Waldo Canyon Fire
Bob Berwyn had this piece on the Waldo Canyon fire near Colorado Springs..reminded me of our discussion of air tankers.
Winds are forecast to be out of the southwest, with red flag extreme fire weather conditions prevailing across the area once again. Harvey (Incident Commander Rich Harvey) said heavy air tankers could be especially effective in aerial attacks against the fire in this area. He said a third Air Force C-130, modified to work as a tanker, will be worked into the rotation to step up the attack.
Categories: 21st Century Problems, Fire and Fuels
It is a good thing that wildfires are “natural and beneficial”, and that dead lodgepoles don’t burn any better than live lodgepoles, or Colorado would REALLY be in trouble. And, how is that tourism thing going for ya, with all the smoke and closed roads? Welcome to the “new reality”!!!
Larry- I don’t have enough time to track all the fires in CO but many of them are not in (dead) lodgepole, most notably this Waldo fire, that has caused the evacuation of 32,000 people.
I’m just spouting back the rhetoric that has filled the winter months, on this blog, and other sources. The preservationists get pretty quiet when wildfires are radically-affecting people’s lives and livelihoods, as well as their health. There should rightly be a “firestorm” of debate now, in Colorado, about applying more active management to their public forests. It simply isn’t enough to save the towns from wildfires, within a tiny island of green trees soon to be overwhelmed by a new flush of bark beetles, pouring out of “protected” brood trees. Who wants to live in such a place, when you are surrounded by forests that burned at high intensity? I’d much rather have thinned and resilient green forests than a giant snag patch.