doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com To Our Members and Friends in California...

We pray for your safety and a little rain.

We do indeed.

Have been and will continue

Many thanks for thinking of us. It started raining last night, which will help with the fires, and the air has improved dramatically. But of course, the rain also adds to the misery of all those who lost their homes and may cause landslides in the burnt areas. If the weather and fire patterns of the last few years continue, California will be a very different place two or three decades from now.

I too hope things improve for California. I hope that after this passes people will stick to building where the land wants you to...Geo

My prayers are included as well, and hopes for a peaceful Thanksgiving.
Karl

My hope, beyond the threat of minimal damage from mudslides, is that someday the Smokey Bear syndrome will be cured.
Many ecosystems, particularly prairie, savanna, chaparral and coniferous forests, have evolved with fire as an essential contributor to habitat vitality and renewal. Many plant species in fire-affected environments require fire to germinate, establish, or to reproduce. Wildfire suppression not only eliminates these species, but also the animals that depend upon them.

Very pertinent post, halk. You can add the longleaf pine ecosystem to those that need fire to thrive, and for the hundreds of species that thrive in it.

Controlled burns aren't popular in places in California, but they are needed to keep the fuel from building up to catastrophic levels.

I grieve for the dead and deprived, and hope that wiser heads replace those who have suppressed controlled burns for so long.

SRH

Yes Stan I have helped support Tall Timbers for many years even though I've never seen a longleaf pine. It was the Komarek brothers there with TT who published their famous paper that plotted lightning strike frequencies across North America and found a near perfect match with grasslands including those originally under several important southern and western coniferous forest types. They happened to be friends of a wildlife refuge manager I knew and he was the one that fostered my interest in fire ecology. I try to burn as much of my grassland as possible and helped on many other burns on public and private land.

halk,
The damage from mudslides is not minimal, when it is your home and family caught in it and pushed over the cliff or into the river. There is a lot to be said about not building is areas subject to storms, fires, mud slides, earth quakes, or floods.
Mike