Wild Fires in Colorado

[orin stepanek]

Wild fires in Colorado were reported on the news tonight! Some are near Colorado Springs! Made me think of Chris! Chris I hope you aren't having any near you!http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/1 ... 24165.html

[Chris Peterson]

Wild fires in Colorado were reported on the news tonight! Some are near Colorado Springs! Made me think of Chris! Chris I hope you aren't having any near you!http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/1 ... 24165.html

We're deep in the smoke of the Royal Gorge fire, about 25 miles south. We don't have smoke from Black Forest, 50 miles to the east, but we did evacuate my mom, who lives on the south edge of Black Forest, less than a mile from the mandatory evacuation zone. Looks like we're in for a long summer.

[geckzilla]

I just read an update on these. 360 homes burned now by the Black Forest fire and 0% containment. More wind and lightning in the forecast. Wow, that sound really grim.

[Chris Peterson]

I just read an update on these. 360 homes burned now by the Black Forest fire and 0% containment. More wind and lightning in the forecast. Wow, that sound really grim.

Yeah, and this just a year after Waldo Canyon, which didn't hold the record long as the most destructive fire in the state.

The reality is, with the change in climate, and the long history of not allowing fires to burn naturally, a lot of people here are in trouble. If you live on the east side of the Continental Divide, in a house with any substantial amount of wood on the outside, and are in an area with trees, there's a good chance your house will burn down in the next decade. The only hope is to eliminate trees 100 feet or more around your house, and have all exterior material fire resistant. And most people won't make those changes. We're just going to keep seeing this destruction, year after year, especially as climate change continues to make things drier and hotter.

I've got friends living in Black Forest, and that entire area was just a disaster waiting to happen. And now it has.

[geckzilla]

Did any of them spray paint their horses and set them free? I think that's a pretty good strategy for the horses at least.

Edit: I found a Flickr feed from the Colorado National Guard documenting one helicopter crew and their efforts with their Bambi Bucket.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/conational ... 036976920/

[owlice]

By Thursday morning the small farm was teeming with volunteers willing to muck stalls and strangers laden with animal feed. Grocery and pet stores along with area restaurants wanted to donate or help. Notes were posted on a board about calls coming in from ranches and farms willing to shelter animals.

Beautiful read; thanks for posting it, geckzilla.

[neufer]

---

<<When the National Interagency Fire Center released its 2013 wildfire outlook in early June, it did not forecast unusually high fire risk for Colorado. Most of the Rockies received some relief from drought during the spring, so there was hope that this year’s fire season would be more manageable than the last.

But then the heat arrived. Temperatures soared above 100°F in Denver on June 11, the earliest it has ever reached triple digits. That heat, along with gusty winds and drought-parched forests, came together to produce the Black Forest fire, the most destructive the state has ever seen. By the afternoon of June 13, the fire had destroyed 360 homes and damaged 14 others. The Waldo Canyon fire, Colorado’s most destructive prior to the Black Forest fire, destroyed 346 homes.

The Black Forest fire began on June 11 in a densely-wooded area north of Colorado Springs, Colorado. On June 12, 2013 at 12:05 p.m. MDT, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured these images of the fire about 20 miles northeast of Colorado Springs. Red outlines indicate hot spots where MODIS detected the unusually warm surface temperatures associated with fires.

According to firefighting agencies in Colorado, the Black Forest fire had spread through 15,000 acres by the afternoon of June 13. Hundreds of people on the ground and numerous water-dropping helicopters and planes were fighting the blaze, but it remained zero percent contained on the afternoon of June 13. More than 38,000 people had been forced to evacuate their homes. Tens of thousands more people coped with elevated air pollution levels because of the fires.>>

[BMAONE23]

Don't get me wrong, This fire is a tragedy especially for the local residents. But this can happen when people move into forested areas and try to tame the wilds. Just 10 years ago the area was growing so fast that the Electrical Grid couldn't handle the demand and a new Electric Distribution Substation was constructed along Goodson Rd to ensure adequate supply for the increased demand. 30 years ago, a fire in the same location wouldn't have destroyed even 1/2 the number of structures and likely less than 1/4. Forests burn during lightning storms and when people move to forested areas, their structures are susceptible to wild fire destruction.

[Chris Peterson]

Don't get me wrong, This fire is a tragedy especially for the local residents. But this can happen when people move into forested areas and try to tame the wilds. Just 10 years ago the area was growing so fast that the Electrical Grid couldn't handle the demand and a new Electric Distribution Substation was constructed along Goodson Rd to ensure adequate supply for the increased demand. 30 years ago, a fire in the same location wouldn't have destroyed even 1/2 the number of structures and likely less than 1/4. Forests burn during lightning storms and when people move to forested areas, their structures are susceptible to wild fire destruction.

No, you're absolutely right. People are living in places they shouldn't be, at far too high a density. Both last year's Waldo Canyon fire (which destroyed an urban subdivision that should never have been zoned in the first place), and now the Black Forest fire, demonstrate this. And it's not just an issue with fires. People build (and rebuild) in flood plains and on hurricane prone beaches.

Too many people, not enough common sense.

[geckzilla]

I almost got started on a post about too many people just now. Almost.

[orin stepanek]

Oops; too many people? How should that be taken? Don't want to make that political! Don't get me wrong; overpopulation may get to be a problem; but I don't think it is yet! I agree we build out cities in some of the wrong places! We also keep urbanizing into valuable farm land!

[geckzilla]

It does not matter what I or anyone thinks. That line isn't ours to draw. We can only hope to see it before we cross it.

The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature, — were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.

[Chris Peterson]

Oops; too many people? How should that be taken?

Consider that we are resource limited. Double the number of people and you halve the resources available to each (of course, it doesn't really work that way...) Why do we have global warming? Because when you multiply the individual carbon footprint by the number of people, the carbon cycle is disrupted. As we add people, we reduce the amount of carbon each can be responsible for producing. Of course, that get's harder and harder. As we add people, it gets harder (and more energy expensive) to provide water. Same for food. Same for a lot of rare but useful materials.

Bottom line, the easiest way to resolve a lot of our resource issues would simply be to have fewer people drawing on them. Yes, we can probably continue to direct technology at these problems, and manage to support a few billion more people. But at what ultimate cost to quality of life? Realistically, we aren't going to be leaving the Earth before the problem becomes technologically intractable. No matter how good we get with our applied science, there will be a point where we need to stabilize our population. Getting comfortable with that idea, learning how to make our economies work without demanding constant growth, these are things we should be doing now.

But of course, how often do humans act in advance of problems, to prevent them?

[geckzilla]

A futile effort when few people even seem to realize we are all in the same boat.

[orin stepanek]

I was just saying that it could be a scary subject!

[geckzilla]

Yes, people immediately conjure up ideas of Nazis, eugenics, euthanasia, etc. when the topic is broached. Of course, nothing that radical is desirable or even necessary. It simply takes public awareness, education, and, like Chris said, learning how to live differently. We don't shy away from managing wild animal populations because we understand what happens when there is an imbalance. Why should the subject of human population management be holy and untouchable? It's a lot less frightening to think about securing a good future for our descendants than it is to stick our heads in the sand and pretend like there is no problem at all.

edit: Look what you did, Orin. Now I'm doing that thing where I type too many words again.

[geckzilla]

. . . learning how to make our economies work without demanding constant growth . . .

Say, we could build all our homes in forests, flood plains, and hurricane prone areas in order to create a constant need for rebuilding which could replace the need for constant growth.

[Chris Peterson]

Say, we could build all our homes in forests, flood plains, and hurricane prone areas in order to create a constant need for rebuilding which could replace the need for constant growth. :wink:

The Geckzilla School of Economics. Maybe you shouldn't be looking at studying biology at all...

[orin stepanek]

edit: Look what you did, Orin. Now I'm doing that thing where I type too many words again.

Sorry! I erased a lot of what I started to say! Because of the situation; I sometimes am glad I'm in my rusty (golden?) years! But there is so much to want to see; So much in space to find out about! Hopefully the dawn of space age isn't the dusk of mankind!

[rstevenson]

... Bottom line, the easiest way to resolve a lot of our resource issues would simply be to have fewer people drawing on them. ...

I can think of only three ways that has ever happened, alas.

1. Plague: Though it can be quick and effective, it's not usually considered a positive thing. But it will happen again, and perhaps soon. It only requires a bacteria or virus with a particular combination of traits: extremely virulent (so it kills most of those infected), stays quiescent for a period after initial infection (so it can spread around the world before being noticed), easily spread by contact.

2. Suasion, moral or otherwise: While it's true that China's population has increased greatly, it could have been a much larger increase if the guvmint had not enforced a 1 child per family rule for the past half century or so. But the societal control required for this method to work is considered repugnant in most of the world.

3. Prosperity: It seems that the more prosperous a society is, the fewer children people have. But that very prosperity may be part of what overwhelms the Earth's carrying capacity -- though that need not be the case, depending on your definition of prosperity.

On the whole, I prefer the prosperity method, if it can continue to work. But it doesn't work fast. If fast is required, the bacterial method will no doubt come into play. Beware the sniffles!

As for the subject of this thread, I've long been bemused by people's propensity to insist on living in risky circumstances, and then demanding "help" -- that is, public money -- when the risk is realized. Flood plains look like a great place to build, but they call them flood plains for a reason. Similarly with hurricane/tornado zones, or bush/forested areas. Perhaps it's time to stop granting building permits in those areas, or at least to stop insuring new buildings in such areas. We can all have a say in this, because like it or not, we all pay for it.

Rob

[geckzilla]

Hey, careful about lumping tornadoes with hurricanes. If we stopped building in tornado alley we'd have to clear out the entire center of the US. Tornadoes aren't nearly as predictable as hurricanes and the general tendency for things built along the coast to erode away with the sand.

And slow change is definitely better than quick. Otherwise you'll end up with terrible burdens like we have now that the baby boomers are becoming geriatric. Few young people to take care of lots of retired people... it's hard!

[Chris Peterson]

I can think of only three ways that has ever happened, alas.

1. Plague

It did the job in the past, but at the rate medical knowledge is advancing, there's a good chance that technology will keep this one at bay before it can rear its head in a serious way again.

2. Suasion, moral or otherwise

There are more ethically acceptable ways of approaching this, however. For instance, in the U.S. the tax system is set up so that people are effectively rewarded for having more kids. Rewarding people for having no kids or just one doesn't seem objectionable (other than politically, perhaps). Financial incentives, as opposed to legal or financial disincentives could be very effective, and at the same time avoid the ethically questionable approaches of the Chinese.

3. Prosperity

As you say, probably getting a bit late to expect that one to do the trick, especially when we take a global view.

As for the subject of this thread, I've long been bemused by people's propensity to insist on living in risky circumstances, and then demanding "help" -- that is, public money -- when the risk is realized. Flood plains look like a great place to build, but they call them flood plains for a reason. Similarly with hurricane/tornado zones, or bush/forested areas. Perhaps it's time to stop granting building permits in those areas, or at least to stop insuring new buildings in such areas. We can all have a say in this, because like it or not, we all pay for it.

Localities like issuing building permits, because the "growth is good" mentality pervades government, and because more people means more taxes, means more power for those in control. But insurance companies could charge something that reflected the actual risk better, instead of relying on those of us in low risk areas to subsidize others. Also, after a major disaster, federal funds used to help people rebuild could be used instead to buy them out, turning areas dangerous for habitation into federally owned parks or agriculture zones.

[rstevenson]

Hey, careful about lumping tornadoes with hurricanes. If we stopped building in tornado alley we'd have to clear out the entire center of the US. Tornadoes aren't nearly as predictable as hurricanes and the general tendency for things built along the coast to erode away with the sand.

I understand, but the fact remains that those of us who live in low risk areas are subsidizing those who build in tornado alley (or flood plains, or on beach-front lots, or... ). We do that by paying higher insurance premiums than we would otherwise have to pay. I don't suggest emptying out the US from the Rockies to the Appalachians, but I would definitely like to see higher construction standards and more sensible community planning, a program of renovation or replacement for all older buildings, and most definitely insurance premiums that reflect the local risks. That last point should apply everywhere of course. I really should not be paying more for my insurance just because eejits built their homes on sand bars along the Jersey shore.

Otherwise you'll end up with terrible burdens like we have now that the baby boomers are becoming geriatric.

That myth is beginning to take on the status of a truth, and it must be squashed at all opportunities. The oldest boomer alive is only now 67 years old, hardly the age at which you yout's will begin to feel the pain of caring for us. The majority of boomers, more so than previous generations, will be taking care of themselves for a long time to come.

Rob

[geckzilla]

Otherwise you'll end up with terrible burdens like we have now that the baby boomers are becoming geriatric.

That myth is beginning to take on the status of a truth, and it must be squashed at all opportunities. The oldest boomer alive is only now 67 years old, hardly the age at which you yout's will begin to feel the pain of caring for us. The majority of boomers, more so than previous generations, will be taking care of themselves for a long time to come.

Visit a hospital lately? Was it crowded? There's already not enough doctors. There's a lot of problems with the social security system due to the increasing disparity between retirees and workers. I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine this.

[geckzilla]

Judging by the crickets I suppose I wrote something terribly ignorant or awkward or both. At least the fires are getting under control in Colorado.