River Fire Reflections

George Rebane

Kudos to Yubanet.com for being the most heads up and informative website for wildfire information.  At the same time, government falls short of its function as is apparent to anyone visiting mynevadacounty.com.  Starting yesterday (4aug21) afternoon, all of us in western Nevada County have been on tenterhooks watching the River Fire started by someone at the Bear River Campground near Colfax.

For Jo Ann and me this kind of annual firewatch and evacuation preparedness has been a way of life ever since we moved to Simi Valley in 1968, and then into the Santa Monica Mountains in 1978, and here to Nevada County in 2002.  Every year it’s the same ol’ same ol’ – are we going to lose our home this year?  And frankly, after over fifty years of this and at our age, we’re starting to get a little tired of being puckered up every summer and fall.

Today some of our family also lives in Nevada County, and their houses are between us and the flames.  More aggravation and worry.  So, we’re all glued to the TV, internet, and radio trying figure out the location and progress of the fire.  Which brings me to how such disasters are reported to the public.  Bottom line, being keenly aware of wildfire reporting on the media for all these decades, and looking at it through the perspective of an engineer and a former forward observer (we’re the supposed map experts), the media on the whole gets no better than a D for their sophomoric efforts.  Although I do admit that ever so slowly, they have been getting better at passing on information instead of just missing or mangling it.  As I said, up here Yubanet is the closest thing we have to a gold standard in such reporting.

The basic questions an endangered individual wants to know is (1) where is the fire, its actual extent, and how is it spreading, and (2) what and when are my prospects for having to evacuate?  Secondary information items are things like number of persons and resources on the fire line, percent containment, and when is it going to be over.  The problem comes with how much credibility do such media information displays have.  Because when a media outlet’s report is grossly inconsistent, time late, and missing critical items, it’s hard to believe the information they do put out that might be useful.

Back in the old days in LA County, when the fires burned, reporters and camera crews were dispatched, and the result was always confusion.  Why?  No TV producer understood the information items that their viewers needed, and the fielded reporters never knew from where they were reporting, or what their telephoto lens were looking at from some remote mountain top.  So, the copy transmitted was mostly time late pabulum – human interest evacuation stories - and the video was always of close-up pictures of flames – totally information free reporting, no big picture of what was going on.

Today Yubanet shows you the latest contour of the fire area superimposed on boundaries of evacuated areas and areas under evacuation warning.  In addition, they show us anecdotal verbiage on the nature of the fire and how crews/aircraft are fighting it.  All this is accompanied by data items such as acreage burned, current containment, and when 100% is expected.  There remain some humorous inconsistencies like currently ‘0% containment’, but the fire will be completely contained by ’14 August 2021’.  Also, not all the items are time-tagged, so it’s hard to tell the time late of what you’re looking at.

And true to form, MyNevadaCounty.com is not only deficient in the information items shown, but also not consistent with Yubanet on the evacuation areas.  Finally, the anxious citizen has no idea of the location and extent of the fire, and NOTHING is time tagged.  Our county’s Office of Emergency Services is strictly a junior high school operation when it comes to keeping citizens informed during emergencies.

Let me end with some envelope calcs on making sense of the reported area of a fire.  We recall that the important part of a wildfire from where it spreads is its perimeter.  Other than high value structures inside the perimeter that need defending, almost all firefighting resources are expended on the perimeter.  And therefore, it’s the lengthening perimeter that needs to be contained and doused, because that’s where the action is.  That makes thinking about a fire in the form of a burning loop of rope, and the length of the rope, not the area it contains really communicates the ‘size’ of the fire.

Our River fire is now (1450hrs, 5aug21) about six miles long and two miles at its widest.  It is reported to be a 2,400 acre fire.  Recall that at 640 ac/sqmi, 1,000 acres is about 1.5 sqmi.  So, our fire is about 3.6 sqmi.  Were it really a square, it would be about 1.9 miles on a side, or with a minimum perimeter of about 7.6 miles.  (I’m asking the geometrically astute to give us a little slack here.  It’s easier to take one square root than to go from a circle’s area to its circumference, i.e. calculating C = 2*sqrt(Area*pi).)

So the shape of the fire’s area suggests that its perimeter is somewhere less than 14 miles = 2*6 + 2 (for the bulge in the middle).  So this gives you a rough rule of thumb for figuring out the real size of the fire, it’s between the perimeter of a square and two times the length of the square’s perimeter.  The firefighters have to manage this length of fire line of a 0% contained fire.

A fire is ‘contained’ to the extent that a “any physical barrier that stops the fire from passing a certain point” has been put around the fire line (i.e. perimeter).  So, a fire is 50% contained if such a physical barrier has been created or encountered (i.e. coming to a sufficiently wide river) along half of its perimeter.  Of course, a fire can be 90% contained, and a devilish wind can subsequently induce a breakout, and we’re off to the races again.

Comments

[Barry Pruett]

Yubanet does a great job. Anytime there’s a fire, everybody in town knows to go online and check out what yubanet that says. The county probably relies on them as well. Lol

[Scott O]

My wife and I copy on the fire season worry. We do sorely miss the trees and the view but right now the evergreens in our yard and the alfalfa fields and distant hills and mountains will happily suffice.
God be with the personnel fighting these blazes.

[Walt]

Firefighters love this country.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/proud-american-california-firefighter-photographed-saving-us-flag-just-feet-away-from-flames-of-dixie-fire
Old glory is worth risking one's life. Usually without thought.

[Gregory]

Fire, fire, go away,
Come again some other day.

[Paul Emery]

KVMR will be broadcasting live the Community meeting on the River fire from Bear River High School this morning at 10:AM. 89.5 FM

[George Rebane]

thanks Paul.

[scenes]

I've been musing about this a bit.

I think part of the problem is simply a mismatch of desire for information and desire for informing.

I'd like: Accurate map of fire, accurate map of fire an hour ago, two hours ago, etc. Assets applied to fire. Daily CalFire morning report. Anything from people nearby. Some weather information. You can put this together from pieces (flightradar24, a couple of online mapping things, Facebook, etc.)

What I'll get: Split the county up into areas. Mark area as 'OK', 'get ready to leave', 'leave'. You don't need to know much more than that little missy.

It would be nice if someone at the county took some time off from the HR department or the Tobacco Use Prevention League gig and pasted together an up-to-date running online blog, but that ain't gonna happen. Instead, there'll be lots of INTERAGENCYDIDAGREATJOBCOOPERATIONblahblahblah talking heads on the radio.

The whole thing is just a fact of life. It isn't like anything will be done about
initial fires: a bazillion dollars worth of PGE retro work, lightning, homeless (the modern day version of holy cows in India)
fuel load: a bazillion dollars worth of cutting plants down. Scarcely anything visible is done beyond cutting around powerlines.

Online will be a morass of 'native 'mericans knew how to manage the forests', 'global warming is the cause', 'lack of forest cuttin is the cause,', 'people shouldn't live in the forest' etc., none of which does any good.

[George Rebane]

re scenes 1051am - native Americans knew jackshit about managing forests, and they did none of it. The closest they got was starting prairie fires to promote growth of new fodder and improve hunting prospects. The forests were culled by lightning started forest fires which resulted in western forest lands (of little summer rains) consisting of <5 acre copses of trees separated by open space.
https://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2009/09/environmentalism-beyond-reason.html

[Scott O]

George 11:03 - I don't think scenes was promoting the idea that the folks who happened to be here before us actually were "managing" the forests - he was just listing the typical blather on the blather-net that always pops up when forest fires are in the news.

[George Rebane]

ScottO 1215pm - Never accused him of that, but I did want to expand on the perennial notion promoted by the Left that the noble savage did everything better and more 'naturally' ;-)

[Paul Emery]

George

The forests and rivers and the aquifers sure were in much better shape in say 1840-pre Gold Rush than they are today. This is disputable.

[Paul Emery]

sp-crucial error

indisputable

[Scott O]

Paul 2:43 - Care to tie that in with George's point?

[scenes]

re: Paul@3:00PM

Here's a reading assignment, just so you actually know anything at all about the topic.

Dasmann, R. F. (1998). Environmental Changes before and after the Gold Rush. California History,

[Paul Emery]

Good link scenes. I will read the entire thing. Have you read it? If so you would have seen this:

In reading the accounts of those who were there in 1849 and later, most often one seeks in vain for descriptions of the countryside, the natural world, or the wild animal life. There was no obvious concern for the environment. Anything that stood in the way of the gold seeker was pushed aside or destroyed, whether a grizzly bear or a mountain. Ruthless exploitation with no thought for tomorrow was the basis for the way of life in gold-rush times.

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft758007r3&chunk.id=d0e5034&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e5034&brand=ucpress

[George Rebane]

PaulE 300pm - And that's my point. The worst thing that happened to America's forests was Smokey the Bear. Healthy wild forests need to be thinned; fire was the solution for millions of years. Today we could do with prescribed burns and a lot of logging. But your Lefty environmentalists have killed the logging industry and have even prevented logging burned timbers and/or made it into a regulatory nightmare. A general principle - in the overwhelming cases, the Left has always fucked up everything they touched here in America and elsewhere. We could learn from Europeans and New Zealand on how to manage forests, there they grow and harvest trees as crops.

[Bill Tozer]

Nothing new under the sun.

From Paul’s link, but taking the liberty to change gold to another commodity. Artist license.

There was no obvious concern for the environment. Anything that stood in the way of the illegal pot grower was pushed aside or destroyed, whether a grizzly bear or a mountain. Ruthless exploitation with no thought for tomorrow was the basis for the way of life in marijuana growing times.
——-
As far as the fire goes, one cannot but wonder if they built the dam in that canyon, how many buildings and homes and animals would have been saved. It would have been the ultimate firebreak. But, noooooo.

[Bill Tozer]

At the height of hypocrisy, in Bernie’s home state of Green Vermont, they took a beautiful mountain and leveled the top of it to put up solar panels and green energy.. Ruint that mountain. Ripped her majesty’s beauty. Sickening. I am still pissed about that.

“There was no obvious concern for the environment. Anything that stood in the way of the green energy seeker was pushed aside or destroyed, whether a grizzly bear or a mountain. Ruthless exploitation with......”

https://freebeacon.com/culture/solar-farms-spark-civil-war-in-virginia/

[Walt]

Even the Indians set fire to the "forest".
Emery is too dense to understand why.

Even the Indians knew the forest needed fire to be healthy.
The ECO bastards? not so much.

[Paul Emery]

You know George I agree with you on forest management especially comparing it to the way the Germans, in particular, manage their forests. I swear every tree must have number. Jan noticed that in her three month stay with her daughter in Germany.

So how do you propose we manage forest land under private ownership? Where I live near the Old Downiville road is a total mess and it's all private property and nobody can do anything about it. . It did burn before I moved here in "94 but now it's a huge fire hazard.

[Paul Emery]

I support managed burns Walt. How about private lands? Should we force owners to do controlled burns on their property?

[Bill Tozer]

Daniel Boone killed a bear on this here tree. And Tom Sawyer and Becky carved their initials into that there tree. And they did the hydraulic mining that blasted away the scenery so much that there was nothing to do put call it a state park, lol. Come to think of it, there ain’t much news about out of control fires in the diggings. And California has had ten year droughts, twenty year droughts, one maybe close to a hundred year droughts, and fires that burned for two years or more. The real solution is to depopulate the area. Yet, we have open borders and abortions just ain’t going to take us to the promise day. Back to Earth Movement, except without the humanoids.

[Walt]

Bring it on Emery! If the FD wants to prescribe burn my holdings, more power to'em.
Back when I was defending my community as a firefighter, we did just that. We burned many a private acre at their request.
It was a great training opportunity as well.

Then liability law got in the way.

[Bill Tozer]

“I support managed burns Walt. How about private lands? Should we force owners to do controlled burns on their property?”

Control burns on private property? We already have that. It’s called Burn Days. On larger parcels......well, we must consider animal habitat. Co-exist.

Not surprised Paul that the fuel hazard (organic) around your place has built up over a quarter of century since the last fire. Time flies. I know how fast fuels can built up after say, 15-20 years. Also, after a fire comes through, often a new kind of bush or bush takes hold and springs up everywhere and starts taking over. They just needed light to germinate, which the fire provided. Seeds stay a long time in the ground.

All one can do is protect one’s abode the best he can. Don’t see a homeowner clearing 12 acres, but the circle of safety is important. Most folks with land, no matter the acreage, basically live and spend their time within a 1/4 acre of their home. Some 1/4 acre including their home, like me when I get lazy.

[Paul Emery]

Yeah Bill I've got a little under an acre and I've raked it and hauled away a huge dumpster load of leaves etc. Got about 1/8 acre left for another day. The property below mine is all bushes and short trees and brush that have filled in since the champion fire in '93. The big trees survived the fire. The owner did a great job clearing around his house property but nothing adjoining my lot. Not much we can do.

[Bill Tozer]

Well, Paul, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you really want to have a neighbor do more, then you will have to complain, complain, complain, report them, report.

If you worry about it too much, it will turn your home into just a house. There is always a trade off, a compromise. You know what perfection is, then you start the internal compromises. Suppose your lower neighbor did clear between you and him....and exposed his house and lights from your back porch view. What about privacy? There goes your backyard privacy. These are considerations.

I like the Old Downiville Road area. Pretty and big conifers and cedars. Like it a lot. You got black oaks at that elevation? Firs? Anyway, your roof is what I would be blowing off as a priority.

Bet if you even did a small burn pile there, all of the 3 digit addresses and neighbors would have a heart attack. They would complain to air quality and ONE complaint, valid or not, shuts you down. Everybody Burns down here. No complaints. No worry warts. I do let one neighbor know before I burn so he doesn’t worry. He smells smoke and his heart starts pumping fast.

. I know how much sheer volume two large brushes take up. Not feasible to load them up and take them to the dump. Take months and a lot of gas. Even if you got that chipper from the county or Fire Safe Council, you would still have to drag them to the road. And you will be surprise how little time a big a pile brush slowly feed into a fire can take. 2-2.5 hours! ....then let it smolder for a night...watching it of course. Labor intensive. I have given up going down the hill. I could spend weeks upon weeks down there. Where I walked 8 years ago is full of poison oaks and fallen snags from huge dead trees that have fallen and natural brush and scrub oaks that has come back. I do pick a small spot and go hit it in the fall or winter, , leave it there on the ground and then burn it come Spring. Move it once.

This year, there were few burn days when I was ready to go for a burn in mid-May. Cut in late April. Four burn piles. After two weeks of no burn days in burn season, I resigned myself to forgetting about it until November-December after a couple good rains. Ground too dry to burn, even if it there were two last burn days around just before they pulled the plug before June.

I know what perfection is in my mind, but then I start the “series of compromises”. Got that from Dr. Thomas Sowell discussing photography. It has since been my theme of this year. Probably doing /did a series of compromises within yourself when it came time to get the sound studio up and running.

My bro-n-law broke down and had that pulverizer machine come over. The type Walt recommended to you. After their House burned about 12-15 years ago when it raced up from the N fork American River gouge, for some reason Scotch Broom took over. Man did it. Thick. They never had a scotch broom problem before, but the mazinita was so thick after a previous fire that there was no light. That piece of equipment did a great job, even climbing darn near vertical in some places.

[scenes]

"There was no obvious concern for the environment."

Ah, I get it. It's part of the Orange Man Bad, White Man Bad concept. At least the Green Libertarians are consistent unlike moi.

I wouldn't sweat gold mining too much, it was of limited duration in a limited area.

The bigger events were things like the Pleistocene die-off, Spanish/Mexican large scale overgrazing (which seems to have changed the California landscape quite a lot), and (of course) modern overpopulation. Industrial-age people are harder on the environment no doubt, but for some reason Team Blue wants to import ever more people into the US. 'tis a mystery.

Sometimes I wonder if someone shouldn't write an accurate version of 'A People’s History of the United States'. Be absolutely truthful about everybody including their importance (or lack thereof), cruelties, bad habits. Maybe mix in Mesoamerica for good measure. Guaranteed one star reviews on Amazon as there's plenty of ox goring opportunities.

[scenes]

BillT: " The real solution is to depopulate the area. "

I was thinking about that.

Perhaps the right answer is to own an expensive piece of land with a pad, hook-ups, and a nice RV.

Fire comes. RV leaves. No harm no foul, spend the summer at the beach. We'll meet up at the RR Circle of Jerks and form a motorhome kraal.

Probably not allowed. Lotta rules in the Blue State.

[Bill Tozer]

Scenes. What are you talking about? You can park that RV anywhere you want in the Bay City with their lovely bombers.. or Sac, or......down by the river in your van.

Heck, you be homeless. Go to the Fairgrounds here or in Auburn. Oh, and tell the good hearted folks that you don’t need anymore darn washers and refrigerators and freezers and enough already! Stop it! Thanks but no thanks. But, waived building permits to build a storage barn would be nice. Gotta any grants?

Good tip if there is any horse folk out there. Take a sharpie (Marks-A-Lot) and write your phone number on a front hoof, make sure there is no blankets or the like on them that could burn, set them loose, and get the hell out as fast as you can if there is no time left. And don’t forget good boots. You will need them when you come back...with the ground still smoldering.

[George Rebane]

PaulE, no problem with prescriptive burn regulations as soon as you get your progressive idiot tort lawyers to back down on suing anyone who might get singed, or have their property values decline.

[scenes]

" But, waived building permits to build a storage barn would be nice."

Ah, there you go. A great big docking station for the RV. Live in the vehicle, toss a couch or two around the barn, use the rest for welding together giant steel dinosaurs and restoring the AC 428 (which would be the towd car, naturally). Keep another barn by the beach.

A person might need to keep their possessions mobile during the Apocalypse, plus you get to always sleep in your own bed.

Of course, the tempting matter is to build the barn, get the inspection and lowish property taxes, finish out your stealth house inside. I won't tell.

[scenes]

re: GeorgeR@9:22PM

A person could certainly argue that burning down the neighbor's while ridding yourself of pine branches makes for a righteous lawsuit. Generally, it would help a lot if people could throw away their pile o' biological matter without the long drive to and expense of and lines at the dump (sorry, 'Recycling Center') plus tree parts 'n pieces of any size are flora non grata.

Locally, it isn't like anyone will spend real money on a Deer Creek cleanup, which points like an arrow of doom to all the coffee shops and fine gift stores of one local metropolis.

[Bill Tozer]

Scenes: helpful hint.

When building your barn or steel building, always make sure the supports/beams are in place for the loft after the shell passes inspection. I don’t tell either. Just a place to park the RV to get it out of the weather. :)

[Bill Tozer]

As far as land clearing (or turning the land into a park-like property, it all gets down to money. What the property owner can afford, what to leave in, what to leave out. And burning a pile of limbs ain’t going to start the neighborhood on fire.....no way, unless one is a greenhorn or burning newspapers and leaves in the wind. A pile of dried limbs won’t even smoke when it gets going. Zero smoke even if you stand next to it....but don’t stand too close then touch your Levis.

It all gets down to money. Need a new chainsaw? Tough. Love the one you got, love the one you’re with. If the fire is getting too big, let it die down a bit which only takes a few moments, or shoot a fine spray of water over the top of the flames as it gets going. No hose to reach? Keep a Hudson Sprayer close by. Can’t afford a Hudson sprayer? Well, you got bigger problems than overgrown vegetation.