Stunning Images of Yosemite Fire

[MikeL]

Video from cockpit of a California Air National Guard tanker as crews battle the huge Rim Fire burning near Yosemite National Park:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c_eGiGG1B-Q

 

 

 

And from the International Space Station:

 

Edited August 27, 2013 by MikeL

[B1ue]

I grew up in Pine Mountain Lake. In fact, my parent's house is less than a mile from where they started to contain the fire. I feel weird that so many of my childhood memories have been destroyed, but it's not exactly the first go around for that.

 

I've been extremely amused by all the comments I've read about those damn liberals that live in that area whose houses are threatened. That entire county, and the surrounding counties as well, trends very conservative. The last time that congressional district went for a Democratic president was Bill Clinton's in the 1992 race.

[iSimba]

oh no the landing gear!

[MikeL]

oh no the landing gear!

 

Yeah, the tanker is flying so low, it gets the automatic "landing gear" warning.

[Zombie]

Terrible destruction of such beautiful wilderness.

Seems the regular fires that have always occurred and cleared scrub in forests haven't been allowed to happen under human management meaning when this fire broke out there was an unnatural quantity of scrub fuel causing such intense burning and heat that the burnt forest won't be able to recover in our lifetime

[MikeL]

Terrible destruction of such beautiful wilderness.

Seems the regular fires that have always occurred and cleared scrub in forests haven't been allowed to happen under human management meaning when this fire broke out there was an unnatural quantity of scrub fuel causing such intense burning and heat that the burnt forest won't be able to recover in our lifetime

 

You are absolutely correct.  We can't do good without doing harm.

[B1ue]

Actually, that area has burned four or five times in the twenty years my family has lived there, and a heck of lot of regulations are in place to help manage grass and scrub on owned properties. Plus, the Forestry service practices controlled burns, in order to help propagate seed growth among the sequoias and older growth trees. 

 

Drought conditions may be more at fault. Trees require a lot of water to grow properly, but native grasses and scrub require much less. Grasses and scrub also burn at a much lower temperature than trees do, which is why the calls for clear-cutting the forest as a strategy to fire management makes less than no sense. Drought conditions also make controlled burns a much riskier endeavor, even the best planned controlled burn can get out of hand; one of the fires I mentioned in my opening sentence was exactly that.

 

This fire got so big because we've had several years of drought in a row, and because of geography. I'm not sure if you've seen the topographical maps of that area, but that canyon where the fires started and grew through is steep, and access is spotty. The initial hope for this fire seemed to be that it would burn itself out with little human intervention, but that did not work out.

[Zombie]

Actually, that area has burned four or five times in the twenty years my family has lived there, and a heck of lot of regulations are in place to help manage grass and scrub on owned properties. Plus, the Forestry service practices controlled burns, in order to help propagate seed growth among the sequoias and older growth trees. 

 

Drought conditions may be more at fault. Trees require a lot of water to grow properly, but native grasses and scrub require much less. Grasses and scrub also burn at a much lower temperature than trees do, which is why the calls for clear-cutting the forest as a strategy to fire management makes less than no sense. Drought conditions also make controlled burns a much riskier endeavor, even the best planned controlled burn can get out of hand; one of the fires I mentioned in my opening sentence was exactly that.

 

This fire got so big because we've had several years of drought in a row, and because of geography. I'm not sure if you've seen the topographical maps of that area, but that canyon where the fires started and grew through is steep, and access is spotty. The initial hope for this fire seemed to be that it would burn itself out with little human intervention, but that did not work out.

 

Problem is humans see things like this on their tiny tiny timescale - we live for a speck of time. Even our collective memory is just a speck - Native Americans a lot longer due to their oral traditions. The forest has been around for millennia and has always recovered. But we're incapable of thinking along those lines. So we intervene. We change nature. And, so far, we've been spectacularly unsuccessful. Hubris is our downfall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Edited August 29, 2013 by Zombie

[B1ue]

I am actually not certain what you're saying there. When you're talking about human intervention, are you referring to putting out natural fires in that area? I thought I'd already addressed that point, but I'll be blunter. When people are saying that fires haven't been allowed to occur in the area of the Rim Fire, they are misinformed. When they say that the last fire in this area occurred over 25 years ago, they are lying. Fires are quite frequent, and often are allowed to peter out on their own when sufficient resources are available to contain it. It's cheaper, and as you say, it's better for the environment for regular fires to happen anyways. So they do, and when they don't it's policy to have controlled fires, again when resources are available to help it from getting out of control. But there's a risk, and the Rim Fire is a stunning example of what can happen when the ability to maintain a perimeter is misjudged.

 

Most of the acreage burning is unpopulated by humans. Most of it is in a national forest. The structures destroyed are nearly all camp ground facilities, or are related to the couple of reservoirs in the area. Buck Meadows, which houses the remaining structures, has a population of 50, if I recall correctly. Even Pine Mountain Lake is mostly summer and vacation homes (my family being among the exceptions). For all the talk about preserving the pristine nature of Yosemite, Yosemite sees more people and is more affected by human intervention than almost anywhere in the fire's footprint.

 

Edit: Actually, that's not fair or quite true, because I am not allowing for the effects the Hetch Hetchy reservoir has had on the local ecosystem. So that has had a continuous affect, but I'm not sure it's equal to the thousands of people that flock to the Valley every year.

Edited August 29, 2013 by B1ue

[Zombie]

I am actually not certain what you're saying there.

 

You have the advantage that you / your family have lived in that area for the last 20 years, so you should know it pretty well.  But 20 years is just a gnat's breath of time. And that's one of the points I was making. We - humans - think we know a place pretty well because we measure by a human lifetime. But 20 years, 50 years, or even 100 years if you're long-lived are the merest blink compared to the hundreds of years lifespan of a giant redwood and the millennia of the forest. And my other point was that humans intervene and change nature and natural processes when they occupy land. They think they can control nature and "improve" it by trying to make it suit their needs [except those ancient cultures who aimed to live with nature]. Which means human policies in place to manage Yosemite and other forest areas, including fire policies, now there are roads, settlements, infrastructure, tourist camps and all the other paraphernalia of humanity. Which means humans trying to "manage" these wilderness areas by overriding / changing natural processes - "intervening". We think we're pretty smart with all our technology but the reality is we're incredibly stupid and incredibly short sighted. Just look at what we've done / are doing t the rest of the planet Like I said, hubris.

 

[hh5]

if all the trees were gone would that affect the magma dome? ie: become larger due to less weight of the trees? and the short term increase in water due

[Celethiel]

I wonder what would happen if you just evacuated the areas involved and let it burn...

[Ashi]

How do you evacuate wild lives?  What do do with the camping sites?  What about the dam that provides us Californians water?  What about the hydro plant that provides us power?  What about some legacy sites in Yosemite?  You can't just let it burn.... 

 

I remember I was there in 2009, and it was a 4th of July even, and it was smoke everywhere because they were doing controlled fire and Glacier Point Road was a disaster because it's impossible to get to the top so we stayed in the valley and Tioga Road where they were not burned down.  I learned later that eventually it got out hand into an uncontrolled fire....  I don't think human has any control over nature.  Just saying.  I will be in Yosemite in October, by the way....  Hopefully the fire would be out by then.

 

Oh and found this article....  Somewhat controversial, but it looks like another problem of the state is surfacing....

 

http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_23986627/rim-fire-did-illegal-marijuana-growers-start-blaze?source=most_viewed

[Celethiel]

Problem is there are wildfires everywhere right now, and really not enough firefighters to cover them all, and put them out Arizona, Montana, California dozens of other places...

Interesting Article, I don't know that Marijuana growing is illegal in Montana now however... "medical" marijuana is legal in the state.... I might add quite a few card holders don't use it for Medical use but recreational...

 

Believe me you can actually let it burn... questions really if you want to let it burn...

I remember as a 12 year old going through to Yellowstone and seeing thousands of acres of burned forest.... And these were burned out long before I was born, you could see the new growth of trees under the old burned ones.... it was kind of a strange and sad sight.

[Zombie]

I wonder what would happen if you just evacuated the areas involved and let it burn...

 

That's just what happened in nature. Forest fires are routine in nature. That's how the forest managed itself. Pretty successfully too.

 

Then people came along.

[hh5]

It was started by the guy who didn't heed smokey the bears warnings posted all over the park.

Wow a single fire caused all this damage rather than a typical california fire