Discover Top Posts Tagged with #fire management

How can I stay positive regarding the wildfires?

It can be really hard in the face of so much destruction. I don't know how much anyone can specifically stay positive in the face of disasters like this -

but I can give you some thoughts about how to let hope live alongside everything else you're feeling about this, and how to avoid spiraling and remember that this is not proof that we're doomed.

Possibly relevant note lol is that I've lived my whole life in California, so suffice to say figuring out how to move forward among the consequences and destruction of massive wildfires is something I'm definitely not new to.

I remember walking to my classroom in elementary school, about 20 years ago now, and it was literally snowing ash around me. This too shall pass.

Take a few deep breaths. I know it's cliche but it's also important

Zoom out in terms of perspective: Wildfires can make the sky look apocalyptic (like I said, I have lots of experience with this!), but they are regional, and they always end. These wildfires are awful but this specific wave of fires is happening in just one country in a huge, huge world. There's far more land that isn't burning

Canada is about to get substantial international aid in fighting the wildfires - there are already 200 additional firefighters headed over from the US and France, and Canada (Quebec specifically) is also already in talks with Costa Rica, Portugal, and Chile about additional firefighters/resources. Help is on the way and these numbers really will make a big difference, and as the disaster continues (unfortunately it is uh...pretty early in fire season), more help will be sent. People are doing what they can to help, because in the face of disaster, that's what we're wired to do

There are actually MUCH better fire management plans than just about anyone is using, esp in North America but that we COULD implement and increasingly WILL going forward. A lot of the wildfire situation these days is because of the West's incredibly wrongheaded derision toward traditional Indigenous land and ecosystem management practices, including cultural prescribed burns that keep massive wildfires from happening. California in particular is already partnering with several First Nations to revive prescribed burns, to significant success. As fires continue to be terrible, more and more places will get on board with this. We can and will implement practices that will truly change our situation

Cultural burns work because, ironically, the reason for the wildfires is that "is that we've been so good at putting out every fire possible that it has led to overly dense forests and a buildup of burnable material like branches and dry vegetation" that makes wildfires much worse in a number of ways. At lower intensity, however, as with cultural burns, forest fires can actually have huge environmental benefits

Finally, every time a natural disaster happens like this, as awful and destructive as they are, it serves as a wake-up call for thousands of people and adds both ever-mounting urgency and ever-mounting evidence to the importance of fighting climate change, which really does translate into action. For a lot of people, "saving the environment" feels super distant - but you know what feels super immediate? Saving their homes from burning down (or getting flooded or otherwise destroyed, etc. etc.) In 2021, the UN ran the world's largest climate survey, across 1.2 million people and 50 nations, and almost TWO-THIRDS SAID THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS A GLOBAL EMERGENCY THAT WE NEED TO WORK HARDER TO ADDRESS. Imagine that 10 years ago! That other third of people aside, this really is real and massive progress

Also, every time there's a big disaster like this, climate change deniers look more and more baldly ridiculous. Think about it: How often did you hear US Republicans bullshitting about climate change denial 10 years ago? And how often do you hear them doing it now? In fact, there's increasing evidence that Republicans really are shifting on climate change (mind you they're managing to do it in an obnoxiously somehow pro-fossil-fuel way, but it's still a major sea change). Some of them are literally calling for a clean energy transition, and Kevin McCarthy himself (guy in charge of the US House right now) created a task force for to a conservative climate change agenda that acknowledges climate change is real. There's now a conservative climate conference that does active lobbying and a House Conservative Climate Caucus, which somehow has SIXTY MEMBERS. Again, something that would've been unimaginable just six or seven years ago.

Every acre that the fires burn this year is an acre that's pretty guaranteed to not burn next year, for what that's worth. (And I do think it's worth mentioning, esp with such a high number of acres)

The battles are going to be hard, but I truly believe that even the ones we lose often bring us closer to winning the war.

Fires burn, but life always grows back.

Hot shot hero. 🔥🚒🔥

Santa Tracking on alert! https://www.noradsanta.org/en/. Tapioca iceberg melts in chocolate ocean! Santa, Elves, Reindeers Despondetnt

End of winter is the season - both for ‘controlled burns*’ like these old photos from my pasture, and for wildfires. Our county has had an odd lack of wildfires for quite a few years, now. I can remember when my husband and I were younger there were weeks he’d hardly be home at all, running from one small wildfire to another or working to stop a bigger one. In our area, fires aren’t as massive or destructive as the western usa, so none of this ever makes the news. There have been several fires this week, and my husband left extra early this morning to head out to one. I’m hoping for rain today, to settle the situation down.

* Controlled burns, aka ‘prescribed fires’ are extremely fun to watch and make areas bloom and flourish beautifully in the following growing season.

#wildfire #fire management #environment #sustainable

This is a 1986 pamphlet from the United States Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service Pacific Northwest Region detailing the steps these agencies take when preparing for fire season as well as other year round management procedures.

United States. Forest Service. Pacific Northwest Region. (1986). Protecting the forest-- fire management in the Pacific Northwest. Portland, Or.?]: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region.

Full text available via HathiTrust

#govpubs #1980s #1986 #prescribed burn #fire management #pacific northwest #prevention and control #reforestation #forest fires

For more than a century, California's Native American tribes were largely banned from doing traditional burning of the landscape. Now, they're restoring that practice to help prevent fires.

#california #fire management #native american tribes #cultural burning #traditions #environment

HAPPY FIRST NIGHT OF CHANUKKAH BITCHES

Rather than wishing for material things this year, I’m making a sort of wishlist for the world. Feel free to add yours.

1) Peace with Palestine 🇵🇸

2) Black Lives Matter

3) Women’s equality (pay gap, birth control, abortions, etc...)

4) Safety and equal rights for LGBTQ+ people around the world

5) Asylum for migrants and the abolition of ICE

6) Change in forest fire management for the west coast of the United States

7) Freedom from dictatorships around the world

8) Reform of the United States penal system