2011--Flood, drought and fire?

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by proveick

Here we go already. I remember a couple of years ago we lost 5 rafters in 2 weeks near Salida.
Rafters escape F Street Bridge incident (http://www.themountainmail.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=2262 6 - broken link)
RP

I saw a fatality mentioned in the vail daily yesterday, scrolling thru their news. I remember one summer a couple of years ago it seemed at least one person a day was dying in Colorado while rafting. I don't know how these raft companies do it.

[Shuffler]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

I have a friend who worked fighting the forest fires in Yellowstone back in 1988. He described what fighting fires in extreme drought conditions was like: He talked about building fire lines 8-30 feet wide with Pulaskis (a combination shovel and ax used by forest firefighters) while watching the wind--a lot of it generated by the fire itself--blowing fist-sized embers 10 miles through the air. He recounted that, except for saving the historic buildings at Old Faithful--which a relatively small group of firefighters accomplished with a few fire trucks, aerial slurry, and foam--the entire fire-fighting effort--something $130 million worth--was futile. Snow in the fall finally put the fires out. So, having an army of firefighters really is not a very effective way to fight a mega-fire--it looks impressive, but does not do much to stop what is pretty much inevitable.

There are now huge "mega-fires" ravaging the West because of over a century of fire suppression, massively diseased forests caused by tree over-crowding, aggravated by people building homes in the middle of tinderboxes--the latter that really complicates forest management practices. The really infuriating thing is that the US Forest Service is now spending a fortune in taxpayer monies protecting structures on private property that have been built in places where they never should have been built in the first place--while the Forest Service lacks sufficient funding to perform their mandate: managing the natural resources on the public lands that actually are its responsibility.

I'd be fine with taxes so high in fire zones that it discourages people to ever consider building & living there...that might be one way to control the growth.

That, or it's a 'build where you like, but we ain't sending the cavalry when the sh*t hits the fan...you're on your own then, and good luck'.

It really peeves me that firefighters put lives on the line to defend structures built in 'the stupid zone'. Not worth it...when I was in the fire service I worked with a lot of guys who got called out for wildland duty, and while fun & financially rewarding, they really weren't psyched to know that most of what they did was geared toward property preservation in stupid zones. No life is worth losing over a house.

Many of the USFS firefighters I met would just assume evacuate these places and set up to let the fires rip and roar, and to hell with the real estate...