There should be preventative measures that prevent or reduce the fire danger. The fire danger was all over the news days before the event stated.

The town of Borger, Texas was saved by a prescribed burn from the Windy Deuce fire in February 2024. The burn area acted as a fireproof wall, preventing the fire from spreading into the southern parts of the town.
Why didn't California do something like:
1. Activate the National Guard before the fire started, not after.
2. Ask for mutual aid fire fighters before the fire started.
3. Have a bypass set up to pump RAW water into the mains and declare a Boil Water Notice.
4. Since some of the fires are started by power lines making contact (sparks) due to the high winds, shut down the grid during these high wind events. Better yet, upgrade the power system with better separation or insulated dividers. Cost would be high, but not nearly as high as it is now.

I think everyone is making some pretty valid points for sure. I just don't think there are any easy solutions without huge amounts of money, resources, manpower, and a complete overhaul and reversal of the way things have been done. When it comes to getting money for manpower and resources, we all well know that it doesn't matter what state you live in or what their politics are, those things are hard to come by.

Well, sdavis24 chimed in, from just south of San Francisco, basically a suburb, and you called those people
“nut jobs” hahaha

Since I don’t know about you are you from California?

Do you have any idea how much easier it is to implement a prescribed fire, that likely amounts to burning fairly short grass. I’m a qualified RXB2, and have burned 10’s of thousands of acres in Texas and it a literal walk in the park in comparison to burning anything out west. It isn’t even comparable. I’m glad small town west Texas was able to black line around there town, it’s smart, ranchers have done it through the Great Plains for decades. but that’s a case study for Texans to use in TX.

You realize that these municipalities in LA have very robust plans on how they will respond to wildfires. There are massive amounts of local wildland fire resources that are augmented from resources from Northern California and the rest of the country when needed. They don’t do anything that isn’t in conjunction with multiple agencies, they have had a unified command set up since the beginning of these fire. Look online, a lot of the daily resource reports and intelligence is public, it’s real, it’s very organized. LA county is more organized than anywhere in terms of responding to wildfires.

Good luck shutting down power to a city just because of the off chance a fire might start.

I think the water issue is a localized infrastructure issue. There have been catastrophic wildfires in so cal for decades and this is the first time, unless someone knows otherwise there has been limited capacity to store water for hydrant use.

I think we are all guilty to a degree of “arm chair quarterbacking”. When a fire starts in an area like that, no matter how organized the response, it’s chaotic, you have people scrambling every which way, it’s Smokey, it’s easy to underestimate how serious the situation is. You can issue mandatory evacuations, but there will always be people staying behind, or creating traffic jams at the last moment. I don’t see the national guard deploying and solving the problem. They might set up some aid stations, and prevent some from accessing certain areas, but when you have a whole community of people, they are going to drag their feet, look around the house cram all sorts of stuff in their car, and creep out of their neighborhood last minute and be in the jam with everyone else doing the same thing. Seen it, the national guard isn’t fixing that anytime soon. If you’ve fought fire around the guard, you know.

Some moron was flying a drone in the area planes were on firefighting runs and hit SuperScooper, now it's grounded and out of the fight. Sure hope they catch them and make an example of them

Those CL 215s are one of their best weapons, sounds like it left a big hole in its wing. The news says that is punishable by 1 year in the fed pen, they should quickly turn that into about 50 times that. People are so dumb.

Unless the politicians prevent your from mitigating the threat (clearing brush)[/quote]

Exactly. I don’t think wildfires and tornados are the same. And I don’t think anyone out there should think wildfires won’t occur. No one is saying that, and that would be silly. There are some techniques being thrown around that people claim could mitigate damage in wildfire-prone areas of California.

Are California politicians doing everything they can to mitigate the damage? I’m 100% sure they’re not, just based on what I know of California politics and governance. [/quote]

What about New Mexico & Texas Panhandle?[/quote]

What about it? Spell it out, Butch. [/quote]

Well duck
You think the same techniques were not used in the 2 local fires ?

I think he knows about everything

Well thats a good one to learn about. it was towards the last quarter of one of the worst years of wildfire in Texas. I don't think you'll meet a wildland firefigher in this country that was working in 2011, that didn't go on at least assignment to Texas.

It started by a power line after forecasted high winds arrived. I don't remember much negative media around that incident at all. Duck, why didnt they just shut the power off and let the wind blow that day? it would have save nearly 2,000 homes from being destroyed.

Oh and by the way, the city of Bastrop was completely blind sided by what happend, they had done almost nothing to prepare for such an event.

One ironic parallel to this story and the one in CA. TX governor Perry was on the presidential campaign trail in SC when the fire started (remember this is essentially when the entire state was in some form of extreme fire danger, and returned 2 days after the bastrop fire started and was criticized for his role in cutting budgets to the Texas Forest Service and Volunteer Departments, the two major players in wildland fire suppression in TX. Sound Familiar?

All im trying to say is, Just pray, thats about all we can do, this is a mess all the way around, there isn't much of a fix.

If you're trying to attribute the bottom quote to me, you need to go back and re-read this thread. That was posted by a different user.

He was talking to Slicefixer

I really appreciate wildland firefighting history. When I was a smokejumper we used to play old training films over lunch, they were always interesting, and really made you realize how far we had come over the course of 50 years or so. This is one that stood out to me, we had one these "bombs" at our base, kind of like a lawn ornament.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/th...er-bombs-after-world-war-ii-2a7d68e5b199

Define S of San Fran.... San Jose?.... Salinas?...Monterrey? That's a lot of real estate S of San Fran. How far S are we talking about? That determination makes a pretty big difference...

Btw, the quote I referenced in regards to "sdavis" says nothing about "Pacifica" (and I didn't notice it in his bio) .. He simply said way N of the fires, which I assumed to mean NoCal.(think Redding) ... above/N of San Fran, and E. That's on me and it's perhaps the root of the confusion.

"Appreciate the concern, but I'm way north of these fires. I've kept my mouth shut for a reason. Southern California gets what Southern California deserves"

However, I'm more than willing to discuss S of San Fran if you like. IMOP Carmel/Monterey etc is one of the most beautiful spots on planet earth. I also think the folks in the central valley are thoroughly decent as a rule...daylight to dark compared to the bay area (and there are a lots and lots of good folks in the bay area in my experience)

I wasn't, I was talking to Slicefixer he was saying you live on the wrong side of the "common sense line" and i was just asking if he knew where Pacifica was. Maybe you dont even live there, dont know. Just kind of a strange thing to say to someone who doesn't live on the "right" side, of his "common sense line" hahaha