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19 Hotshots Killed in Yarnell Hill Fire

Well you can't stop the fires from happening. Around here the main problem are dry lightening storms that usually hit in late August when things are at their driest.

You have to remember that in western states we don't get any rain from May to November. By the end of summer the forest is a ticking wild fire time bomb.
 
Just one thing to point out to all the idiots people claiming that it's just property being protected, not lives.

You've just lost your house and everthing in it. You have your car, with what gas it had at the time, and the small amount of clothing and what-not you could stuff into it in fifteen minutes. Your insurance can't pay you much, because the destruction of multiple entire towns has bankrupted them. Your place of employment no longer stands, and you're out of a job because of that (they can't replace either, same problem with the insurance). Just for fun, there are medical bills that are due because of smoke inhalation suffered during evacuation, because (since no one was fighting the fire) the fire moved more quickly than allowed for in the evacuation plan.

There are a few thousand others in the same situation.

Fires eventually take out more towns, as with no one fighting them they grow, increasing their speed and becoming less predictable in their path. By the time they do threaten lives, they're too big to stop.

Over time, insurance against forest fires is impossible to get, because the loss of entire towns becomes relatively commonplace. Many towns shut down entirely, the populations moving away, with the economic loss that involves, and the hardship that falls disproportionately on the poorest segments of society (those that can't afford to pick up and move, or that can't easily find new employment, or have extra expenses from disabilities).

You'll have entire areas of the mid-west depopulated.

Are you seriously going to argue they're "just protecting property, not lives"?

Seriously, I wonder how some people manage to function. I wonder how some people figure out how to walk outside, considering that would require them to consider that there might be something beyond the door.
 
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Silly Green Monkey said:
The comfortable arrogance of someone who's been protected from danger their entire life.
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I was a part-time cab driver for two-and-a-half decades. I've been stabbed in the arm, the hand and the back. I spent four months in St Paul's Hospital in Vancouver after having a big chunk of my liver blown out of my belly.

My long-time friend John McKecknie was shot to death on May 19, 1992, by a US soldier who fled back to the US dressed as a woman. (You can't make this stuff up).

Another long-time friend and fellow musician, Bobby Dent, was stabbed right through from the back seat with a butcher knife.

You have no idea who you're talking to, kiddo. I put my own life on the line for well over two decades. I'm still paying the price for the stress alone.
 
Travis said:
Gsmonks, you clearly don't know what you are talking about. They have to control these fires or numerous lives are at stake. If they just let them go because only trees are burning the fire will turn into a monster that will swallow whole towns, and all the people in them, in a blink of an eye.

Again, you clearly don't know what you are talking about.
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I know exactly what I'm talking about. We've had huge fires here in the Canadian prairies- as big as anything in the US. Towns have been evacuated and allowed to burn to the ground.

If and when fires get too big and out of control, everyone is moved out of harms way and the fires are watched from a safe distance, and contained on the periphery.
 
gsmonks said:
I know exactly what I'm talking about. We've had huge fires here in the Canadian prairies- as big as anything in the US. Towns have been evacuated and allowed to burn to the ground.

If and when fires get too big and out of control, everyone is moved out of harms way and the fires are watched from a safe distance, and contained on the periphery.
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What, exactly, is it that you think hotshots do, if not contain fires at the periphery?

I don't think you've supported the idea that you know what you're talking about.
 
Hellbound said:
Just one thing to point out to all the idiots people claiming that it's just property being protected, not lives.

You've just lost your house and everthing in it. You have your car, with what gas it had at the time, and the small amount of clothing and what-not you could stuff into it in fifteen minutes. Your insurance can't pay you much, because the destruction of multiple entire towns has bankrupted them. Your place of employment no longer stands, and you're out of a job because of that (they can't replace either, same problem with the insurance). Just for fun, there are medical bills that are due because of smoke inhalation suffered during evacuation, because (since no one was fighting the fire) the fire moved more quickly than allowed for in the evacuation plan.

There are a few thousand others in the same situation.

Fires eventually take out more towns, as with no one fighting them they grow, increasing their speed and becoming less predictable in their path. By the time they do threaten lives, they're too big to stop.

Over time, insurance against forest fires is impossible to get, because the loss of entire towns becomes relatively commonplace. Many towns shut down entirely, the populations moving away, with the economic loss that involves, and the hardship that falls disproportionately on the poorest segments of society (those that can't afford to pick up and move, or that can't easily find new employment, or have extra expenses from disabilities).

You'll have entire areas of the mid-west depopulated.

Are you seriously going to argue they're "just protecting property, not lives"?

Seriously, I wonder how some people manage to function. I wonder how some people figure out how to walk outside, considering that would require them to consider that there might be something beyond the door.
Click to expand...

Raging fires have been around a lot longer than there have been people. As a matter of fact, there are people, many of them scientists, who are for allowing forest fires to burn themselves out.

Contrary to hoopla, raging fires of all types don't go on forever and burn up everything, everywhere.

In the case of forests, forests have evolved to burn. Yes, you read that right- forests have evolved to burn. Trees in forested areas have evolved to burn in such a way that they can be terrifically burnt but still alive. The fires, meanwhile, release nutrients while allowing light in.

Reforestation after a forest fire is not about reforestation. If you've ever lived in an area where there has been a forest fire, and nature has been allowed to take its course (Salmon Arm in British Columbia, Canada, for example), you'll see for yourself that in the aftermath of a forest fire, what looks as bad as the dark side of the Moon comes back with a vengeance.

Reforestation is a matter of greed and stupidity. Baby evergreen trees are planted where a conifer forest once was. Problem is, planet Earth evolved in such a way that Alder and Ash trees follow a forest fire, and their remains, over many years, provide nutrients to the evergreens that gradually choke them out as the new conifer forest grows back.

Fires are part of Nature, and Nature doesn't need us to manage it.

The rest of the equation is priorities, and the top priority is life. The value we place on life is the value from which all our values (and priorities) evolved.

There is a certain mentality that wants to push the envelope and take charge of what Nature throws at us. Some people see them as heroes, others see them as fools. I fall into the latter camp. I wept when Terry Fox died, but when some storm chasers recently died I didn't bother to so much as take note of their names.

That's the difference.
 
gsmonks said:
Raging fires have been around a lot longer than there have been people. As a matter of fact, there are people, many of them scientists, who are for allowing forest fires to burn themselves out.

Contrary to hoopla, raging fires of all types don't go on forever and burn up everything, everywhere.

In the case of forests, forests have evolved to burn. Yes, you read that right- forests have evolved to burn. Trees in forested areas have evolved to burn in such a way that they can be terrifically burnt but still alive. The fires, meanwhile, release nutrients while allowing light in.

Reforestation after a forest fire is not about reforestation. If you've ever lived in an area where there has been a forest fire, and nature has been allowed to take its course (Salmon Arm in British Columbia, Canada, for example), you'll see for yourself that in the aftermath of a forest fire, what looks as bad as the dark side of the Moon comes back with a vengeance.

Reforestation is a matter of greed and stupidity. Baby evergreen trees are planted where a conifer forest once was. Problem is, planet Earth evolved in such a way that Alder and Ash trees follow a forest fire, and their remains, over many years, provide nutrients to the evergreens that gradually choke them out as the new conifer forest grows back.

Fires are part of Nature, and Nature doesn't need us to manage it.

The rest of the equation is priorities, and the top priority is life. The value we place on life is the value from which all our values (and priorities) evolved.

There is a certain mentality that wants to push the envelope and take charge of what Nature throws at us. Some people see them as heroes, others see them as fools. I fall into the latter camp. I wept when Terry Fox died, but when some storm chasers recently died I didn't bother to so much as take note of their names.

That's the difference.
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Actually, no.

First, you can cut out the strawmen anytime. No one has said it's going to burn everything, nor implied it.

No one has contested that fires are part of the cycle. That's why controlled burns are still done.

The difference you seem to be unwilling or unable to address is that there used to be nothing but forest in the places where the fires burn.

Now we have towns and cities in those areas.

So just letting it burn out, like it used to, IS going to burn out towns, cities, and cost lives as well as property.

But I understand you have a position and the facts will be molded to fit, so good luck with that.
 
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gsmonks said:
I know exactly what I'm talking about. We've had huge fires here in the Canadian prairies- as big as anything in the US. Towns have been evacuated and allowed to burn to the ground.

If and when fires get too big and out of control, everyone is moved out of harms way and the fires are watched from a safe distance, and contained on the periphery.
Click to expand...

What towns? Specifically. I'd like to double-check this claim.
 
gsmonks said:
In the case of forests, forests have evolved to burn. Yes, you read that right- forests have evolved to burn. Trees in forested areas have evolved to burn in such a way that they can be terrifically burnt but still alive. The fires, meanwhile, release nutrients while allowing light in.

Reforestation after a forest fire is not about reforestation. If you've ever lived in an area where there has been a forest fire, and nature has been allowed to take its course (Salmon Arm in British Columbia, Canada, for example), you'll see for yourself that in the aftermath of a forest fire, what looks as bad as the dark side of the Moon comes back with a vengeance.
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This has already been discussed in this thread - not every local environment is adapted to fire. Non-native plants, air pollution and climate change have introduced fire into vast areas that were not previously susceptible to fire. These areas are not fire adapted and do not recover back to what they were before.

Arizona has quite a lot of that non-fire adapted territory. Your Canadian ecological perspectives do not apply to the deserts of the American southwest.
 
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Just an addendum to my earlier post.

If you don't think they're heroes, that's fine. Personally, I wouldn't use the word hero, but I do have a lot of respect for those who choose a job that puts their life on the line for the safety of others: police, firefighters, paramedics, soldiers, and similar. But that's an opinion, fine.

If you go so far as to class them "fools", fine. I disagree strongly, but that's also an opinion, and you have a right to it.

I argue against the factual errors of "unecessary" and "only protecting property"...both of which are only true if you ignore anything but the immediate.
 
One thing I've noticed in this thread is a huge disconnect, which I put down to being of different generations.

My late grandfather, born in 1893, was a logger in British Columbia. It was an extremely dangerous job and men were killed on a regular basis.

When a man was killed, there wasn't all this blowsy fake emotion like you see today. The men were grim about the whole affair, but there was no hand-wringing, no impromptu shrines to the deceased, and no pseudo-emotional media coverage.

People were very stoic in those days. If a man worked at a high-risk occupation, like mining, logging and fishing (I lost a lot of ancestors in two of those occupations), people were stone-faced from sick dread when the notifiers came knocking, but that was about it.

The heightened emotionalism you see today came about from watching television, primarily. For example, a big to-do was made back in the 60's as a result of the television show Bonanza. There was a scene with some manly hugging, groping and fondling, which flew in the face of how men really acted in those days. Within the span of a few months, every television show had to have a scene of manly hugging, groping and fondling, which generally ended with one of us angrily shutting off the idiot box.

This has its analogue in the 70's, when because of Steve McQueen's Bullit you had to have an irrelevant car chase in every tv show, and because of Darin McGavin's Night Stalker you had to have a yelling-match scene in every episode.

When you live with someone who works in a high-risk occupation, you always half-expect the dreaded phone call, and no one but a liar would claim that they're not at least partially prepared for it if and when it happens.

The "hero" thing is a mite overblown these days, too. These days, if a soldier taking a crap in a latrine lights up a smoke and dies in a methane-gas explosion, he's supposed to be planted with full military honours as a hero.

Younger generations are tremendously emotionally and mentally messed up. They're out of touch with real emotion and real life. And because they are, not one of them reading this will have the first clue what I'm talking about.

For a city kid working in the service industry, the road to becoming fake usually begins with the line, "Always smile at the customers." That fake, plastered-on smile becomes a fixture in the collection of affectations of the city-dweller, and is the tip of the iceberg at the wedge driven between that person and the world in which he lives.
 
gsmonks said:
One thing I've noticed in this thread is a huge disconnect, which I put down to being of different generations.

My late grandfather, born in 1893, was a logger in British Columbia. It was an extremely dangerous job and men were killed on a regular basis.

When a man was killed, there wasn't all this blowsy fake emotion like you see today. The men were grim about the whole affair, but there was no hand-wringing, no impromptu shrines to the deceased, and no pseudo-emotional media coverage.

People were very stoic in those days. If a man worked at a high-risk occupation, like mining, logging and fishing (I lost a lot of ancestors in two of those occupations), people were stone-faced from sick dread when the notifiers came knocking, but that was about it.

The heightened emotionalism you see today came about from watching television, primarily. For example, a big to-do was made back in the 60's as a result of the television show Bonanza. There was a scene with some manly hugging, groping and fondling, which flew in the face of how men really acted in those days. Within the span of a few months, every television show had to have a scene of manly hugging, groping and fondling, which generally ended with one of us angrily shutting off the idiot box.

This has its analogue in the 70's, when because of Steve McQueen's Bullit you had to have an irrelevant car chase in every tv show, and because of Darin McGavin's Night Stalker you had to have a yelling-match scene in every episode.

When you live with someone who works in a high-risk occupation, you always half-expect the dreaded phone call, and no one but a liar would claim that they're not at least partially prepared for it if and when it happens.

The "hero" thing is a mite overblown these days, too. These days, if a soldier taking a crap in a latrine lights up a smoke and dies in a methane-gas explosion, he's supposed to be planted with full military honours as a hero.

Younger generations are tremendously emotionally and mentally messed up. They're out of touch with real emotion and real life. And because they are, not one of them reading this will have the first clue what I'm talking about.

For a city kid working in the service industry, the road to becoming fake usually begins with the line, "Always smile at the customers." That fake, plastered-on smile becomes a fixture in the collection of affectations of the city-dweller, and is the tip of the iceberg at the wedge driven between that person and the world in which he lives.
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:jaw-dropp
 
Here in the Southwest, we are beginning to move toward a more "natural" forest fire management protocol. It's difficult because we are dealing with 100 years or so of having put out every single fire. As a consequence of this, additional fuel has accumulated, fires burn hotter, faster and are more destructive than they would be otherwise. And all this is in addition to the problems of drought, climate change and Bark Beetle infestation. We're going to have to continue to fight most fires until the situation reaches an equilibrium. It's going to be a tough period. These same problems, I suspect, are going to manifest themselves in Canada, at some point.
 
Wow. Just wow.

I've been listening to the planes overhead everyday since this fire started. I see a huge cloud of white smoke outside my windows -it spans the whole horizon for me, and blocks out an entire mountain. Yesterday, I had to take my son to the ER because he couldn't breathe and while the smoke probably didn't cause his bronchitis, it certainly hasn't helped, and probably aggravated it a lot.

To come here and see someone pissing all over the people who are working as I type to prevent us from losing our home or even our lives, really makes me angry.
 
gsmonks said:
One thing I've noticed in this thread is a huge disconnect, which I put down to being of different generations.
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How old do you think I am, kiddo?

Your posts clearly show that you do not know what you are talking about when it comes to forest fires.
Edited by jhunter1163: 
Edited for civility.


Controlled burning and establishing and maintaining containment lines are keys to fighting fires in forests where people and houses are under threat. Fires are, in fact, allowed to burn out when they are too big to fight directly. Firefighters try not to allow them to burn out in people's homes.

And I, too, would like to see a cite for your claim about Canadian towns which were deliberately allowed to burn to the ground without attempts to save them.
 
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