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Posted by Bill S on November 7, 2007 at 2:44:29 pm EST
In reply to Cali wildfires posted by MTB416 on October 27, 2007 at 11:40:17 am EDT

As rexim says, removing fallen and dead debris disrupts the natural cycle. Though you may not have explicitly said so, your "advice"

Quote:

to properly clean out the forests of fallen and dead debris

will disrupt that natural cycle, unless you go to the extent of turning the whole of Southern California into an urban park or golf course with widely spaced trees and grass that must be maintained and heavily watered. And even then, as was shown by the golf course near Barb's brother's house, it doesn't lessen the fire intensity by much.

Unfortunately, people have been building in areas in total disregard to Nature - flood plains, barrier islands, tornado country, hurricane country, directly on fault lines, in the midst of forests. Then they complain that the government has not been doing enough to protect their homes when the natural cycle of Nature wipes out their house. Clearing the debris does not help if you do not clear a defensible space and if you do not use fire resistant materials in construction, just as building on a flood plain or next to an earthen levee does not guarantee you will never be flooded out.

No, I did not take you out of context. I merely pointed out the inevitable consequences of ignoring the way Nature works. Think it through to the ultimate consequences - how big and strong a levee is needed to keep the floods out? How strong a building is needed to keep it from being damaged by a tornado (by the way, every state in the US, including Alaska, sees tornadoes from time to time)? How strong a building is needed to stand up in the maximum possible earthquake in a given area (recall that the strongest earthquake on record in North America happened in Missouri, with serious damage seen from the Great Lakes down to New Orleans, and a couple hundred miles east and west of the Mississippi River)? How can you prevent earthquakes (no, steel beams across the fault line won't do it)? And as shown, clearing the dead and fallen debris won't lessen the fire damage unless you clear all vegetation, and then you increase the flooding and landslide danger. But people seriously propose exactly these very things.

You have to know and understand the way Nature works and build in locations and by methods that take that into account.

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