California fires

[TYKE]

To all our friends across the water...................  my heart goes out to all who have been involved and suffered loss from the Californian fires......

It is a truly terrible situation     

[Sonny]

Yes it is bad. A real human tragedy in those heavily populated areas. Sadly, most of the western US is being steadily deforested. Warming shifts are causing epidemics of pine borer beetles which kill the trees, then they burn in droughts. Ironically, human fire prevention efforts have led to an unnaturally thick understory in the forests. Then when it dries out it is explosive.

It is hard to get a perspective on this. For the earth it's like shaving a beard. Burning off that California scrub is nothing. 50, 100, a few hundred years and the coniferous forests can all grows back. But for us on the human time scale it is heartbreaking because we won't see it like it was again.

[TYKE]

Interesting Sonny, thanks for the explanation     

Obviously what we see here is the T.V footage which looks horrific

[hobzinho]

I live in Northern California and we have spent the last 12 days locked inside due to some of the worst air quality in the world - and we're 150 miles away from the actual fires!  It's devastating what's going on.  Sonny's right on all the factors, and the fact that forest fires are simply a normal part of the environment in the Western US.  That being said, I've lived here for over 25 years and only in the last 2 years have we had the kind of fires that devastate hundreds of thousands of acres and affect life for hundreds of miles.  This is the 3rd time in 2 years.

A few months ago I did a ride up to the giant redwoods in N. Cal (https://www.versys1000.com/index.php/topic,19223.msg222514.html#msg222514).  I rode through the area of the Sonoma fire that happened almost 2 years ago.  There were areas that used to be populated neighborhoods but were now a matrix of cement foundations surrounded by blackened totem poles that used to be trees.  Even when insurance pays out a lot of people can't afford to rebuild their homes, and these calamities have spiked construction costs across the country. 

I guess we need to get used to a lot more of this.

[francis83]

I hope that all the involved people will find peace and a normal life again as soon as possible. We had big flood in 2010 and we know the feeling of people bringing face to the nature's tantrum.