was incoherent and incorrect in assigning blame. He continues to do both of those things in his role of King of the GOP, so there's no reason to stop pinning blame on him for things he is doing.

Thank you. I sometimes wonder if it is that I don't write clearly enough or if some people have poor reading comprehension. Perhaps both.

Ad hominem attacks aside, the question remains. Now that #OrangeManBad isn't here, who, exactly is,as you say, "the problem"? From what I've seen, Californians have a bad habit of electing people who can't accomplish anything, and then blame their woes on people who are so far removed from being able to have any influence that it's laughable. The forestry service under Trump is the same forestry service that logged (pardon the pun) eight years under Obama. What did Obama do to mitigate the fires? The Dixie fire continues to burn without restrainnt, what's the solution? Frankly, as much as I don't like the man, Trump is right - when it comes to forest fires in CA, it's kind of your mess to clean up. Drive down any road on the coast and you'll find acres of arroyos full to the brim with deadwood - literal tinderboxes that nobody is cleaning up. Okay, 50x% of the forests belong to the Federal Government? Cool, don't build your houses within a half mile firebreak of them. The other 50%? Well, gosh, I guess you all should have a chat or something.

Let’s see, most of the giant fires, Shasta Trinity, Mendocino, Six Rivers, Lassen, Plumas are all National Forests. Lassen National Park, part of the Dixie fire.

I guess these people think Newsom was/is President or do not understand the difference between county, state and federal jurisdiction.

Not totally; they are intermingled with privately held land.

Can you honestly say that any president really understands the science of wildfires (or anything else -- perhaps Jimmy Carter excepted, he did understand the science of nuclear reactors).

Probably not, which is why all but one of them tended to defer to hired experts on many issues instead of spouting the first thing that popped into their head.

This is been a problem a hundred years plus in the making. You can't blame just one president

These extreme fire events extend across the entire Northern hemisphere right now (Oregon, Washington, Montana, Greece, Turkey, Siberia etc.). Blaming California specific forest management practices is disingenuous at best.

How does the fires being common across the region absolve California of the accusation of mismanagement? Isn't that more damning?

Calling "the entire northern hemisphere" a "region" is a bit of a stretch; GP is presumably referring to the summer season (which is not shared by the southern hemisphere at this time), not proximity to California.

They are mainly Federal lands and so it is mainly Federal policy and practice that would be to blame in the US for that aspect of the causes. But the most obvious international common denominator is hotter, drier, windier weather - although I would not be surprised if many countries have similar "modern" responses to forest fires.

Forest management is bad overall, who will pay for it? In US/Canada the heat dome made for extreme weather. In Europe, record heat and rainfall causing extreme floods. We're having both, bad mitigation and climate catastrophe, going on. Plus Covid, pretty much following Hopi prophecies.

There are two problems that required to Solutions. Many of the areas that are burning now had a burn interval I'm less than 5 years prior to Federal wildfire suppression. They haven't burned in the last 150 years because of this. This is a real problem that needs to be addressed on top of climate change.

Here's a great talk from a Forest Service expert on why wildfires have become worse. The TLDR is that forests have become much denser, particularly after old trees were logged, and this creates large areas of fuel. Additionally, forests need active management - prescribed burns, dry fuel cleanup, pest management, etc. Climate change may be aggravating or amplifying the intensity of wildfires but there are other causes that are potentially more important, and they present opportunities for wildfire prevention that are currently ignored by governments/news media/social media.

https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_hessburg_why_wildfires_have_g...

The Federal Government, who has been partially in charge of the Dixie Fire, has a more relaxed approach to wildfires. The recent River fire was fought with California management and resources. It was put down within a day. I really don't think the Federal Government should be able to own so much land in a state. The state of California is closer to the land and could manage it better in my opinion. The forests need to be managed defensively and need to be cleared to recreate what an uncontrolled wildfire would have done in the past. There are parts of California that do manage their forests better than others. From my time in the woods, there has been more defensive forest management around the outskirts of Truckee, CA. They cut down dead trees and pile them in separate areas that could not have a chain burning reaction.

I wonder what the net benefit would be though. I can definitely see CA doing a better job in terms of climate.

But give Alaska or many mountain West control of federal lands they likely would be leased out to polluting corps at breakneck pace.

Tweaking executive controlled land policies and making Monument designations has been effective on both sides of fighting climate catastrophe...

My hope is that California finally gets serious with its environmental management after this. I know, feels like a pipe dream, but we should have been doing things like Israel had done, like transitioning farms and cities to desalinated water sources decades ago for instance. Another lacking practice is controlled burns done with the intention of decreasing these types of fires and actually healing forests. I’ll stave more rants but this isn’t exactly a new problem it’s just new in its scope

Yet another record-setting fire started by PG&E.

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/wildfire/pge-may-be...

A combination of increasing electricity consumption per capita combined with a lack of investment is a perfect storm for wildfires.

The elephant in the room is having huge swaths of the state requiring nothing more than a spark to go cataclysmic. Lightning strikes, failing catalytic converters w/side exit tailpipes spewing hot sparks, careless campers, arson, there's an endless list of sources for that spark.

It strikes me as ridiculous PG&E takes so much blame, if there were no power lines California would still be burning.

Would these fires really not have started without PG&E as the most proximate source? The Mendocino Fire Complex, the largest in CA history, was sparked by lightning. Another fire was started by someone sparking it by hitting a metal spike trying to seal a wasp nest. If it wasn't PG&E, it surely would have been something else. The forest was/is a tinder keg waiting for a spark of any sort.

Is this a process of California desertifying? That is, we will have a period of fires and then a new equilibrium? Or will California keep burning, healing, and then burning again?

Along this thread, I would be curious to know if there is statistics available for how many acres of forest grow per year, versus how many acres are burned?

> Paleoclimatological studies indicate that the last 150 years of California's history have been unusually wet compared to the previous 2000 years. Tree stumps found at the bottom of lakes and rivers in California indicate that many water features dried up during historical dry periods, allowing trees to grow there while the water was absent. These dry periods were associated with warm periods in Earth's history. During the Medieval Warm Period, there were at least two century-long megadroughts with only 60-70% of modern precipitation levels. Paleoclimatologists believe that higher temperatures due to global warming may cause California to enter another dry period, with significantly lower precipitation and snowpack levels than observed over the last 150 years.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_California

Many of the larger ones were "complexes", near by started at the same time, bit distinct fires added together I think. (Not a fire expert)

https://www.fire.ca.gov/media/4jandlhh/top20_acres.pdf

what's so special about California that it's always on fire? Why don't we have this kind of issue in say Maine, Michigan or North Carolina which all have lots of forest?

California is prone to multi-decade droughts (see, East of Eden). I guess maybe that doesn't answer your question at all, but I'm sure lack of rain is mostly it, since bad forest management and global warming is everywhere.

Found an interesting page:

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/us-maps/3/201009?p...

Every year shows the same pattern: you can see how California is tinder-dry at the end of each summer.

Generally not as wet. Camped in dozens of states across America and where it is trivial to start a fire with downed wood in the west, it is far more difficult in the east. Landscape is far more lush in the east.

Humidity is a major control; low humidity helps fires initiation and spread.

California is a desert. Those other states are not.

California has by far the most number of wildfires and most acres burned each year compared to other states, no matter your measure. States can sue one another over water rights if one state is polluting water upstream to another state. Is a similar right available for air rights? It seems unfair that Nevada, Idaho, Colorado and Montana have to suffer from California’s mismanagement and lack of prevention, and perhaps a lawsuit would finally provide the right incentives.

Most of the land burning is federal land: Forest Service and BLM, for instance.

Does California not have a role there? Or perhaps the suit should be against the federal government then, or both, but something needs to change. It doesn’t have to be this way.

California can't control federal land (that's why it's called federal).

The Fed Govt. is in charge of the overwhelming vast majority of the forest in Cali.

>It doesn't have to be this way

When you have one of two political parties that meaningfully exist in the US parroting the fact they "believe the Fed. Govt should be small enough you can drown it in a bathtub"

It does in fact have to be this way.

Thanks. I enjoyed reading up on that today. As for the federal role, I think a lawsuit is exactly how to solve this. Both parties are for big government, and neither has solved this when they could.

One party is most definitely not for big government, or at least they claim not to be to garner a large portion of their votes. And, if they are for big government, they've proven time and time again to not give the slightest fuck about managing things that need to be managed, in favor of slashing/redirecting all budgets for more frivolous endeavours.

>neither has solved this when they could.

Yes, this goes hand in hand with their re-election tactics. They complain about something, say they'll solve it, don't solve it when given an opportunity, then campaign again on said issues, and repeat this for decades. It's quite simple and works because their constituency appears to have the attention span of a walnut.

>think a lawsuit is exactly how to solve this.

You obviously don't have the best understanding of how the US legal system works, especially on this level. A lawsuit can/will quite literally drag things out until all involved are pretty much dead/it's too damn late to save whatever the lawsuit was about in the first place.

Why do you think a lawsuit would be fruitless? Yes courts move slow, but there is clear harm here. The federal government bears responsibility over this land. If they don’t want it, then they should hand the land over to the states, or otherwise compensate those states affected. There have been many disputes about water rights over the years that are similar to this. I would bet this will happen eventually.

Pretty unlikely, California and the west is finally returning to its natural burn cycle, albeit with a bang. Annual burn acres are closer to the pre-1800s.

We need more smaller prescribed burns, not less. If residents in neighboring states don't like it, the are free to relocate.

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