Forest Service maxed out as wildfires break across US West
Source: AP
By EUGENE GARCIA and DAISY NGUYEN
WESTWOOD, Calif. (AP) — The U.S. Forest Service said Friday it’s operating in crisis mode, fully deploying firefighters and maxing out its support system as wildfires continue to break out across the U.S. West, threatening thousands of homes and entire towns.
The roughly 21,000 federal firefighters working on the ground is more than double the number of firefighters sent to contain forest fires at this time a year ago, and the agency is facing “critical resources limitations,” said Anthony Scardina, a deputy forester for the agency’s Pacific Southwest region.
An estimated 6,170 firefighters alone are battling the Dixie Fire in Northern California, the largest of 100 large fires burning in 14 states, with dozens more burning in western Canada.
The fire began a month ago and has destroyed more than 1,000 homes, businesses and other structures, much of it in the small town of Greenville in the northern Sierra Nevada.
After walking down a gravel road to do recon on a fire cresting into the trees, a wildland firefighter grimaces as he walks back to his crew on Thursday, Aug. 12, 2021, at the Bedrock Fire north of Lenore, Idaho. Lenore is about 30 miles east of Lewiston, Idaho. (Pete Caster/Lewiston Tribune via AP)
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/fires-environment-and-nature-california-montana-wildfires-56e8fc9bf52dca140255335cd2b6dc04
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Should have raked the forest like Dotard recommended.
otoh, that means it won't be adding to the fire hazard as it usually does.
We've heard about the drought continuing into this year, of course. We left SoCal in 2000 and had had severe drought with water restrictions for 7 of the previous 9 years. I was a nutso gardener then but continued by, as you say, adapting.
Here in NoGA, the rains were decent this year and last, but we're seeing far fewer birds and insects. It took forever for a butterfly to show up at the butterfly bush outside our kitchen, and some weeks later it finally very belatedly looks more normal; I saw 6 at once yesterday, this year's record. Next week I'll participate in GA's annual pollinator census. Very easy. For each entry you select a plant with pollinator activity and count the different insect species visiting it for 15 minutes.
Just thinking about 2000. Without that, including the precedent of a presidency settled by judicial decision, and with a tied senate and bare house majority like now, there would have been perhaps 8 more Democratic years of stabilizing investment in our nation, people and climate. No invasion of Iraq, no increase of ruthless RW authoritarianism during the Bush administration that changed our notions of what it is to be Americans, no great recession of 2008 that set RW populism on fire and set the stage...
I'd rather think about bugs.
is sure coming due...tell me again why we can't afford to get out of fossil fuels?
