I’ve heard it said globalists want to herd us out of rural areas into dystopian urban settings for better control…I think I know how they’ll go about that.
Further – I’ve been following the Maui fires and I must say I’ve seen some weird ass videos from the residents, not to mention inexplicable behaviour from police, firefighters, utilities and local leaders.
…and I’ll be pleasantly surprised if they convert to honest journalism now.
That just isn’t going to happen. But I admire your optimism Mr.Spector.
municipality requests release of water above their water ration to fight fires, water management agency says no, firefights see this and retreat rather than risking their lives ?
I don’t see any sign that they want us alive.
Many of these fires are being deliberately coordinated and set. They do not fit the patterns AT ALL of the last major drought years: the 1930s dust bowl.
Absolutely.
The Greek fires showed how to do it. Hijacking airliners is so passe. Wrecking economies by U-boat warfare is meh … too expenisve.
Funding and organising local “actors” to attack vital economic centres in this way? Well now THAT is a bang-for-your-buck fireworks display!
What would lumber prices be and our forestry industry look like if we harvested all the burned up and bug eaten trees, before they went to waste?
The real question the treehuggers need to answer, is, where there are interior forests, where the trees are no older than 250 years old, why would that be?
There was no commercial logging industry pre-whitey.
Yeah, Forest Fires. They are common, natural, and required for many plant species for renewal and seeding. Ponderosa Pine cones need the heat of a fire to open up and seed.
Its always been drier than a popcorn fart here in the OK, every summer. Doesnt matter if it rained for a couple days in July, for example. Within days, that moisture is gone and its hot and dry.
Arson and human carelessness are prime drivers of all the fires, as is Forest mismanagement, leaving all the fuel in the bush and preventing/reducing forest harvesting. Trying to protect the forest, results in the opposite, just more fuel to feed the fire.
I spent many years with the MOF Initial Attack in the BC interior and live there still. It’s difficult to describe how much things have changed from the days when all able-bodied males could be drafted to fight fire. Your choice was go to the fire or go to jail. Thankfully that doesn’t happen anymore but the old idea that you had to establish control on a fire by 10:00 has gone out the window as official policy. This allows fires to build up quite nicely as heat of the day progresses. Also, no one can set foot on a fire until an official has examined it for any safety problems. My friends in the logging industry can’t legally touch a fire except maybe one that starts on the landing, but lightning strikes – no way.
So, those are just a few of the myriad of problems that I have seen in the last several years which result in fires burning for weeks without anyone around and then when the wind kicks up like it did in BC in the last few weeks and days all hell breaks loose. This is a disaster that has been brewing for years and has now blown up. Of course, after the last Kelowna fire an inquiry was held and things got worse, not better. Will the latest round result in changes? I honestly don’t know.
“Also, no one can set foot on a fire until an official has examined it for any safety problems.”
I think you just need to provide the proper motivation for them to do their job quickly and efficiently. How about chaining the fire safety evaporator to a tree in the path of the fire?
If true, pardon me while I don’t give a flying f***. Follow-up on Burton, I’ve yet to see any photos of any firefighters engaging any fire anywhere in Hawaii when it happened. Maybe they exist, but have yet to see one. Still no official ’cause’. This is exactly how ‘conspiracy theories’ get rolling and it’s the so-called officials perpetrating them again.
Like Covid, Russian election interference, outside actors are behind the Freedom Convoy etc. You really don’t hate the media enough.
Yes, and we got a partial explanation when we found out the Maui Water Board Official had to consider native farmer … equity ,,, before approving water to be used for firefighting.
Our world has gone full bizarro. Why? Because all of the competent people work for corporations or themselves making money the old fashioned way … earning it and are too busy to get involved with government. So every idiot and loser in life is now “in charge” of our government … at every level. Idiots. We are being led by idiots.
Governed by idiots, there’s no leadership going on. Governed by idiots elected by lazy and wilfully ignorant voters.
Cambridge Dictionary:
kakistocracy
noun
A government that is ruled by the least suitable, able, or experienced people.
Kenji, as I have been saying for decades, the terminally stupid seem to be in control. Yet the people, yes the people are stupid as well, because they refuse to address and change the situation.
To me, the truly scary part of that, is that people that know better, still comply at many levels.
So, imho, if you follow idiots, you must be one.
Not really worth bothering with.
I am an American, grew up in Maine. Our volunteer fire force was dispatched with a siren, repetitive short blasts for a medical or auto crash call, a long steady blast for fire. If the siren blew for more than a minute all able bodied men – men in the old sense, anyone who can haul hose or otherwise be useful – were supposed to respond to the fire barn or to the fire to help. They modernized with pagers for the volunteers, but stuck with the siren to call out everyone in town. But in the 80’s they started having trouble with the town’s insurance company, they didn’t want “untrained people” on the fire ground (such as the ranchers you mention below, ours were lumbermen, commercial fishermen who couldn’t afford the coast, and some hobby farmers). Towns such as ours were unwilling to turn down available help, some would simply “deputize” whoever showed up with skill or equipment, so they insurance sons of *s went to the legislature and passed a law. No more general call outs. At the root of this is of course our out of control plaintiff’s bar down here, lawsuit fears have become a safety obsession that has allowed government to grab a lot of power they shouldn’t have, which they then use incompetently.
Thank you and all who wrote here, I learned more here this morning than I could if I tried to use the Leftist PR News Media all day. And thank you Kate, Robert, and all who bring us this great blog. I live in the South now – it’s nice to have sane neighbors, Maine has become North Massachusetts – and this blog allows me to keep up with Canadian news. Godspeed to all who have to fight the fires.
You want to see what is really going on? Go to a Facebook page with a hashtag like #climatemergency. They are screaming these fire are proof we must stop airline travel, lock the population down again because COVID proved it can be done. The earth is burning up and we must do something NOW!
I have not found a single one of these fires not linked in some way to arson or official bureaucrats ignoring the warnings and doing the wrong thing. The elite are out to clear the land of people and force everyone into their smart cities living in rented pods and eating bugs.
Does anyone know what are the sources of the initial fires? How many are caused by:
Lightning
Power lines
Railroads or Vehicles
Careless Campers
Careless residents
Arson
Unknown
Initial reports were “arson”, but that soon changed to “power lines”. I sure would like to see photos of the power lines which started this blaze. Otherwise, I’m going to assume that the PTB are just blaming the organization with the deepest pockets like they did in California. Let the ratepayers carry the burden when the lawsuits start!
I was a professional forester and worked in the forest industry on the Coast since 1974. When I started, we were progressively clear cutting which meant that we could design a logging block adjacent to a previous block only after it had been considered “abated” which means the fine fuels in the slash had either been burned off or decayed and “greened up” to where there was little chance of a ground fire spreading. We could continue to do this up until we came up to the next primary fire break which consisted of an old growth vertical corridor half a mile wide transecting an entire valley (spaced every few miles) which slowed or stopped most fires quite well. We burned a lot of slash which lowered the risk of fire spread. It meant that during fall and increasingly in the spring there was fire smoke around. As the public complained, we did less burning until we eventually did virtually none and as of 5 years ago the regulations around air quality made broadcast burning next to impossible. Successive governments pressured by the public forced cut blocks to become smaller and more scattered which may have looked better but resulted in more wind felled and destroyed timber, less opportunity to safely burn slash and higher risks from pests. The industry has lost most of its people who had fire fighting experience and rely more on government forest service to take that on. My only advice is that people need to know that they can choose their poison: more smoke in the off season or a lot more smoke and damage during the fire season. I did a consulting project a few years after the last major fire fried the Eastern hills of Kelowna on the status of municipal progress in fire-proofing communities and one of my conclusions was that the public didn’t want to see the kind of measures taken that could address some of the risk. Politicians scramble to get in front of the mob.
I should add that the primary fire breaks we used to use were a coastal phenomenon due to the size of timber and absence of ladder fuels. In a high wind fire storm, nothing works.
I read that like blowing out oil wells, high wind fires can only be stopped by an opposing force of same or greater magnitude. Explosions work in a small example but are impractical for a wall of fire.
Kudos to you John Chittick for adding some additional points.
Here in the BC interior it was standard procedure to broadcast burn cut blocks to clean up slash and debris and those burned blocks made very good fire guards all on their own. Once slash burns were frowned upon due to smoke the block had to be worked with a machine to prepare for planting. This of course left slash and I have been watching those replanted blocks torch up every summer for years. Just took my uncle up to look at one that was incinerated last week. All in all very frustrating to see.
Even more frustrating is the utter lack of fire abatement in the interface areas as you have mentioned and the realization that as every year passed we added more fuel to these areas. But the really aggravating thing is that there are legions of experienced loggers and operators who can’t do anything other than watch. I just spoke to an industry guy this morning who told me about a contractor who got $300k on a contract but all in all spent $6k on fuel because ultimately they were never given permission to move a single machine. Very profitable yes but very frustrating.
One other thing that needs mentioning is that when the government issues evacuation orders you now must leave or face fines and arrest whereas previously you could stay if you had animals, property etc. The news media goes along with this and reports the property owners as scofflaws who are endangering the fire professionals. I mean seriously, we formerly would have welcomed ranchers and other locals who owned and were familiar with pumps, bulldozers, skidders and other equipment and would have appreciated their knowledge and help. There has to be some common sense brought back into solving this problem.
Just another dreary example of how little regard there is for history, and that includes the history of industry best practices. Combine that with bureaucratic inertia, incompetant government officials and political pressure to kowtow to the squeaky wheels and the outcome is predictable.
In Clearhills county of Alberta this spring, if it wasn’t for the efforts of local residents, a lot more homes and property would have been lost. The county actually encouraged the citizens, in contrast to the County of Grande Prairie where affected residents were threatened with stiff fines for trying to protect their property and in many cases livelihood.
It’s still hazy in Western North Carolina today.
Kate or someone on the site linked this website in the past,
The haze is fairly consistent with the predictions of this website. The ground level smoke is so variable. Yesterday, I walked out of a store into what smelled like a dozen campfires next to me, but I drove a few miles and the air was pristine again. Other times, the air was fine until suddenly it was not, and I started looking for a fire, because the smoke smell was suddenly that bad.
I live in central Minnesota far from any wildfires so far this year. But the smoke is around over half the time. Minneapolis has had “The worst air quality” in the US, or even the world several times this year.
My birth father lives and works most of the year up in Wemendji, Quebec in the baei-James. Hope they’re doing okay up there.
There was no time to avoid homes burning yesterday, the winds were driving the fire faster than it could be fought.
We’re in Osoyoos for two weeks, drove thru the Cathedral/Ashnola corridor on Hwy3 yesterday with the winds whipping those fires. Took videos, it was surreal to see the power of nature. All on the south side of the Similkameen valley, across the river, on the mountain sides and the plateaus above.
Saw the smoke plume from the new fire NW of Oliver, again, impressive yet concerning to see this erupt so fast. Yet, it was yesterday’s cold front moving in with 40-50k winds that stirred everything up. Air quality was very bad from south of Cawston into Osoyoos yesterday, sun blotted out, black sky, but not bad in Keremeos. Today is a different story, very much better, though still smoky.
Friends bugged out of Kelowna yesterday, returning to Alberta, however, they were Kelowna residents 20 years ago when the OK Mtn fire burned down neighbourhoods. Yeah, Kelowna is a mess for now, long lineups at gas stations, tourists escaping, etc
As long as the wind doesnt pick up like yesterday, crews should make progress towards containing.
I live in Kelowna. It is a very bad situation.
Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming
Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming
Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming
Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming
The more this is repeated by the so-called scientists and their media parrots … the less will be done on a practical, logical, and patently obvious level to minimize the conflagrations.
When all you have is a hammer (and the proper pronouns) everything looks like a nail.
I left Canada and the friggin’ smoke followed me!
EJ and John pretty much sum it up. Progressives etal, whatever you call them have royally screwed with nature.
Been there, logging, fire fighting, choppers to camps, mountain tops, sleeping bags, weeks on line, sandwiches etc, tough, but great camaraderie.
Saw Forestry consultant/manager?, set back fire in known weather change. Lost equipment, we’re in the lake, he was promoted to Victoria.
Everyone on deck, attack with all means, few restrictions, stop this rascal, put it out or starve of fuel/path. Was the goal, Forest Cos actively involved.
New Gen doesn’t want eco system, view etc changed. So, leaving fuel around, you get fires. Simple.
Truly feel for the unaware and victims, but new age created issue, now they get to deal with it.
Sad, but true.
Nature and weather, they don’t care bout politics, policies, or cultish beliefs. They roll on, as they have always done, and always do.
Snide comment tho, how’s about them EVs for situations like this. Dreamers slammed by reality once again.
Reap what you sow, simple mantra.
Our local volunteer fire department was offered wildfire training by BC Forest Service. When they discovered we didn’t have a specific type of water pump they refused to train us. The fact that we were bringing fire trucks and lots of water was completely lost on them. We didn’t check a box so we didn’t get the training. We didn’t get the training so we couldn’t fight forest fires. (We do anyway, it would be insane not to.) Examples like these can be found everywhere in all governments.
You have hit the nail on the head. I am appalled that so much experience is tossed under the bus by people who apparently don’t have a clue, or are so arrogant that they think they know everything, or a combination of the two. Trust me I have been hearing from many folks just like you who would be invaluable in the fire fight and are ignored.
Environmental Studies grads end up in government….
That’s why things are screwed up.
We are residents of West Kelowna, fortunately closer to the lake so we are not under notice, yet.
McDougall Range has been a tinderbox waiting to explode for at least 15 years when the bugs went through and killed off all the over mature Ponderosa Pine. Common sense would have dictated that the trees be removed at that time but the ‘planners’ in down town Kelowna decreed that would interfere with their view of the opposite hillside. Meanwhile the planners have allowed property development in the area to increase their tax base.
So now Mother Nature aided by some idiots with fireworks has decided to do some house cleaning. In a few years, aided by the fire induced seed release the range should become a healthy young forest again, unless of course it is covered in housing to enhance the tax base.
That is what happens when government ‘experts’ are allowed their ego trips.
Left Scotch Creek campsite on Shuswap Aug 17 @ 5:15pm when park folks told us we were on alert, with the next evac order giving one about 10 min to move. In the morning we had a blanket of ash on the car & tent. Took a some pics from Celiste around noon that day and you couldn’t see the south shore of Shuswap.
Lee Creek bridge got some water sprinklers installed as it is a wooden bridge. Flagging personnel were there as fire was already on the ridge on both sides of Lee Creek. Smoke was increasingly worse.
Watched the rest on twatter as 40-50% of Scotch Creek became burn material from home.
Survival instincts and skillz are still pretty good.
Cheers
C in C
1st St Nicolaas Army
Army Group True North
At least they don’t have any of those dirty pipelines.
Disasters.. Politics and government programs.. You pull on one thread and the whole thing might fall apart.. Its best to blame global warming and those awful people who don’t believe in it..
The fact is.. Politics has overstepped it bounds into every corner of our society.. Everything is managed or in this case not.. Same same..
Never enough clip boards and zoom meetings in this world.. Experts at managing the solutions but never the problem..
So.. Its possible to freeze in the dark while you burn to death.. That is impressive..
We live in Penticton, and both work in the aerial fire attack business. In the last couple decades we’ve seen the leadership of the forestry customers change from rise-from-the-ranks to university environmental grads, with the attendant shift to sustainability, reduced human impacts, and other such notions. Whatever worked in the past, whatever lessons we may have had and passed down, were left at the altar of progress.
Whoever is in charge of the fire response, and however the slight climate change we’ve experienced may affect fire behaviours, there are some things that stay the same:
The four essential elements of a wildfire are Fuel, Oxygen, Ignition, and Overtime.
Aircraft do not put out fires. Ground crews do not put out fires. Rain and cold put out fires.
Building into forested areas is fraught with danger. Ranchers have mitigated this by logging, grazing, and prescribed burns – all of which are frowned upon by their new neighbours from the cities.
Bureaucrats are first, last, and always motivated by self-interest. Your home, your business, and even your life are secondary to their careers and overtime opportunities. Don’t bet on them to do the right thing, ever.
Good comment. This site really needs an upvote function.
https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1692957043945324604?s=20
I’ve heard it said globalists want to herd us out of rural areas into dystopian urban settings for better control…I think I know how they’ll go about that.
Further – I’ve been following the Maui fires and I must say I’ve seen some weird ass videos from the residents, not to mention inexplicable behaviour from police, firefighters, utilities and local leaders.
…and I’ll be pleasantly surprised if they convert to honest journalism now.
That just isn’t going to happen. But I admire your optimism Mr.Spector.
municipality requests release of water above their water ration to fight fires, water management agency says no, firefights see this and retreat rather than risking their lives ?
I don’t see any sign that they want us alive.
Many of these fires are being deliberately coordinated and set. They do not fit the patterns AT ALL of the last major drought years: the 1930s dust bowl.
Absolutely.
The Greek fires showed how to do it. Hijacking airliners is so passe. Wrecking economies by U-boat warfare is meh … too expenisve.
Funding and organising local “actors” to attack vital economic centres in this way? Well now THAT is a bang-for-your-buck fireworks display!
What would lumber prices be and our forestry industry look like if we harvested all the burned up and bug eaten trees, before they went to waste?
The real question the treehuggers need to answer, is, where there are interior forests, where the trees are no older than 250 years old, why would that be?
There was no commercial logging industry pre-whitey.
Yeah, Forest Fires. They are common, natural, and required for many plant species for renewal and seeding. Ponderosa Pine cones need the heat of a fire to open up and seed.
Its always been drier than a popcorn fart here in the OK, every summer. Doesnt matter if it rained for a couple days in July, for example. Within days, that moisture is gone and its hot and dry.
Arson and human carelessness are prime drivers of all the fires, as is Forest mismanagement, leaving all the fuel in the bush and preventing/reducing forest harvesting. Trying to protect the forest, results in the opposite, just more fuel to feed the fire.
I spent many years with the MOF Initial Attack in the BC interior and live there still. It’s difficult to describe how much things have changed from the days when all able-bodied males could be drafted to fight fire. Your choice was go to the fire or go to jail. Thankfully that doesn’t happen anymore but the old idea that you had to establish control on a fire by 10:00 has gone out the window as official policy. This allows fires to build up quite nicely as heat of the day progresses. Also, no one can set foot on a fire until an official has examined it for any safety problems. My friends in the logging industry can’t legally touch a fire except maybe one that starts on the landing, but lightning strikes – no way.
So, those are just a few of the myriad of problems that I have seen in the last several years which result in fires burning for weeks without anyone around and then when the wind kicks up like it did in BC in the last few weeks and days all hell breaks loose. This is a disaster that has been brewing for years and has now blown up. Of course, after the last Kelowna fire an inquiry was held and things got worse, not better. Will the latest round result in changes? I honestly don’t know.
“Also, no one can set foot on a fire until an official has examined it for any safety problems.”
I think you just need to provide the proper motivation for them to do their job quickly and efficiently. How about chaining the fire safety evaporator to a tree in the path of the fire?
If true, pardon me while I don’t give a flying f***. Follow-up on Burton, I’ve yet to see any photos of any firefighters engaging any fire anywhere in Hawaii when it happened. Maybe they exist, but have yet to see one. Still no official ’cause’. This is exactly how ‘conspiracy theories’ get rolling and it’s the so-called officials perpetrating them again.
Like Covid, Russian election interference, outside actors are behind the Freedom Convoy etc. You really don’t hate the media enough.
Yes, and we got a partial explanation when we found out the Maui Water Board Official had to consider native farmer … equity ,,, before approving water to be used for firefighting.
Our world has gone full bizarro. Why? Because all of the competent people work for corporations or themselves making money the old fashioned way … earning it and are too busy to get involved with government. So every idiot and loser in life is now “in charge” of our government … at every level. Idiots. We are being led by idiots.
Governed by idiots, there’s no leadership going on. Governed by idiots elected by lazy and wilfully ignorant voters.
Cambridge Dictionary:
kakistocracy
noun
A government that is ruled by the least suitable, able, or experienced people.
Kenji, as I have been saying for decades, the terminally stupid seem to be in control. Yet the people, yes the people are stupid as well, because they refuse to address and change the situation.
To me, the truly scary part of that, is that people that know better, still comply at many levels.
So, imho, if you follow idiots, you must be one.
Not really worth bothering with.
I am an American, grew up in Maine. Our volunteer fire force was dispatched with a siren, repetitive short blasts for a medical or auto crash call, a long steady blast for fire. If the siren blew for more than a minute all able bodied men – men in the old sense, anyone who can haul hose or otherwise be useful – were supposed to respond to the fire barn or to the fire to help. They modernized with pagers for the volunteers, but stuck with the siren to call out everyone in town. But in the 80’s they started having trouble with the town’s insurance company, they didn’t want “untrained people” on the fire ground (such as the ranchers you mention below, ours were lumbermen, commercial fishermen who couldn’t afford the coast, and some hobby farmers). Towns such as ours were unwilling to turn down available help, some would simply “deputize” whoever showed up with skill or equipment, so they insurance sons of *s went to the legislature and passed a law. No more general call outs. At the root of this is of course our out of control plaintiff’s bar down here, lawsuit fears have become a safety obsession that has allowed government to grab a lot of power they shouldn’t have, which they then use incompetently.
Thank you and all who wrote here, I learned more here this morning than I could if I tried to use the Leftist PR News Media all day. And thank you Kate, Robert, and all who bring us this great blog. I live in the South now – it’s nice to have sane neighbors, Maine has become North Massachusetts – and this blog allows me to keep up with Canadian news. Godspeed to all who have to fight the fires.
You want to see what is really going on? Go to a Facebook page with a hashtag like #climatemergency. They are screaming these fire are proof we must stop airline travel, lock the population down again because COVID proved it can be done. The earth is burning up and we must do something NOW!
I have not found a single one of these fires not linked in some way to arson or official bureaucrats ignoring the warnings and doing the wrong thing. The elite are out to clear the land of people and force everyone into their smart cities living in rented pods and eating bugs.
Does anyone know what are the sources of the initial fires? How many are caused by:
Lightning
Power lines
Railroads or Vehicles
Careless Campers
Careless residents
Arson
Unknown
Initial reports were “arson”, but that soon changed to “power lines”. I sure would like to see photos of the power lines which started this blaze. Otherwise, I’m going to assume that the PTB are just blaming the organization with the deepest pockets like they did in California. Let the ratepayers carry the burden when the lawsuits start!
Here’s one for the fires in Hawaii: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/08/17/ny-post-we-have-video-that-might-show-how-the-maui-fires-started-n2627150?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&recip=29528679
Plus the firefighters didn’t babysit the hotspot to confirm it didn’t re-ignite.
I was a professional forester and worked in the forest industry on the Coast since 1974. When I started, we were progressively clear cutting which meant that we could design a logging block adjacent to a previous block only after it had been considered “abated” which means the fine fuels in the slash had either been burned off or decayed and “greened up” to where there was little chance of a ground fire spreading. We could continue to do this up until we came up to the next primary fire break which consisted of an old growth vertical corridor half a mile wide transecting an entire valley (spaced every few miles) which slowed or stopped most fires quite well. We burned a lot of slash which lowered the risk of fire spread. It meant that during fall and increasingly in the spring there was fire smoke around. As the public complained, we did less burning until we eventually did virtually none and as of 5 years ago the regulations around air quality made broadcast burning next to impossible. Successive governments pressured by the public forced cut blocks to become smaller and more scattered which may have looked better but resulted in more wind felled and destroyed timber, less opportunity to safely burn slash and higher risks from pests. The industry has lost most of its people who had fire fighting experience and rely more on government forest service to take that on. My only advice is that people need to know that they can choose their poison: more smoke in the off season or a lot more smoke and damage during the fire season. I did a consulting project a few years after the last major fire fried the Eastern hills of Kelowna on the status of municipal progress in fire-proofing communities and one of my conclusions was that the public didn’t want to see the kind of measures taken that could address some of the risk. Politicians scramble to get in front of the mob.
I should add that the primary fire breaks we used to use were a coastal phenomenon due to the size of timber and absence of ladder fuels. In a high wind fire storm, nothing works.
I read that like blowing out oil wells, high wind fires can only be stopped by an opposing force of same or greater magnitude. Explosions work in a small example but are impractical for a wall of fire.
Kudos to you John Chittick for adding some additional points.
Here in the BC interior it was standard procedure to broadcast burn cut blocks to clean up slash and debris and those burned blocks made very good fire guards all on their own. Once slash burns were frowned upon due to smoke the block had to be worked with a machine to prepare for planting. This of course left slash and I have been watching those replanted blocks torch up every summer for years. Just took my uncle up to look at one that was incinerated last week. All in all very frustrating to see.
Even more frustrating is the utter lack of fire abatement in the interface areas as you have mentioned and the realization that as every year passed we added more fuel to these areas. But the really aggravating thing is that there are legions of experienced loggers and operators who can’t do anything other than watch. I just spoke to an industry guy this morning who told me about a contractor who got $300k on a contract but all in all spent $6k on fuel because ultimately they were never given permission to move a single machine. Very profitable yes but very frustrating.
One other thing that needs mentioning is that when the government issues evacuation orders you now must leave or face fines and arrest whereas previously you could stay if you had animals, property etc. The news media goes along with this and reports the property owners as scofflaws who are endangering the fire professionals. I mean seriously, we formerly would have welcomed ranchers and other locals who owned and were familiar with pumps, bulldozers, skidders and other equipment and would have appreciated their knowledge and help. There has to be some common sense brought back into solving this problem.
Just another dreary example of how little regard there is for history, and that includes the history of industry best practices. Combine that with bureaucratic inertia, incompetant government officials and political pressure to kowtow to the squeaky wheels and the outcome is predictable.
In Clearhills county of Alberta this spring, if it wasn’t for the efforts of local residents, a lot more homes and property would have been lost. The county actually encouraged the citizens, in contrast to the County of Grande Prairie where affected residents were threatened with stiff fines for trying to protect their property and in many cases livelihood.
It’s still hazy in Western North Carolina today.
Kate or someone on the site linked this website in the past,
https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/
The haze is fairly consistent with the predictions of this website. The ground level smoke is so variable. Yesterday, I walked out of a store into what smelled like a dozen campfires next to me, but I drove a few miles and the air was pristine again. Other times, the air was fine until suddenly it was not, and I started looking for a fire, because the smoke smell was suddenly that bad.
I live in central Minnesota far from any wildfires so far this year. But the smoke is around over half the time. Minneapolis has had “The worst air quality” in the US, or even the world several times this year.
My birth father lives and works most of the year up in Wemendji, Quebec in the baei-James. Hope they’re doing okay up there.
There was no time to avoid homes burning yesterday, the winds were driving the fire faster than it could be fought.
We’re in Osoyoos for two weeks, drove thru the Cathedral/Ashnola corridor on Hwy3 yesterday with the winds whipping those fires. Took videos, it was surreal to see the power of nature. All on the south side of the Similkameen valley, across the river, on the mountain sides and the plateaus above.
Saw the smoke plume from the new fire NW of Oliver, again, impressive yet concerning to see this erupt so fast. Yet, it was yesterday’s cold front moving in with 40-50k winds that stirred everything up. Air quality was very bad from south of Cawston into Osoyoos yesterday, sun blotted out, black sky, but not bad in Keremeos. Today is a different story, very much better, though still smoky.
Friends bugged out of Kelowna yesterday, returning to Alberta, however, they were Kelowna residents 20 years ago when the OK Mtn fire burned down neighbourhoods. Yeah, Kelowna is a mess for now, long lineups at gas stations, tourists escaping, etc
As long as the wind doesnt pick up like yesterday, crews should make progress towards containing.
I live in Kelowna. It is a very bad situation.
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The more this is repeated by the so-called scientists and their media parrots … the less will be done on a practical, logical, and patently obvious level to minimize the conflagrations.
When all you have is a hammer (and the proper pronouns) everything looks like a nail.
I left Canada and the friggin’ smoke followed me!
EJ and John pretty much sum it up. Progressives etal, whatever you call them have royally screwed with nature.
Been there, logging, fire fighting, choppers to camps, mountain tops, sleeping bags, weeks on line, sandwiches etc, tough, but great camaraderie.
Saw Forestry consultant/manager?, set back fire in known weather change. Lost equipment, we’re in the lake, he was promoted to Victoria.
Everyone on deck, attack with all means, few restrictions, stop this rascal, put it out or starve of fuel/path. Was the goal, Forest Cos actively involved.
New Gen doesn’t want eco system, view etc changed. So, leaving fuel around, you get fires. Simple.
Truly feel for the unaware and victims, but new age created issue, now they get to deal with it.
Sad, but true.
Nature and weather, they don’t care bout politics, policies, or cultish beliefs. They roll on, as they have always done, and always do.
Snide comment tho, how’s about them EVs for situations like this. Dreamers slammed by reality once again.
Reap what you sow, simple mantra.
Our local volunteer fire department was offered wildfire training by BC Forest Service. When they discovered we didn’t have a specific type of water pump they refused to train us. The fact that we were bringing fire trucks and lots of water was completely lost on them. We didn’t check a box so we didn’t get the training. We didn’t get the training so we couldn’t fight forest fires. (We do anyway, it would be insane not to.) Examples like these can be found everywhere in all governments.
You have hit the nail on the head. I am appalled that so much experience is tossed under the bus by people who apparently don’t have a clue, or are so arrogant that they think they know everything, or a combination of the two. Trust me I have been hearing from many folks just like you who would be invaluable in the fire fight and are ignored.
Environmental Studies grads end up in government….
That’s why things are screwed up.
We are residents of West Kelowna, fortunately closer to the lake so we are not under notice, yet.
McDougall Range has been a tinderbox waiting to explode for at least 15 years when the bugs went through and killed off all the over mature Ponderosa Pine. Common sense would have dictated that the trees be removed at that time but the ‘planners’ in down town Kelowna decreed that would interfere with their view of the opposite hillside. Meanwhile the planners have allowed property development in the area to increase their tax base.
So now Mother Nature aided by some idiots with fireworks has decided to do some house cleaning. In a few years, aided by the fire induced seed release the range should become a healthy young forest again, unless of course it is covered in housing to enhance the tax base.
That is what happens when government ‘experts’ are allowed their ego trips.
Left Scotch Creek campsite on Shuswap Aug 17 @ 5:15pm when park folks told us we were on alert, with the next evac order giving one about 10 min to move. In the morning we had a blanket of ash on the car & tent. Took a some pics from Celiste around noon that day and you couldn’t see the south shore of Shuswap.
Lee Creek bridge got some water sprinklers installed as it is a wooden bridge. Flagging personnel were there as fire was already on the ridge on both sides of Lee Creek. Smoke was increasingly worse.
Watched the rest on twatter as 40-50% of Scotch Creek became burn material from home.
Survival instincts and skillz are still pretty good.
Cheers
C in C
1st St Nicolaas Army
Army Group True North
At least they don’t have any of those dirty pipelines.
Disasters.. Politics and government programs.. You pull on one thread and the whole thing might fall apart.. Its best to blame global warming and those awful people who don’t believe in it..
The fact is.. Politics has overstepped it bounds into every corner of our society.. Everything is managed or in this case not.. Same same..
Never enough clip boards and zoom meetings in this world.. Experts at managing the solutions but never the problem..
So.. Its possible to freeze in the dark while you burn to death.. That is impressive..
We live in Penticton, and both work in the aerial fire attack business. In the last couple decades we’ve seen the leadership of the forestry customers change from rise-from-the-ranks to university environmental grads, with the attendant shift to sustainability, reduced human impacts, and other such notions. Whatever worked in the past, whatever lessons we may have had and passed down, were left at the altar of progress.
Whoever is in charge of the fire response, and however the slight climate change we’ve experienced may affect fire behaviours, there are some things that stay the same:
The four essential elements of a wildfire are Fuel, Oxygen, Ignition, and Overtime.
Aircraft do not put out fires. Ground crews do not put out fires. Rain and cold put out fires.
Building into forested areas is fraught with danger. Ranchers have mitigated this by logging, grazing, and prescribed burns – all of which are frowned upon by their new neighbours from the cities.
Bureaucrats are first, last, and always motivated by self-interest. Your home, your business, and even your life are secondary to their careers and overtime opportunities. Don’t bet on them to do the right thing, ever.
Good comment. This site really needs an upvote function.