Pics from the Party Rock Fire

That's crazy... Fire scares me.... and tornadoes... so unpredictable.
 
Gen0cide said:
That's crazy... Fire scares me.... and tornadoes... so unpredictable.
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Thats just it, though.

Fire ISNT unpredictable. It is 100% predictable.

And all the intelligent ecologists have been screaming for decades that we were breeding this with our stupid no fire and no control burn policy in the USFS lands.

That's why I say frequently, Smokey was wrong, "Only you can delay Forest Fires"
 
Maybe I should rephrase then... I don't understand them. So they scare me. ;)
I'll leave the bravery up to the fine people out there fighting this thing. And if I were in charge, I'd listen to them more diligently.
 
Ron said:
Thats just it, though.

Fire ISNT unpredictable. It is 100% predictable.

And all the intelligent ecologists have been screaming for decades that we were breeding this with our stupid no fire and no control burn policy in the USFS lands.

That's why I say frequently, Smokey was wrong, "Only you can delay Forest Fires"
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How is wildland fire 100% predictable when the driving force, weather, is not?
 
Nissan11 said:
How is wildland fire 100% predictable when the driving force, weather, is not?
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What hes saying; if you don't do control burns, you let the undergrowth get to a point where the fire becomes uncontrollable. Control burns keep the undergrowth at bay. This does 2 things, allows the trees to get bigger and stronger and minimizes the fuel if a fire breaks out.

You cant predict drought conditions, but if you don't work to prevent large scale fires, its only inevitable.

On a more obvious note, i believe fire is always predictable. It wants spark, fuel, air. It will continue to burn until you eliminate these. In the forest it is going to burn towards new fuel source, away from where it started.

It may not be easy to stop, but it is predictable
 
I'm sure glad you guys are here to teach me about fire behavior and ecology.

I had no idea the fires I've been fighting in the mountains were so predictable. You should come to the next one and tell us exactly where the fire is going to be after three days so we know where to put our hand lines.
 
Nissan11 said:
How is wildland fire 100% predictable when the driving force, weather, is not?
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Forests burn. Its what they do. They consist of a pile of dead highly flammable material (leaf litter) that lacks the ability to hold moisture.

Indigenous man burned the forests regularly to make the ground more fertile for growing food crops. Ever heard of slash and burn farming?
Its what the native Americans did for centuries if not millenia.

Sometime around the 1940s we started to wage an all out war on Forest fires. When I tell you why you will think I am full of shit.
Ever seen the movie Bambi?
What happens at the end? Heart breaking right?
Well the bleeding heart liberals of the day, started a campaign against forest fires because they were horrified by this cartoon. And at the time the conservatives and "men" of the day were a llittle pre-occupied and spending time overseas. Hanging out on beaches and saving this great Nation.

Well while we were fighting a real enemy and pre-occupied with adult stuff, the hippies do what they always do and take advantage of situations and start a campaign to END FOREST FIRES!!!! Save the Deer.

(Ok...by now you are thinking, Ron you have lost it. Bambi didnt do all this. Au Contraire. Bambi debuted in 1942. The USFS started its first stop wildfire campaigns in 1943. And used this great image:
ourcarelessness.jpg


Smokey the loveable cartoon charchter showed up a year later in '44.

Now on to the problem...the USFS was founded to serve multiple purposes. An important one was to insure a constant supply of wood and wood products for our countries growth. A necessary and vital part of good forest management practice is regular, controlled, prescribed burns. These regular burns release the nitrogen and phosphorous contained in the dead leaves and returns them to the soil as God's own free fertilizer. The secondary benefit is when done regularly the leaf layer never builds up to a layer more than 1-2" thick. The fires are hot, fast, and low. This is how nature and evolution intended it.

Need some proof of that last comment?

Ok here are two evolutionary plant adaptations to fire. Mass adds heat resistance, right? It takes longer at a given temperature to melt a piece of 1" thick bar than it does to melt a piece if 18 gauge, right? Now look at every mountain indigenous tree species you can find and tell me what is notable about the bottom 10-15" of the tree?

Its wider at the base which provide more surface area to protect the core.

Still doubt this? Think the flared base is just coincidence? Ok, try this one on for size. Take the case of the Table Mountain Pine. A very relevant species to the current wild fires at hand. The table mountain pine grows EXCLUSIVELY in the Appalachain mountains. Its native range follows the AT almost perfectly. Its pine cone is like no other you have ever seen. Its called a serotinous cone. This tree and this pine cone fascinate me, sorry call me a nerd. See this pine cone will hang around on its tree for 20 to 25 years! And even when it falls the seeds live on inside this cone for up to another decade. This pine cone also doesnt look like your typical pine cone you are sued to seeing. Its closed up tight and hard like a baby pine cone.You know what opens this pine cone? Fire. It has to get to several hundred degrees to open up. And then it opens over about a 4 hour period and drops its baby tree seed in the fresh burned dirt to produce another tree. Or it can conversely be opened by sustained 90 degree heat for 30-45 days...continuous. In other words in a a lab only.

The fact that this tree species exists and is one of the oldest species in the Appalachain Range tells us, without question that these mountains have always burned. That the seeds have a life of 10 years gives us a hell of a guess at frequency.

But since 1948 we haven't burned the forests. We haven't cut the trees. Our federal government has let emotional outcries from uneducated populaces dictate policy. Words like "old growth" trigger strong emotional responses and we are lead to believe that forests full of old huge trees are the picture of health. Intuitively this makes no sense, but few stop and think. If I asked you to pick out the healthiest sampling of human beings to continue our species, would you take a selection from the Olympic games or from your local nursing home. Which group is healthier? Which is sustainable?

But here we sit. In an Appalachia that isnt how its creator intended it. When the greenies preach about man destroying the forest they forget that homo sapiens are a major NORMAL contributor to our ecology. When you attempt to remove our (perceived negative) input you cause new problems. We as humans as a race are a pretty egotistical bunch. We talk about man caused global warming, we talk about us destroying this planet. When we do the Mother Earth chuckles...you can damage her, much like a mosquito can damage your shoulder. But eventually the damage reaches your brain and you slap the mosquito. These current fires are but a mere swat of a tired and aggravated mountain.

What pisses me off and causes me to write a 10+ paragraph response on a message board when I have more work to do than I can handle is this. The men fighting this fire, risking their lives to put her out. Are largely the descendants either through DNA or mere societal placement of those same men who were busy over seas when this whole mess started. Yet here they are again to clean up another mess.
 
Nissan11 said:
I'm sure glad you guys are here to teach me about fire behavior and ecology.

I had no idea the fires I've been fighting in the mountains were so predictable. You should come to the next one and tell us exactly where the fire is going to be after three days so we know where to put our hand lines.
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For what its worth I spent 9 months as a Jumper in the Sierras in 98. I might actually could.... ;)
 
Of course there are countless species of wildlife dependant on fire, including dozens here in the sandhills where I work, and I burn 20,000 acres a year.
Your diatribe was well put together but not the point of the last few messages.
Two members say fire is 100% predictable. Either they meant to say fire is inevitable in a unmanaged forest, or they are completely wrong and think they know exactly where the fire will be the day after it started in dry, windy conditions like I experienced last week in Lake Lure.
 
Nissan11 said:
Of course there are countless species of wildlife dependant on fire, including dozens here in the sandhills where I work, and I burn 20,000 acres a year.
Your diatribe was well put together but not the point of the last few messages.
Two members say fire is 100% predictable. Either they meant to say fire is inevitable in a unmanaged forest, or they are completely wrong and think they know exactly where the fire will be the day after it started in dry, windy conditions like I experienced last week in Lake Lure.
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No it is predictable. Its predictable that it will happen. Once it happens where it spreads is up to mother nature.
I say we get the damn brave men off the mountain and let nature take its course.
 
Nissan11 said:
Of course there are countless species of wildlife dependant on fire, including dozens here in the sandhills where I work, and I burn 20,000 acres a year.
Your diatribe was well put together but not the point of the last few messages.
Two members say fire is 100% predictable. Either they meant to say fire is inevitable in a unmanaged forest, or they are completely wrong and think they know exactly where the fire will be the day after it started in dry, windy conditions like I experienced last week in Lake Lure.
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And that is the difference with most fires down east and here in wnc. I'm really good friends with Buncombe and Madison county and know several other Acrs. They usually burn less than a 1000 acres a year on prescribed burns. It's worse because Asheville is full of hippies that say fire is bad and makes the forest ugly.

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Cool pics, and for the record I like fire. I like fire enough to know deep down I like to burn stuff. Glad I focused on welding. Funny I worked 15 years building and fixing stuff to put it out. Now hurry up and burn this mother down so I can get back to burning camp fires and cooking outside.........and yes I know rain isn't cooperating. I just want my damn fire.
 
God's speed and good luck to you and everyone working to put these fires out. Control burning should be seriously reconsidered and implementation measures taken.
 
I, myself, am a proponent of control burning. I understand how it affects the health of a forest. Of course, I'm sure it cant be done when it is as dry as it has been.
But I wonder if it gets lost in the areas being developed so close to these forest areas? Scaring the local residents? Or just an inability of the USFS to do its job, in the name of budget cuts.
 
People don't like burning near their house. In developments fire usually won't get outta hand due to people having lawns and keeping their property maintained. At least in the Asheville area I go to the meetings about burning/logging and the hippies get all up in a fit when they hear either one. But don't understand the impact on the forest

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ol'Jeeps said:
I, myself, am a proponent of control burning. I understand how it affects the health of a forest. Of course, I'm sure it cant be done when it is as dry as it has been.
But I wonder if it gets lost in the areas being developed so close to these forest areas? Scaring the local residents? Or just an inability of the USFS to do its job, in the name of budget cuts.
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Its not budget cuts.

Control burns on the eastern US have been nearly non-existent since the Carter days.

Its all about "The Sierra CLub" and "Green Peace"
American Terrorists.

There are some bad bad bad stories out there.
 
Earlier this spring they did a controlled burn in a couple of areas in Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area in Hillsborough. While hiking a trail through one of the burned areas (there was no fire at the time of my hike) I heard a group of hippies bitching about the smell and the blackened area. I tried to explain to them that this was actually a good thing, clearing the underbrush and stimulating new growth. When they looked at me and said, "But it smells so bad and everything is black so this can't be good" I knew it was time to move on and continue my hike.
 
The limiting factor of prescribed burning in the mountains isn't opponents, it's burn weather and topography. If the USFS, NCWRC and NCFS could burn more they would, but with an average of 10-12 eligible burn days per year (during the time in which a burn would be beneficial to the ecosystem and not destructive) they are limited in what they can safely do with the resources available. The same goes for the majority of the piedmont.

Not all wild fires are good, even if they aren't that hot. Any fires that occur in the late summer-fall, early winter do the opposite of what we want out of a burn. The burned area will be barren until the spring growing season which is not good for wildlife.
 
Nissan11 said:
The limiting factor of prescribed burning in the mountains isn't opponents, it's burn weather and topography. If the USFS, NCWRC and NCFS could burn more they would, but with an average of 10-12 eligible burn days per year (during the time in which a burn would be beneficial to the ecosystem and not destructive) they are limited in what they can safely do with the resources available. The same goes for the majority of the piedmont.

Not all wild fires are good, even if they aren't that hot. Any fires that occur in the late summer-fall, early winter do the opposite of what we want out of a burn. The burned area will be barren until the spring growing season which is not good for wildlife.
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Its not about good and bad. Its about nature/natural.
Looking at it from a wildife forage standpoint is but a part of the equation.

I'd challenge the 10-12 number as well I suspect, without researching its closer to 40.

And you are correct, the opponents argument is just the USFS land.
There are also lots of careless folks out there. I was talking to a good friend last Friday who was manning the phones in Rockingham when a Registered Forester called in a burn. No upper atmosphere instability (Smoke is going to be thick and hang around). Plenty of surface area wind (risk of spread). Dry of course ( more risk of spread) and resources already tapped out fihting the WNC fires. District Forester says "Buring is discouraged and not approved" Consulting Forester says "Understood, but we got do what we gotta do. Just letting you know."
 
Ron said:
Its not about good and bad. Its about nature/natural.
Looking at it from a wildife forage standpoint is but a part of the equation.

I'd challenge the 10-12 number as well I suspect, without researching its closer to 40.

And you are correct, the opponents argument is just the USFS land.
There are also lots of careless folks out there. I was talking to a good friend last Friday who was manning the phones in Rockingham when a Registered Forester called in a burn. No upper atmosphere instability (Smoke is going to be thick and hang around). Plenty of surface area wind (risk of spread). Dry of course ( more risk of spread) and resources already tapped out fihting the WNC fires. District Forester says "Buring is discouraged and not approved" Consulting Forester says "Understood, but we got do what we gotta do. Just letting you know."
Click to expand...

The reason for not burning in the summer and fall isn't just for foraging wildlife. If the ground is bare during the rainy winter season then not only will there be no native grasses for browsers, but there will be no cover for small game, insects, reptiles and amphibians. Along with that, there will be months of unimpeded erosion because there is no living undergrowth, leaf litter or duff to hold the soil together inbetween mature trees. The reason environmentally conscious land managers burn during the growing season is to get native grasses and small plants to re-establish ASAP.

I assure you the number of responsible burn days per year in the mountain region is way less than 40.
 
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