California Rim Fire is getting BIG!

[Aaron Sorensen]

105,000 acres bured already.

Just wanted to start the topic to what everyone thinks.

[Paul Wagner]

We were up at our cabin near Twain Harte this week, and came down early today because the smoke was so bad. This is a huge fire, and it has already burned through some lovely country. We've hiked/backpacked Cherry Lake, Miguel Meadows, Lake Eleanor…and it looks like that has all burned. And I don't see them stopping this fire until it gets into the solid granite of Cherry Canyon, Emigrant WIlderness, etc.

Very sad. And on the way home today, the smoke extended almost to Oakdale in the west…and we could see the Pyro-culums cloud easily from Fairfield…about 100 miles away.

[Kevin Burton]

I thought the forest service encouraged fires to burn often to prevent these mega fires from happening.

Is this normal or caused the by the forest service putting out too many fires and not lighting enough control fires to prevent tinder buildup?

[Sharon J.]

perhaps having had drought conditions for something like 5 of the past 7 years contributed.

[Kattt]

I used to live in the area and still visit friends up there. Very familiar with Groveland and the vicinity; I am currently looking at buying a few acres right by Buck Meadows :(

I hope they get this under control soon.

[peter vacco]

" Is this normal or caused the by the forest service putting out too many fires and not lighting enough control fires to prevent tinder buildup? "

the acerage is ok, it's the intensity that is the result of fire suppression.
and ya, it's been hella dry here for years now. drought is the new normal (unless you own a golf course near LA).

[HkNewman]

I thought the forest service encouraged fires to burn often to prevent these mega fires from happening.

After out by the next 10 AM, for awhile they were generally letting them burn but pressure mounted to start fighting them again. Regardless there's too much dry fuel for the dry conditions or these western US fires wouldn't be so huge.

[Kattt]

Also, lots of Manzanita and Madrone, which burns really hot.

[Desert Dweller]

Also the government has been in the process of eradicating the American rancher and the cattle allotments. Cattle, used to keep the understories of our forests grazed down and thier paths provided fire lanes and acess to forests that fire fighters used. Now, since there are less cattle, sheep and goats grazing on public land the forest under stories have grown unimpeded for about a decade or more, and that along with the drought has caused these huge fires. And our forest service has been cut back to minimal bodies to maintain the acreage. Less and less fire lookouts, and when old lookouts are damaged or burned, they don't replace them due to government budget cuts.

[Paul Wagner]

For those of you who don't know this area, this area is incredibly steep—no cattle run this range–and covered with scrub oak, manzanita, and conifers. As many have noted here, this is a very dry year, and that stuff is just ready to explode into flames. There is no way to get fire crews into this area if you ever want to get them back out again…and the fire is so large that it is creating its own weather: huge downdrafts that burst out of the fire in many different directions.

The good news is that the primary wind is from the southwest, and to the northeast of this fire is a massive bunch of granite in northwestern Yosemite and the Emigrant Wilderness. So it will probably burn out against that.

But the western side of the fire is still dangerous, and they are still advising evacuations for communities along the 108 corridor.

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

"the government has been in the process of eradicating the American rancher and the cattle allotments. Cattle, used to keep the understories of our forests grazed down and thier paths provided fire lanes and acess to forests that fire fighters used."

Wilderness doesn't need cattle to keep it healthy. With cattle we've replaced the native ungulates and done it at a density that is far too high and thus causing all sorts of ecological damage including riparian degradation and erosion. Cattle grazing on public lands is one of the worst things that's happened to park land in the south west.

With both cattle grazing and fire suppression we've caused some longer term problems that are going to take time to heal. After decades of fire suppression there's going to be bigger fires until things settle into a more natural routine (although climate change might keep them big). With cattle grazing there's going to be ecological differences until native ungulates can refill those niches. In the mean time, forests get enhanced primary productivity and diversity in the understory communities – far better than having overgrazing to facilitate unnatural fire suppression access.

[Jerry Adams]

Don't need fire lookouts anymore – satelites and airplanes

One problem here in PNW is that beetles have killed huge stands of timber, maybe caused by weather related to higher CO2 levels.

CO2 may also cause more, worse droughts.

In the future, there may be huge areas of timber that are replaced by meadow.

[Joseph Brody]

I hope the smoke will mostly be gone by September 11th, because I have a 1/2 trip down the John Muir Trail and it really grinds my gears when its smokey in Yosemite. RAIN.

I hate fires, they destroy the trails. I got dangerously lost when I could not find the trial in a area that many years ago had been destroyed by fire. I was hiking from the Grand Canyon of the Toulomne to Smith Peak over Hetch Hetchy. When the trees are gone, the sharp thorned brush explodes, and covers the trail. Then the dead trees fall all over the trail. Once you hike over the tree, trail finding is very hard. I re-routed and told the Rangers that they should warn or close the trail. They shrugged and said that it was a Wilderness Area. As a former member of Search and Rescue, I was very disappointing in these rangers.

Looks like the fire is going north and State and San Francisco has declared a state of emergency to protect bay area water in Hetch Hetchy and power lines.

[Ken Thompson]

The fire, which started last week in the Stanislaus National Forest, had burned more than 125,620 acres as of Saturday morning, claiming 16 structures, including four homes, and causing one injury

It's big one for sure. No casualties so far. Hope that keeps up.

[Kattt]

Fire updates for locals, without big media.
First minute is just audio, then video picks up.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=au6H-K6nBEc&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dau6H-K6nBEc

[Hiking Malto]

Isnt this the same general area that burned in 1987? If so then how did the undergrowth get so bad to allow this fire to take place? If fire is needed to stop big fires then why didn't it work?

[Ken Thompson]

25 years too soon in your opinion?

[peter vacco]

so, if in the 25 yrs since it last burned, and that 1987 was FAR to long in coming and it killed a lot of the trees, then what else will be there besides "undergrowth". it can't all be water'y ferns and such. it's going to be brush and dry 'd out thistles and other good burn'y things. as so, it may be quite some number of cycles before nature sorts out the mess. if at all … ever.

Only YOU can prevent forest fires !
but just because you can, does not always mean you should ….

ultra-long term fire prevention is maybe another of those things our gov't sold us, that perhaps are not so great an idea.

[Jerry Adams]

"ultra-long term fire prevention is maybe another of those things our gov't sold us"

I think it's more like that people demanded that the government prevent forest fires

Right now, if the government tries to let a fire burn, they face huge pressure to stop it

Maybe one of the weaknesses of a democracy?

[Hiking Malto]

"so, if in the 25 yrs since it last burned, and that 1987 was FAR to long in coming and it killed a lot of the trees, then what else will be there besides "undergrowth". it can't all be water'y ferns and such. it's going to be brush and dry 'd out thistles and other good burn'y things. as so, it may be quite some number of cycles before nature sorts out the mess. if at all … "

So if 25 yo burn areas are this intense then how does the west ever recover from the massive burn areas that keep occurring? I believe Postholer posted that a full 41% of the first 700 miles of the PCT has burned in the last 13 years. If it takes several generations to get the forest back into a sustainable condition then is it possible to keep it from burning over that long period of time? I'm glad I was able to hike the PCT while there are still trees left on it!

[Jerry Adams]

I've hiked through areas that have been burned, like Mt Hood or Three Sisters and it's still a nice hike. Only some of the areas burned. It's interesting to see how the burned areas recover.

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

"Isnt this the same general area that burned in 1987? If so then how did the undergrowth get so bad to allow this fire to take place? If fire is needed to stop big fires then why didn't it work?"

A natural fire disturbance typically clears out a lot of the brush/understory/young trees without killing many of the mature trees. It doesn't burn hot/long enough to kill the majority of the mature trees over huge tracts of land (normally but not as a rule). So for example redwoods get to be giants not because they live in an area that hasn't burned for 2000 years, but rather because they have survived many moderate fires.

Decades of fire suppression created a situation where there was a pent up fuel in the understory communities. This has enabled more intense/hotter fires which are capable of complete devastation to the forest including the mature trees. It has also enabled a lot more fires to get established, so the problem is both quantity and severity of fires. So once we allowed the fuel to accumulate we jeopardized the mature trees, even if the actual fire might be decades down the road. There are some ways out (manual clearing, natural rotting etc) but it's a bad situation and simply letting them burn now doesn't solve the problem (although it's probably the best we can do).

I don't know much about these specific fires, but it sounds like the mature trees in the area likely perished in the 1987 fire as a result of previous fire suppression efforts. Now with the mature trees gone the ecosystem system was in a vulnerable state since there isn't the same contrast/separation between the mature tree canopy and the younger understory. So any fire that comes along burns the whole enchilada until the forest can reach a climax state.

It's tough getting back to climax communities – which is one of the reasons why we shouldn't wreck them. Ecology is a complex and fascinating subject. With specific regard to fires, forests basically need to get lucky and avoid fires for a couple hundred years while they reach maturity – at which point the mature trees can hopefully endure fires. So this time around the forest made it to 25 years and then burned. Hopefully the 2013 – ???? period is long enough to let the forest mature.

That's a quasi-educated stab at this from a fire ecology viewpoint. Reality is unavoidably more complicated. Climate change is another factor that has the potential to amplify fires (from hotter/drier summers) and possibly would be causing severe complete devastation fires even if we had never suppressed fires.

[Chris .]

Climate change is a bunch of horse poop. Natural fires have happened since the beginning of recorded history. Some of them burning for months and years. Greenies stop allowing land to be cut or burned as necessary, and this is the result.

[Jerry Adams]

"Climate change is a bunch of horse poop. Natural fires have happened since the beginning of recorded history. Some of them burning for months and years. Greenies stop allowing land to be cut or burned as necessary, and this is the result."

Land owners are the ones that want fires supressed

The huge stands of beetle killed trees, possibly due to increased CO2 levels, are different from previous recent times.

Ahhhh… we have a global warming denier. This will be more of a problem 50 or 100 years from now so we won't care, we'll be dead, but our grandchildren will wonder why we didn't do more when we had a chance.

[Nick Gatel]

Interesting study done in the San Jacintos a few years back. Scientists estimated fires every 80 – 100 years, and the forest was healthy. But now with forest management the fires are disasterous due to the accumulated ground fuel, as Dan points out.

We have had serious damage in California forests over the past 20 years due to the bark beetle destruction — drought makes trees vulnerable to the beetle. Root cause of drought is a huge debate that no one can prove at this point in time.

[Author]

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