In February 2009 wildfires ravaged the state of Victoria in southeastern Australia. 173 people were killed and 2,133 homes incinerated. Termed “Black Saturday”, it was the worst fire disaster in Australian history, a history replete with fire disasters, most notably in 1939, 1944, 1969, 1977, 1983, 2003, 2005, and 2006.

A Royal Commission was formed to inquire, consult, and report on the fires and the fire suppression efforts associated with “an unprecedented loss of life, extreme property damage, and major community trauma and displacement.”

An Interim Report [here] was released a year ago containing 51 recommendations focused predominantly on changes to be implemented prior to the 2009–10 bushfire season.

The Final Report contains an additional 67 recommendations which will now be considered by the Victorian Government and others.

Some (not all) previous posts on the 2009 fires and related matters are [here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here].

Some excerpts from the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission Final Report:

PREFACE

The bushfires of Black Saturday, 7 February 2009, caused the death of 173 people. Black Saturday wrote itself into Victoria’s history with record-breaking weather conditions and bushfires of a scale and ferocity that tested human endurance. The lives of many Victorians were changed forever, and many showed they are capable of deeds of great courage and compassion. Although some communities were physically destroyed, their members also displayed ingenuity, strength and resolve in the face of this calamity. There was also widespread devastation of considerable areas of the scenic forests and woodlands that form part of Victoria’s natural heritage.

Eighteen months later, the landscape is healing, flora and fauna are returning, and individuals and communities are getting on with rebuilding their homes and lives. We acknowledge the losses—of family, friends, fellow citizens, homes, gardens, animals, and the many other things that people hold dear. We have seen the pain people have endured and continue to bear, and we know it will be a long road to full recovery for many. Bushfire is an intrinsic part of Victoria’s landscape, and if time dims our memory we risk repeating the mistakes of the past. We need to learn from the experiences of Black Saturday and improve the way we prepare for and respond to bushfires.

The 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission was an important part of ensuring that those lessons are clearly defined and learnt. The Commission conducted an extensive investigation into the causes of, the preparation for, the response to and the impact of the fires that burned throughout Victoria in late January and February 2009. As Commissioners, we concentrated on gaining an understanding of precisely what took place and how the risks of such a tragedy recurring might be reduced.

In our deliberations we ensured that the voices of affected community members were heard. Our priority was to listen to people directly affected by the fires. We also ensured that the Commission’s processes were firmly based in the community through open hearings (including in regional towns), web streaming so that people could listen to the hearings over the internet, public submissions, the participation of lay witnesses, the creation of the Black Saturday Gallery, and the participation of family and friends in hearings about people who died as a result of the fires. This access will continue: the Commission’s website will remain active, and all the Commission’s documentation will be available at the Public Records Office of Victoria.

This report is an important part of securing the memory of the fires. The first volume describes the origins and course of the 15 fires that wrought the greatest harm on 7 February and the response to them. It also tells the stories of the 173 people who died. Volume II looks at what lessons can be learnt from these experiences—how we can reduce the risk and impacts of fire and minimise fire-related loss of life in future. Volume III reports on the Commission’s administration and processes. Volume IV reproduces the statements of the 100 lay witnesses who gave personal accounts of their experiences in the fires in late January and February and in their aftermath. The stories told by these people grounded our work. They continually reminded all at the Commission that bushfires deeply affect people and communities and that their needs and safety must be at the forefront of government policy.

The recommendations we make give priority to protecting human life, and they are designed to reflect the shared responsibility that governments, fire agencies, communities and individuals have for minimising the prospect of a tragedy of this scale ever happening again.

We offer this report to the Governor and the people of Victoria.

The Hon. Bernard Teague AO, Chairperson

Ronald McLeod AM, Commissioner

Susan Pascoe AM, Commissioner

Planning and building

In all, 2,133 houses were destroyed as a result of the January–February 2009 bushfires in Victoria. The Commission heard many accounts of people who tried to defend a well-prepared house and failed. Many of the 173 people who died as a result of the fires had been trying to defend their home, a number of which had been prepared in accordance with CFA advice. These results demonstrate that where people live, the standard of the buildings in which they live, how those standards are maintained and, therefore, planning and building controls are crucial factors affecting safety in a bushfire.

The protection of human life should always be the overriding objective. Although it is not possible to guarantee that any building will survive a bushfire, particularly a ferocious one, the Commission considers that there are some areas where the bushfire risk is so high that development should be restricted. …

Further, building regulations do not adequately cover the construction of non-residential buildings used by vulnerable groups—for example, schools, hospitals, child care centres and aged care facilities—in bushfire-prone areas. The building regulations need to contain specific standards for the construction of such buildings. …

Applying land-use planning and building controls to minimise or reduce bushfire risk presents challenges. In particular, the planning and building systems operate prospectively and have little capacity to deal with past decisions and existing settlements or buildings in bushfire-prone areas, so they cannot account for people who are already living in areas of extremely high risk. The Commission therefore proposes that action be taken to help people move away from those areas where other bushfire risk-mitigation measures are not viable. In particular, the State should develop and implement a voluntary retreat and resettlement strategy—including non-compulsory land acquisition—for existing developments in areas at unacceptably high bushfire risk. …

Land and fuel management

Prescribed burning is one of the main tools for fire management on public land. It cannot prevent bushfire, but it decreases fuel loads and so reduces the spread and intensity of bushfires. By reducing the spread and intensity of bushfires, it also helps protect flora and fauna. Ironically, maintaining pristine forests untouched by fuel reduction can predispose those forests to greater destruction in the event of a bushfire.

About 7.7 million hectares of public land in Victoria is managed by DSE. This area includes national parks, state forests and reserves, of which a large portion is forested and prone to bushfire. DSE burns only 1.7 per cent (or 130,000 hectares) of this public land each year. This is well below the amount experts and previous inquiries have suggested is needed to reduce bushfire and environmental risks in the long term.

The Commission recognises that prescribed burning is risky, resource intensive, available only in limited time frames, and can temporarily have adverse effects on local communities (for example, reduced air quality). Nonetheless, it considers that the amount of prescribed burning occurring in Victoria is inadequate. It is concerned that the State has maintained a minimalist approach to prescribed burning despite recent official or independent reports and inquiries, all of which have recommended increasing the prescribed-burning program. The State has allowed the forests to continue accumulating excessive fuel loads, adding to the likelihood of more intense bushfires and thereby placing firefighters and communities at greater risk.

The Commission proposes that the State make a commitment to fund a long-term program of prescribed burning, with an annual rolling target of a minimum of 5 per cent of public land each year, and that the State be held accountable for meeting this target. DSE should modify its Code of Practice for Fire Management on Public Land so that it is clear that protecting human life is given highest priority, and should report annually on prescribed-burning outcomes.

To ensure continuing environmental protection, the State needs to improve its understanding of the effects of different fire regimes on flora and fauna. The Commission proposes that DSE expand its data collection on the effects of prescribed burning and bushfire on biodiversity. Maintenance and extension of data collection on Victoria’s flora and fauna assets has not been a high priority. It needs to be improved so that more informed and scientifically-based decision making can accompany the development of prescribed-burning regimes that meet conservation objectives as well as accommodating bushfire safety considerations.

Organisational structure

In the Commission’s view, a disaster of the scale of 7 February will always put pressure on organisational processes and structures. In this case it highlighted serious deficiencies in top-level leadership as a result of divided responsibilities, and the operational response was hindered by differences between agencies’ systems, processes and procedures. Individually, the problems identified might be resolved by changing working arrangements between the CFA and DSE, and work is already under way towards this. But, when considered collectively, the problems illustrate systemic failings that led the Commission to contemplate organisational change. The Commission does not consider that the shortcomings identified in connection with Black Saturday can be overcome simply by doing more of the same, even if it is done better.

In weighing the various opinions, the Commission was not convinced by the State’s view that structural change is not needed and that the focus should be on refinement of existing arrangements. For many of the operational problems the Commission identified, previous attempts to improve coordination have failed. Typically, progress has been slow or incomplete or has not achieved the level of interoperability required. Neither is the Commission persuaded that radical reform, such as moving to a single fire service, is necessary or desirable at this time. There might be an intuitive attraction to merging agencies, but there is a risk that the merger itself becomes the primary focus of effort, which could easily distract attention and focus from the operational improvements the Commission considers to be the priority. …

The Commission also looked at the funding of fire services. Fire services in Victoria are currently funded through a mix of contributions from insurance companies, the State and municipal councils. Insurance companies recoup the cost of their statutory contribution to the CFA and the MFB by imposing a Fire Services Levy on insurance premiums for building and contents insurance.

The current model’s claimed benefit is that the insurance premium is a good way of linking the charge for fire services to the fire risk of individual properties. Evidence suggests, however, that this link is at best tenuous. Fundamentally, the Commission considers that the current funding model lacks transparency and is inequitable since people who are not insured or are under-insured do not make a fair contribution to the funding of fire services.

The Commission takes the view that the lack of equity and transparency in the current arrangements constitutes a good reason for moving to another system. Several other Australian states and territories already require all property owners to contribute to fire services via a levy on property, as opposed to insurance, and the Commission proposes that Victoria also move to replace the Fire Services Levy with a property-based levy.

Research and evaluation

Governments need to invest more in bushfire research to enable Australia to rebuild the capacity it once had as a leader in this field. The Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre (initiated by Australian and New Zealand fire and land management agencies, their research partners and the Commonwealth Government) contributes to this effort. Overall, the Bushfire CRC has made gains in re-establishing a community of researchers and has consolidated the research agenda, but it does not meet all research needs. To a large extent its research program is determined by its stakeholders (which has resulted in a focus on applied research) and its funding cycle and thus its research projects have been relatively short term. Commonwealth Government funding for the Bushfire CRC is due to expire in 2013.

A permanent national centre for bushfire research is needed with reasonable surety of long-term funding. In developing the model for such a body, governments should consider incorporating the following features:

* pure and applied research as well as long-term research projects

* strong governance arrangements—including research independence

* the location of the research centre, preferably in Victoria

* a balanced focus that includes physical, biological and social research

* links with teaching and promotion of graduate scholarships

* cross-institutional and jurisdictional collaboration

* international collaboration and sharing of knowledge

* the research priorities highlighted in evidence before the Commission.

The Commission’s work revealed a number of research gaps and priorities. Some were raised by expert witnesses; others became apparent when the Commission was conducting its analysis. These gaps are a good starting point for considering short- and long-term priorities for bushfire research in Australia. They include the following areas:

* the effects of prescribed burning and bushfire on biodiversity and on reducing bushfire risk

* the establishment of databases to map Victoria’s flora and fauna, to register Victoria’s fire risk and to identify its bushfire-prone areas

* the extent of deliberately lit bushfires and the causes of fire-setting behaviour

* the long-term effect of trauma resulting from the experience of bushfire

* the effects of fire activity and smoke on radio communications

* the extent of road deaths in bushfires, including use of cars as shelters in bushfires

* house defendability in extreme conditions

* the circumstances of the thousands who survived the Black Saturday bushfires by leaving early or late or by defending their homes or sheltering

* the shelter options—including factors affecting the safety of different places of shelter and particularly motor vehicles in the open, dams, pools, creeks and water tanks.

In addition to this, the Commission invites the Commonwealth to take the initiative on two matters outside the proposed research framework. The first is to consider the development of nationally acceptable bushfire terminology. It became apparent during the Commission’s hearings that a number of bushfire-related terms are cumbersome, have obscure meanings or are potentially confusing to the general public. The second matter arises from there being no agreed methodology for estimating the cost of bushfires. The Commission experienced difficulty performing its analysis because of the lack of data and the absence of an agreed methodology for estimating various costs. This is a deficiency in the nationally available bushfire information and an area in which further collaborative work is warranted.

Finally, if fire agencies are to lift their capability and performance and improve the response capacity of individuals and communities, they need to become true evidence-based learning organisations. The Commission proposes that the fire agencies adopt and fund a culture of reflective practice that routinely pursues current research, searches for best practice, and habitually evaluates policies, programs and procedures with a view to improving internal practice and that of the communities they serve. Policy—especially in an area such as bushfire safety—needs to be reviewed and evaluated periodically, with the results of such review and evaluation being used in the development of policy and program improvements.

The “Cohesive Strategy” was mandated by the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement or FLAME Act [here, here, here].

A draft report entitled National Wildfire Management Report to Congress and Cohesive Strategy Draft has been issued [here, 3.2 MB] and comments were requested.

W.I.S.E. has complied and submitted our Comments today [here, 1.7MB].

Some additional comments:

From John M. [here].

From Bill D.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide general comments to the Cohesive Strategy Draft Report. I am a retired USDA, Forest Service employee and was with the Agency for 38 years. I held various positions in Fire Management and retired as the Special Agent in Charge, California Region, Regional Office, San Francisco CA.

Following are my recommendations for your consideration as you move forward in the strategy development process. I trust you have previously consulted with individuals from multiple jurisdictions with extensive wildland fire management experience and credentials who have had front line experience in suppressing wildfires.

1) Enhanced fire prevention and pre-suppression (preparedness) programs, development of infrared satellite/drone based early detection systems, and immediate initial attack and follow-up with sufficient resources are the most cost-effective measures in the prevention, containment, and control of wildfires. The increased use of night shift firefighters and night flying water dropping helicopters can provide an effective means to contain fires when they are least active. The previous Forest Service policy of containment and control by 10 a.m. ensured that sufficient resources were available to contain and control fires within reasonable time frames. Risk management objectives are met when fires are suppressed in the early stages with sufficient resources as opposed to having insufficient resources and allowing a wildfire to become a major conflagration where firefighters, persons, and property are exposed to risk over longer periods of time and valuable natural resources are placed at risk and/or severely damaged.

The August 26, 2009 Station Fire on the Angeles National Forest in California may have been a case where sufficient resources weren’t in place soon enough to contain the fire in the early stages wherein it escaped and burned 160,000 acres of the most valuable watershed in the United States. Two firefighters were killed, hundreds of structures destroyed, and suppression costs exceeded 100 million dollars with additional long term resource damage and associated costs predicted to run into the billions.

2) Hazardous fuel load reduction and thinning by mechanical and other non-fire use methods, and fuel and fire break construction are cost-effective ways to reduce fuel loads and establish containment lines prior to a fire.

3) Maintaining and restoring healthy and disease-free timber stands by increased forest and fiber product utilization, grazing, and timber harvesting contibute to the reduction of hazardous fuels. Lawsuits designed to prohibit logging in specific areas should be defended vigorously by Government Attorneys so that these areas, including fire damaged timber, can be properly harvested and salvaged.

4) Establishment or revision and modernization of pre-planning/attack programs with computer modeling of previous programs so that wildland fire suppression action strategies can be anticipated and planned for to facilitate early containment and control of fires.

5) Selective prescribed burning can be effective in reducing hazardous fuel loads when pre-planned, executed by competent personnel, kept within prescription, are an integral component of unit Land Management Plans, and coordinated with adjacent units.

6) Application of AMR and WFU on an existing fire often preclude adequate pre-planning and escape containment and control resulting in significant suppression costs and damage to property and resources and is not recommended except where there has been proper pre-planning and assurance that the fire will be kept within prescription.

7) Lightning fires should receive the same fire suppression priority and action as man-caused fires since both have the potential to escape early containment and control if not aggressively suppressed.

Whatever additional costs may be incurred by investing in the above recommendations before fires occur and during initial and extended attack will be more than compensated for since there is a far greater propensity for early containment and control resulting in less costs overall. The risk to firefighters, persons, and property will be reduced and valuable resources such as timber and watershed will be better protected ensuring the sustainability of our Nation’s natural resources. The overall costs of fire suppression, resource and other associated damage are greater when fires are not aggressively contained in the early stages.

These recommendations have wide application in multiple jurisdictions. Implementation requires well trained, experienced, and competent leaders, managers, and firefighters if risks and losses due to wildfires are to be held to a minimum. The application and understanding of the U. S. Forest Service “10 Standard Firefighting Orders” and “18 Watch Out Situations” by fire personnel is the best guarantee against injury and fatalities. Failure to follow this guidance has been a factor when firefighters have been injured or killed. Order number 10 “Fight fire aggressively, having provided for safety first” is the cornerstone of risk management. Aggressive suppression of wildfires reduces risks to firefighters, persons, property, and resources when “Safety” comes first.

From Troy K.

Wow! I read through the document, peeled an orange and found apples, pears, and grapes together with some orange here and there. Reminded me of my Fruit of the Loom underwear which I had to change after reading the document! This could be edited down to about 8-10 pages and someone might understand the direction. And to lump the entire western USA into one region? One policy group? Who wrote this?

First impressions: this is a self serving document in great need of a professional writer editor. It appears to be way off the target, incorporates a lot of wish stuff not called for by Congress and does not meet the questions asked with answers. The scope is way to large and fails to target the real issue: strategic direction for federal action on federal land by federal agencies and what will federal agencies do when their actions impact the state lands that are mostly in private ownership. The strategy seems to place secondary value on the national natural resources: food, fiber, energy, water, air, soil! Our timber, range, wildlife, water, air and soil are sustainable natural resources produced on the national forests. That is what we need to manage and protect.

This is a document attempting to support an internally developed policy whereby we allow lightning fires to burn without meeting measurable objectives set to attain natural resource management goals. Yes, a wildfire can do a good job of under burning as it backs down the hill, then head fires up the other slope. What? We accomplished fuel reduction on 50% of the land? How do we reduce cost when a spot could be extinguished by the people sent to monitor it? and monitor it? and monitor it? Until we spend 9 million dollars monitoring and guiding a fire over 3,000 acres?

If they put this to a vote in Montana it would go down in flames. (Pretty good uh? Just thought that up but it is true!)

We may have just lost sight of the Forest Service Mission to manage 190 million acres for the national good. Did we really have line officer involvement here like rangers and forest supervisors? Never found them mentioned in report… just fire managers and fire experts and scientists.

From Larry H.

I read bits and pieces of the report and have a few suggestions that might be pretty obvious.

1) There is NO reason to keep meetings closed. We need full transparency and access to the process.

2) If they are going to allow eco-groups to participate, they have to open it up to more representation from other points of view.

3) Making National policies on wildfires cannot hope to satisfy local conditions and situations. Flexibility and responsiveness are keys to making treatments and activities the best fit for the land.

4) Use only established and non-anonymous peer reviewed studies in decisions. Studies MUST address the fact that humans have always lived in our forests.

5) All plans MUST follow formal NEPA laws. This not-so-simple process includes essential features that the public deserves to know and comment about.

From Scott A.

Having secret closed door meetings is a bad idea. Especially when it favors one group’s input over another. It promotes bias, close-minded-ness and spurs mistrust and suspicion amongst those who were purposely left out of the process. The group which is feeling left out right now is a small, unimportant group the USFS refers to as “the American people/taxpayer.”

National policies towards fire management do not work. What is good for West Virginia doesn’t always work in Washington State or Utah and Arizona.

More public involvement, transparency should be considered. And more emphasis should be put on public comment instead of bad science. I grew up at the gateway of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. The good intentions of over-educated scientists and bureaucrats have laid 80% of said wilderness in ruin, ashes, out-of-control-insect/disease infestations. Thousands of endangered species have died in out of control wildfire, needlessly. The fires have destroyed critical endangered species habitat and only the highly flammable sub-species of vegetation have come back, which will make future fires more frequent and more out of control.

More comments will be posted as received.

The Twits on the Twitchell

Twitchell Canyon WFU Fire [here] has been burning on the Fishlake National Forest since July 20th. It was declared a Let It Burn fire from the get go, without any NEPA process or public oversight. In their own words:

The fire is being managed for multiple objectives, which included providing for the safety of the public and firefighters, to increase structural diversity in forest and shrubland ecosystems through use of fire, reducing fuels in a mosaic pattern to effectively manage future fires, and to manage the fire for a scenic vegetation mosaic effect in the Manderfield Reservoir viewshed.

Get that? The “purpose” of this wildfire is to create a scenic “mosaic” of incinerated forest with “structural diversity”. Those are environmental “objectives” but without any sort of environmental analysis or EIS as required by law.

A barebones crew of 26 were assigned to “monitor” the fire. They watched while the fire grew and grew. By August 14th the fire had grown to 4,128 acres and a real fire crew was called in. Over 200 personnel fought the Twitchell Fire for a week, but then they went home. By August 26th the fire was 4,508 acres and a “monitoring” crew of 20 was all that were left. By that date $2.5 million had been spent to “achieve objectives”.

Yesterday the Twitchell Fiasco Fire blew up to 7,000 acres. The Kimberly Mining District has been evacuated. Ourada’s Type 2 IMT has been called in. Hundreds of firefighters will “monitor” the out-of-control fire and spend more $millions ($3.2 million has been spent to-date).

Oh yes, the watershed being incinerated contains the Manderfield Reservoir 7 miles east of Manderfield, Utah. $Millions are been spent to turn that watershed into a moonscape. The genius behind all that is Fishlake NF Supervisor Allen Rowley.

The Bull S*** Fire

In mid-August a lightning storm swept across the Oregon Cascades. Numerous fires were ignited, among them some on the Mt. Hood NF near Olallie Lakes [here].

A local fire crew responded, but two weeks later (August 26th) they were withdrawn and the PNW Team 2 (Type 1 National IMT, Hoff) assumed command. The fires were over 3,000 acres combined on that date and $2.7 million had already been spent (unsuccessfully). One of the fires (Pyramid Butte Fire) had swept across the Pacific Crest Trail and was burning on the Warm Springs Reservation.

Fire crews ramped up to over 850 personnel and a $million per day was spent to contain some of the fires. By September 2nd 4,523 acres had burned and over $7 million had been spent. The fires near Olallie Lakes had been contained, but not those in the Bull of the Woods Wilderness.

The Bull of the Woods Wilderness is on the west side of the Cascades. It is 37,607 acres in size and contains low elevation old-growth spotted owl forests. It was designated in 1984 ostensibly to “protect” the old-growth and the owls. Of course, it is not really “wilderness” due to the fact that human beings have been residing there for approximately 10,000 years.

Because it is “designated wilderness” the fires there were not fought but allowed to burn unchecked. And burn they have. Of the 4,736 acres burned in the View Lake Fires, 2,871 have been the Bull of the Woods “wilderness”.

On September 3rd the Type 2 IMT was withdrawn and a special National Incident Management Organization (the Portland NIMO) has taken over. There is still zero firefighting going on in the Bull of the Woods although 660 firefighting personnel are doing something somewhere. Yesterday a firefighter was seriously injured by a falling rock. The Warm Springs Interagency Hotshot Crew member was transported to Legacy Emmanuel Medical Center in Portland where, this morning, he is reported in serious condition.

The PCT remains closed, as does the Bull of the Woods “wilderness” where spotted owls are exploding into balls of flame in mid-air and their old-growth habitat is being destroyed. The NIMO has informed the public that the fires will burn until the snow flies for all they care. MHNF Forest Supervisor Gary Larsen has cloaked himself in a cone of silence.

Meanwhile dingbat eco-freaks [here] have climbed into trees in Eugene to protest a timber sale on the Willamette NF. The Trapper Restoration Project has been in the planning and preparation phase for 12 years! After numerous appeals and court cases, it might be logged, but not if the eco-insane can stop it. They claim it is the last native forest in Oregon. No word on how they feel about the Bull S*** Fire incinerating thousands of acres of old-growth owl forests.

Oak Flat Follies

The Oak Flat Deliberate Forest Incineration continues [here, here, here, here]. Today it was reported to be 7,494 acres and still growing, due to extensive backburning.

The Southern Oregon/Northern California Type II Interagency IMT has called it quits, though, after deliberately burning down some 7,000 acres for no good reason. It’s some other IMT’s problem now.

That’s the same thing ORCA did with the Williams Creek [here] and the Rattle Fires [here] on the Umpqua NF in 2009, and the Blue 2 and Siskiyou Complex Fires [here] on the Klamath NF in 2008. It’s their modus operandi. Drop back miles from the fire and backburn. Then walk away.

It might be useful to assign ORCA to Washington DC. They could set fire to that hell hole of freakazoid Communists instead of to Oregon. We residents would prefer it if Oregon was not incinerated by dingbat flunkies from the Gooberment. Whereas Washington DC should be burned to the ground on principle.

The Party Fire in the Park

The Sheep Party Fire [here] in Kings Canyon National Park has been burning since July 17th. No firefighting has been done, but plenty of drugs have been smoked by the “monitoring” crews.

The Sheep Party Fire is now 3,915 acres, of which 988 acres are on the Sequoia National Forest, and it’s still growing. Yesterday the fire reached the valley floor west of Cedar Grove and private property is now threatened. La la la.

Incident Planning Meeting scheduled for 9/9/10 at Hume Lake Ranger District Office between USFS-SQF and NPS-KNP. The public is not invited. Just arsonist gooberment flunkies.

Trails are closed in Kings Canyon National Park and an Area Closure is in force for the Hume Lake Ranger District. A Temporary Flight Restriction in the area of the Sheep Fire is also in effect.

La la la. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Burn, baby, burn.

The deliberate, criminal incineration of Oregon forests, especially spotted owl forests, goes on and on.

On the orders of the Obama Administration, with full complicity of Oregon’s extreme leftist “leadership”, the catastrophic destruction of Oregon’s priceless heritage forests continues unabated.

The Oak Flat Fire [here, here, here] is now 7,400 acres and still growing — because of government arson. This fire could have been contained, controlled, and extinguished weeks ago, but it has been expanded by deliberate backburning miles away from the original fire.

Southern Oregon/Northern California Type II Interagency IMT Incident Commander Brett Fillis, Rogue River-Siskiyou NF Forest Supervisor Scott Conroy, and Region 6 Regional Forester Mary Wagner have conspired to incinerate 18,000 acres, including old-growth spotted owl forests.

They are only half way there. Ground-based and aerial burnouts continue in Divisions D,F, & L. The red area shows the fire size on Aug 14 when the plan was drawn to incinerate 12,000 acres (now 18,000 acres, purple lines).

Despite calm winds, rain, and cool weather, arsonistic firecrews have managed to expand the fire again and again.

Nearly $17 million has already been spent, but the meter is still running. Over $100 million in resource damages have already been inflicted, including incineration of spotted owl nesting and foraging habitat.

More destruction of old-growth owl forests is occurring in the View Lake Let It Burn Complex Fires [here] on the Mount Hood National Forest. The Olallie Lakes area has been burned over, but those fires have been largely contained. Adjacent is the Bull of the Woods Wilderness, and those fires have been Let Burn. Over 2,700 acres of old-growth spotted owl habitat has been burned dead while firecrews stay as far away as possible [here].

But they do rake in the coin. Over $7 million has been spent on the View Lake Let It Burn Complex Fires and that meter is still running, too. Portland NIMO IMT [here] is taking over from the The Southern Cascades Type 3 Interagency IMT so they can get in on the cash flow while watching Oregon’s old-growth being catastrophically destroyed.

Because it isn’t about forests, or protecting them. It is about looting the Federal Treasury while arsonistically destroying America’s priceless, heritage forests.

Meanwhile noted Oregon Communists Ron Wyden, Pete DeFazio, and Ted Kulongoski cheer from the sidelines.

Burn, baby, burn. Kill, baby, kill.

The “Cohesive Strategy” was mandated by the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement or FLAME Act [here, here, here].

A draft report entitled National Wildfire Management Report to Congress and Cohesive Strategy Draft has been issued [here, 3.2 MB]

The timeline for this report is extremely tight since it is due to Congress by November. As a result, public involvement opportunities have been limited, which means many in the natural resource and wildfire communities may have not had a chance to provide comments. In haste, the WFLC is missing opportunities to hear from people with years of experience in natural resource management and fire use and protection.

The future of the report is uncertain since Congress has more than enough issues to consider. However, it would be a mistake for as many knowledgeable and experienced people as possible not to go on record with their thoughts. If the report surfaces and Congress decides to follow some or all of its recommendations the impact on federal agencies, state, local fire and natural resource as well as governments and land owners in general could be significant. For this reason it important for the fire and natural resource community to provide WFLC with good counsel.

W.I.S.E will gather your comments as best it can with this short response period and craft a response which we will post.

If you are able to provide input and would like to share it, you can do that by making it into a comment and placing it at the bottom of this post.

Thank you,

Mike Dubrasich, Exec Dir W.I.S.E.

UP pays $17.3 in damages for Rich Fire

By Delaine Fragnoli, The Plumas County News, August 27, 2010 [here]

Union Pacific Railroad Co. has agreed to pay more than $17 million for damages and suppression costs related to the 2008 Rich Fire [here] on the Plumas National Forest.

The payment, announced by government officials, settled a federal claim after a Forest Service investigation concluded a crew of railroad workers negligently ignited the fire by cutting and welding rail without using tent shields.

The fire, which started July 29, 2008, in the Feather River Canyon, burned 6,500 acres, destroyed four structures, led to evacuations and temporarily closed Highway 70, the rail line and the Pacific Crest Trail.

The settlement amount includes the $10 million* it cost to suppress the fire and another $7 million for destroyed timber, reforestation costs and other environmental and resource damages.

* The suppression expenses reported at the time were $13,233,637 [here]. But those accounts were confounded by the numerous other fires burning on the Plumas NF at the time, including the Belden Fire and the Canyon Complex Fires [here]. There were 45 to 50 fires in the Canyon Complex (37,831 acres, $45,501,474) all ignited by lightning.

We can safely assume that all those fires damaged the environment. After all, the Rich Fire was no different than all the other fires, and the U.S. Judicial System has determined that damages (in excess of suppression costs) were in the order of $7 million on the Rich Fire alone.

That determination was based on the pleadings of the US Forest Service, which (as it turns out) maintained in court, under oath, that wildfires inflict severe and very expensive damages to bugs, bunnies, and other environmental values.

Let’s reiterate the main point here. Wildfires do not provide benefits, they inflict damages, very expensive damages, according to the USFS contentions made under oath in Federal Court and agreed to by the Judiciary.

As it turns out, when the USFS deliberately incinerates forests, as they did this summer again in numerous places, they KNOW they are not doing anyone any favors, but rather they KNOW they are inflicting severe and costly damages to the environment.

So the next time some obsequious bureaucrat from the USFS, or one of the fawning supporters of Let Burn, tries to tell you that they are doing you a favor by destroying your forests with catastrophic holocausts, that pro-holocauster can be dismissed as a lying sack of manure, an arsonist, and an eco-terrorist, and if the pro-holocauster wants to, he (or she, as in the case of our Regional Forester) can tell their sick lies to a judge and see where that gets them.

According to the USFS, that is, and to the Courts, who completely agree that when push comes to shove, wildfires inflict environmental damages (which can be measured in dollars).

More from the Plumas County News article:

Union Pacific agreed to pay the bill in full in exchange for a release from damages claims.

The settlement comes two years after a record-setting agreement on the August 2000 Storrie Fire, which scorched 52,000 acres on the Plumas and Lassen national forests. That fire was also sparked by a UP crew repairing track.

In 2004, the Forest Service billed UP $63.9 million for damages. The company refused to pay that bill, and the United States filed suit.

After two years of litigation, Union Pacific settled that case for $102 million [here].

It remains the largest settlement ever in a case about the origin of a wildfire.

It also set precedent by including, not only suppression costs, but also damages to natural resources.

Settlement funds representing resource losses from fire are dedicated by federal statute to support restoration projects on the damaged national forests. A substantial portion of the Rich Fire settlement funds will go to the Forest Service to help remedy damages caused by the fire.

A fire restoration team on the Plumas National Forest will spend approximately the next year assessing needs and developing a plan said forest spokeswoman Lee Anne Schramel. …

The Eastern District of California has special Fire Recovery Litigation teams that focus solely on these types of cases.

That’s right, sports fans. The US Dept. of Justice has special Fire Recovery Litigation teams whose job it is to sue the bejabbers out of anyone (with deep pockets) who can be held negligent for causing some of the severe environmental damages that accrue from wildfires, damages that will be assessed by the Federal Court to the tune of many, many $millions.

Benefits? Tell it to the judge.

No word yet on whether the special Fire Recovery Litigation teams will be prosecuting Regional Foresters, Forest Supervisors, Incident Commanders, and other government functionary perpetrators of Let It Burn fires that inflict many, many $millions in damages to the environment.

We encourage such prosecutions. Go get ‘em, USDOJ. Bring the perps to justice. In orange jumpsuits and shackles. Throw the book at them.

Because if private companies and individuals are held negligent and financially responsible for inflicting severe environmental damages via fire, then public servants must be treated in exactly the same manner.

Because in the USA the law applies to everybody. There is not one set of laws for the peasantry and another set of laws for government functionaries. That might have been the case in the Soviet Union and Red China, but it is not the case here.

Capice?

The report is “special” only in the sense that it is filled with errors, misstatements, and poppycock. Which is about what you’d expect from yet another government bureaucracy.

The Oregon Legislature created the Oregon Forest Resources Institute (OFRI) in 1991 to improve public understanding of the state’s forest resources and to encourage environmentally sound forest management through training and other educational programs for forest landowners. OFRI is funded by a dedicated harvest tax on forest products producers [here].

Tax the victims, shove the knife in deeper, and twist it.

The problem with crappy forest policy is that it is based on crappy forest science. Political solutions crafted by numbskulls, with no conception of what it is they are attempting to regulate, is doomed to failure.

Failure is OFRI’s middle name.

But let’s give them some credit. The report acknowledges that

* rural communities are suffering extreme social and economic hardships.

* lack of active management to restore forest resilience and health on federal forestland, have put eastside [and westside] forests in large areas of the state in dangerously overstocked conditions and at high risk of drought, disease or insect-induced mortality, and uncharacteristically intense wildfire.

* forest conditions are “out-of-whack” or “out-of-kilter”

* despite protection of owl habitat on federal land, Northern spotted owl populations
have declined [precipitously]

* After five years of study and planning, in December 2008, the BLM completed the Western Oregon Plan Revisions, what became known as the WOPR. However, on July 16, 2009, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar withdrew the WOPR …

* with the advent of the Northwest Forest Plan and the near stoppage of timber harvest on federal lands, counties were hit with a double whammy of fewer jobs and less tax revenue.

That stuff is obvious fact. It is also a fact that the State and OFRI have done absolutely nothing to correct those problems.

They won’t or can’t because they are forest science challenged. OFRI is out-of-whack and out-of-kilter in the forest science sense. And as long as they are married to junk science, they will continue to be utter failures at policy-making.

Some examples. OFRI contends that fire suppression is responsible for all these problems.

Fire in the forest is not the only problem facing federal forestland in Oregon today, but it is certainly a central one. It is directly related to a century-long Forest Service policy of fire suppression.

Without fire suppression, all of Oregon’s forests would have burned up long ago. Now these numbskulls want to disband fire suppression. Let It Burn! But that will not solve anything — instead it is an invitation to mass disaster.

OFRI is ecology challenged, too. They arbitrarily divide all Oregon forests into two types:

To best understand Oregon’s federal forestlands and the issues that surround them, one should have a sense of its two primary forest regions. To generalize, they are often referred to as westside and eastside, or alternatively, wet side and dry side.

There are dozens of forest types in Oregon. Gross simplifications like that above do not lead to understanding; they lead to gross ignorance.

Misunderstanding is OFRI’s other middle name.

Junk science is rife in the report. It evinces a fundamental ignorance of forest history:

On the wet side with all its moisture, relatively little lightning and more moderate temperatures, fire is an irregular visitor, sometimes occurring as infrequently as every few hundred years. … The dry side historically has had a markedly different fire regime. Hotter and drier, with frequent lightning strikes, it experienced recurrent fires, sometimes as often as every three to five years.

Nope. Wrong-ola.

All Oregon forests (and prairies, and savannas, have been subject to anthropogenic fire for 10,00 years or so. As amazing as it may seem to the forest science challenged folks at OFRI, the fact is that human beings set fires every year on “wet side” and the “dry side” for millennia upon millennia.

All that human-set fire had enormous effect. Anthropogenic fire eliminated forests entirely in some regions, including Coast Range valleys. Anthropogenic fire established and maintained prairies, savannas, and open, park-like forests across the entire state. Anthropogenic fire created anthropogenic mosaics that are still evident today.

Without human influences, there would be little or no old-growth in Oregon today. The open, park-like conditions created by anthropogenic fire allowed individual trees to grow to great ages. Absent those conditions, fires kill all the trees, and none grow old.

OFRI’s “science” is fundamentally racist.

They deny human influences, and indeed deny a human presence (actually those are the same things). Throughout history, wherever people have been presence, and especially where people have resided, humanity has burned the landscape with frequent, seasonal, deliberate fires using tradition ecological knowledge regarding time and place of ignition.

It is as if OFRI discovered the Pyramids and then claimed that nature built them.

OFRI is also economics challenged:

The current interagency policy of fire suppression also comes at an enormous financial cost. Throughout the past two decades wildfires have increased in size, severity and destructiveness, and so have budgets to fight them.

In fact, the damages wrought by wildfires exceed suppression costs by 10 to 50 times. It’s the DAMAGES, stupid, not the suppression costs, that have crippled Oregon’s economy.

From Zybach, Bob, Michael Dubrasich, Gregory Brenner, and John Marker. 2009. U.S. Wildfire Cost-Plus-Loss Economics Project: The “One-Pager” Checklist. Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, Advances in Fire Practices, Fall 2009 [here].

The escalating frequency, severity, and costs over and above fire suppression associated with large-scale forest wildfires include losses of human lives, homes, pets, crops, livestock, and long term environmental and infrastructure damage. Many destructive megafires have made international news, such as the lingering California wildfires of 2008, or the February, 2009 Australian fires, which claimed more than 200 lives and leveled several small towns.

Yet wildfire costs and losses are often considered in terms of suppression costs only, with relatively little attention given to related losses of timber and forage values, wildlife habitat and populations (including endangered species and their critically protected habitat), air and water quality, recreational opportunities, local economies, and other resources and amenities important to all citizens. Human lives and adverse health effects are usually not considered in terms of dollar losses at all, and tallies of domestic animal or wildlife fatalities are rarely attempted or even mentioned. Rarely is there any attempt to quantify the long-term consequences of a damaged renewable resource base to provide for the needs of an ever increasing present and future human society.

You would think a bureaucracy dependent on “a dedicated harvest tax on forest products producers” would have some clue about damages from forest fires. The DAMAGES hit them right in their wallets. But no, they can’t think outside their cocoon.

We have an idea, says OFRI. Save money by defunding and cutting off fire suppression. That’ll fix the problem.

God help us. Better to drive the numbskulls out of our public buildings, with whips if necessary.

But let’s give OFRI some more credit (not that they deserve it, but we’re trying to be as generous to them as possible). The report does acknowledge that unsuppressed Federal fires might possibly impact private resources:

Fire recognizes no boundaries. With changing fire conditions and reduced federal agency funding for management activities, such as road maintenance and thinning, there is increased risk of fire spreading from federally managed lands to adjacent private lands.

The destruction of public resources is of no concern, but private resources can be damaged. It’s difficult to see, however, how more Let It Burn on Federal lands is going to fix that problem. Nor will implementing OFRI’s call to ban homes:

Another related issue is a societal trend to build primary residences or second homes at the forest edge, often abutting national forests or other federal land.

Yes, it’s a major societal problem when private property owners use their private properties in any manner. What a pain it is for gargantuan Federal bureaucracies to have to fight their own fires just because some scum of a private property owner might get burned out.

Sieg heil Karl Marx.

The solution is obvious. Commandeer the private property, drive the former owners into concentration camps, and burn baby burn.

It’s the same old solution practiced by our Government for two hundred years. But OFRI is history challenged, too.

Why is it that ethnic cleansing is still considered to be a “solution” to anything?

But let’s be fair. Slowly, inch by inch, something other than knee-jerk political correctness (based on Hitlerian politics) is seeping in:

Most scientists agree that strategies to date for creating older forests in the dry forests of the interior West have not been effective. Leaving already out-of-kilter areas with no management will, without question, leave understories crowded and overstocked, and lead to uncharacteristically intense wildfire. The result will be deteriorated habitat until large trees return hundreds of years in the future, that is, if repeated fires do not take them out as young trees.

Note the qualifier “most scientists”. OFRI did not take a poll, nor did they even consult with actual experts in forest history. Moreover, whatever “most scientists” think is not a yardstick for the truth. “Most scientists” are wrong about most things.

However, the recognition that old-growth trees die in catastrophic fires and are not replaced by natural processes is a giant leap forward for OFRI.

Tell me, OFRI, if old-growth is not created by natural processes, how did it get here in the first place? Think it through. Please don’t blame fire suppression. If you need to, try consulting with real forest scientists. Or the public:

Recent polling data indicates that the public understands enough of the problem to know that they want to see it addressed.

Meanwhile, the USFS is off in fairy land:

In some areas, the Forest Service is seeing fire do remarkable things, managing landscapes as foresters would like, [Regional Forester Mary Wagner] said.

What foresters “like” Let It Burn? This “appeal to authority” is without foundation.

OFRI is sniffing around the real solution, sort of:

Two scientists at the Forest Service’s Forest Sciences Lab in Wenatchee… championed
a strategy that would replace the reserve concept and its notion of making defined forest stands off limits to management with a new, whole-landscape approach.

Well, praise be to those guys. What OFRI failed to note is that forest restoration is now the law, and that last year Congress enacted Title IV - Forest Landscape Restoration of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, now known as the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) [here, here, here, here, here, and elsewhere].

You would think that raging bureaucracy like OFRI would be aware of the law and the programs that address the problem they are most concerned about. But they are not.

Why is OFRI so completely out of touch with reality? It could be that the OSU College of Forestry is also completely out of touch, and this is a case of the blind leading the blind. Smack into a wall. Again.

Much palaver in the report cites the the Federal Forestlands Advisory Committee (FFAC) created by the Legislature in 2005 and stocked with know-nothing bureaucrats and virulent pro-holocauster groups. The FFAC came up with useless recommendations that were never implemented due to Oregon’s “budget crisis”. (Note: and how did that budget crisis arise? Could it be that cutting off all economic use of 60% of Oregon’s forest landbase for 20+ years had anything to do with it?) However, the recommendations, if they are ever implemented, will go nowhere and lead to nothing.

The report also pumps Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden’s Oregon Eastside Forests Restoration, Old Growth Protection and Jobs Act of 2009, a sabotage of the CFLRP and going thankfully nowhere. OEFROGPJA is a campaign stunt, not a real bill, and if it were to pass, it would scuttle forestry in Eastern Oregon forever [here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here].

OFRI also promotes “collaboration”:

Though the condition of dry, overstocked forests is severe, researchers know it is not too late for restorative management. Scientists may disagree to some extent on treatments, but there is certain agreement that we have passed the point where passive management – that is, letting nature take its course – is an option. Polling indicates the public as well wants action taken to address the problem. When it comes to on-the-ground solutions to specific forest problems, one approach showing promise is local collaboration.

That’s all well and good, but when the “collaborators are numbskulls or worse, holocauster forest killers, then not much good is going to come out of that collaboration. Not to mention, the USFS is death on collaboration. They hate it and refuse to do it.

“Collaboration” is a closed room. You are not invited. No one with any actual forest expertise is invited. It’s holocaust today, holocaust forever among the “in” crowd. True restoration based on actual forest science is so far from their understanding it might as well be on the Moon.

OFRI has made a pathetic attempt to evaluate the situation. Mired as they are in junk science and regressive leftwing politics, it is not surprising that this report was a dud and a half.

The problems are clear. They have been clear for 25 years. The solutions remain remote to bureaucracies like OFRI.

Travis Cork III. 2010. The Market Illiteracy Embodied in the Politically Correct Version of Sustainability. W.I.S.E. White Paper No. 2010-4

This White Paper is an excellent cutting-edge review of the folly and fallacies of “sustainable forestry” programs, whether run directly by government or by government-affiliated special interest groups.

By way of introduction to the topic, the following note from the author describes some of the tragic consequences of the red tape Gordian Knot that is “sustainability” in practice.

******

Pick Your Poison While We Pick Your Pocket

By Travis Cork, Practicing Professional Forester and Forestry Consultant

When my client Bud E. called to find out why his property had been decertified as a Tree Farm, in his opinion “given a black mark,” he also asked if there were any advantages to being in the Tree Farm system.

I told him that there are no advantages, but there are plenty of disadvantages.

The parent of the Tree Farm System, American Forest Foundation (AFF), is an aggressive supporter of the one entity on Earth that most threatens sustainability. That entity is government at all levels. AFF supports programs that will allow their members to pick the pockets of other taxpayers, all supposedly in the name of sustainability.

That these programs are adding an unsustainable debt load that our children and grandchildren can never pay, does not seem to be a concern to AFF.

Apparently the one way Bud can remain in the Tree Farm system is to allow a bureaucrat with the South Carolina Forestry Commission (SCFC) to write a “management plan” that incorporates all of AFF’s standards of sustainability.

What about the SCFC? If we took it off the taxpayer teat, how would it pay its way? How would it be sustained?

The SCFC has survived as long as it has due in large part to the fact that the productive economy has created enough wealth which SCFC can siphon off without causing an uproar among taxpayers. By pricing the subsidized services it offers at below-market-rates, it finds and maintains a clientele simply by pricing competition out of the business. It also survives because of its access to government’s monopoly of legalized violence. It uses its regulatory authority to force its existence on us, even though there are superior ways to deal with issues such as BMPs and timber theft.

In fact, there is no person less qualified to write a management plan advancing true sustainability than a bureaucrat with any bureaucracy, be it SCFC, USFS, NRCS, FSA, or any other. Bureaucrats are isolated from any measure of profit and loss. For the NIPF [non-industrial private tree farmer], profit and loss matters. For the bureaucrat, as long as it can force the taxpayer to support it, profit and loss has little relevance. (If bureaucrats understood the true nature of sustainability, they would not be bureaucrats.)

True sustainability cannot be measured by bean-counters doing commodity drain surveys. The only meaningful measure of sustainability are prices. The only meaningful prices are those based on voluntary exchanges of private property. Shadow prices, prices developed by bogus surveys such contingent valuation, and prices arbitrarily set by bureaucrats or legislators, are worse than meaningless. They are destructive. The individuals who develop prices by these means do so because they want the prices to lie so that they can advance their anti-economic agendas.

Looking at a letter supporting carbon incentives, the list of supporters includes the AFF and the Southern Environmental Law Center. SELC is no friend of private property or profitable forestry. Should we not be concerned that AFF and SELC are allies?

Supposedly an advantage of the Tree Farm system is that it provides a cheaper alternative for “sustainability certification” than FSC (another entity hostile to private property and timber management) and SFI. AFF Tree Farms are supposed to be recertified on five year intervals. By my count, it has been nine years since Bud’s property was last recertified. Who is going to certify all of these Tree Farms? Will this be the equivalent of a jobs bill for state forestry agencies? No one can believe that all NIPF will voluntarily submit to the certification process, even if it is cheaper. Can anyone doubt that groups like SELC will file lawsuits to make participation in a certification program mandatory? Can any one doubt that the SCFC will sign on for the opportunity to play a role writing plans. What regulatory bodies will be created to deal with inevitable disputes over chain-of-custody?

We know from experience that SCFC will go on private property without permission to check for possible BMP violations or do a “courtesy BMP exam.” (Silly me, I thought courtesy required one to get permission to go on someone else’s property.) EPA and the COE are worse. Why should we not believe that getting in these programs will only heighten the scrutiny of the property. In an age where EPA is becoming a law unto itself, exposure is the last thing an NIPF needs.

This process is fraught with danger for the NIPF. It will not produce a result that is
sustainable.

The infamous Supreme Court case, Wickard v Filburn, gave us a warning. “It is hardly a lack of due process for the government to regulate that which it subsidizes.”

The Tree Farm system is no friend of private property. If Bud E. want my advice, he will accept decertification gladly and and stay as far from the Tree Farm system as he can.

Even napalm won’t work when the humidity is this high and the temperatures this low.

The climate change that has altered the Pacific Northwest is due to the shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation which has taken place over the last 3 years or so. Colder water is upwelling in the northern eastern Pacific, a condition absent over the last 30 years, but now back for a 3-decade term.

Add to that the growing La Nina in the central Pacific (more cooling of the water off our shores), and a cold wet spell has engulfed us.

Last winter was the coldest and wettest on record, summer was two months late, and now fall is a month early. As the saying goes, summer was the nicest day we had this year.

Great plans were afoot to burn umpteen million acres of America’s priceless heritage forests this summer, and the fire nazis did their best. Not only were numerous wildfires unfought, but arsonistic sub-functionaries attempted to torch off more and more acres — using drip torches and ping pong balls filled with gasoline, dropped from helicopters.

Before the fire season started, various fire pundits predicted a monstrous burning summer. The cold, wet winter and spring had spurred more than the average growth, you see, and all that excess biomass was going to fuel the fires of their dreams.

No mention was made of the biomass that had been building up for 100 years or more. Just this year’s early growth was all that mattered to the pundits. They also tore their hair out over the “early snowmelt” and “late fall” and “extended burning season” indicated by their funk-tastic models. Don’t measure anything — real data aren’t necessary — just plug fantasy into creative equations and voila!, garbage spews out.

But their models were wrong, completely wrong, utterly wrong. Bang the Gong Show gong. Summer was late and fall has come early, just the opposite of the predictions of the chrome domes.

The Alarmist consensus turned out to be a confederacy of dunces. Cue the clown music…

Far be it from me to rub it in, but I TOLD YOU SO!!!!!

And thank God for the rain. Without it, the fire nazis were hell bent on incinerating vast tracts — for all the wonderful benefits megafire holocaust provides, such as dead wildlife, fouled streams, denuded watersheds, killed forests, economic ruin, etc.

There is no arguing with a fire nazi. They are impervious to facts and reason. They lack the compassion gene. It’s a birth defect.

But there is no arguing with rain, either. It’s just so wet. The fires are fizzling. The holocauster schemes aft gang agley.

From the indomitable bearbait, who as usual cuts to the heart of the issue, removes it, examines it with a jaundiced eye, and then throws it to the lions:

The wife and I were at her mom’s last evening after seeing Robert Duvall’s movie “Get Low.” Good movie. Her mom lives near the Oregon State Fair, and you could hear the whine of “hot saws” at the logging events show and contests. And lots of people having a great time.

Now, here at home, all I can hear is the whine of USFS arsonistas as the rain ruins their party.

And it is raining here. Blueberry, tomato splitting rain. Any uncut wheat is now pig feed. Corn trucks will be winched through the fields kind of rain.

This year is so late I saw bean picking going on yesterday. Still picking beans at the very ass end of August!!! I saw those beans planted on the third day of June after the peas were picked, very late. No end to this globular warring over whether..or whether not.

I am tired of being cold in the middle of summer. It was 62 in my house yesterday morning. I have lived here, in this house, since 1976. A while. Never have I had the heat on, the thermostat to run the furnace turned to “on”, after May first and before October 15th, in all that time. This year I had to have heain the house in June, and I had to turn it back on once in early July, and then yesterday.

Kids have been dying in droves in South America for the last few months, due to pneumonia from the recorrd cold snaps there. Barn backs broken to snow. Dead livestock. Crops lost. People died because they never had to heat their homes before, and then did so with charcoal fires and gas heaters in the house. Carbon monoxide poisoning ensued. Went to sleep warm, and forever.

Those shivvering people in the stands at the soccer World Cup in South Africa were cold, and the ball was cold, and kicks went awry and did funny things. Not only did they “bend it like Beckham”, but they knuckleballed it, sliced it, and overshot so many times that the whole of it looked like Tiger Woods playing golf with his wife’s lawyer packing his bag.

The whine you hear today is the fire air force out of work. The hand crews sleeping in wet tents. The demobilization and ruined dreams of holocaust and mass incinerations, all with a dim future for this year.

The State Fair rains have come with a vengeance. Teenagers at the fair will have runny fake tattoos, dye dripping arcade prizes, and wet feet. The old people will be content under cover at the huckster shows, and looking at quilts and jams and flies in the pie and cake cupboards. No fun to be launched by the humongous sling shot into a storm cloud.

I am tired of being cold. I am tired of grey on gray, of Payne’s grey horizon’s, of dark light and yellow leaves. It is one thing to be under the constant hammer of social engineering, of government insanity, but to endure it in the dark of Willamette Valley overcast day after day, only interrupted by storms and an occasional glimpse of the sun, is harder to take each year.

This weather crap bodes ill for people who are dealing with foreclosed homes, no job prospects, tough crop prices, and the inability of the Obamanation to deal with even the simple issues, let alone the tough ones. Evidently, if you don’t have enough ward heelers, thugs, graft and homies, nothing can be accomplished by Chicago neighborhood organizers. Nothing. Can’t carry on a war with any success. Can’t cheerlead a resurgence of an economy as long as it is still dependent upon finances that have yet to recognize 40% or so of our national net worth evaporated into the cosmos, as radiated blue sky, good will, and a losing bet on the come.

That money is gone. Vanished. Never to be seen again.

Ever see a 1940s closet? Holds two sets of clothes for two people. Two changes. The third one you are wearing. One is in the wash, and two hang in the closet. That is it. All you need. No array of cooking stuff. A toaster, a stove, an egg beater, maybe a coffee maker, an electric waffle iron, the means to refrigerate somewhat. We will be there soon. Most of the economy now is the garage sale on every day on some street near you. Kids clothes, plastic crap, and another dumpster load because none can now afford a storage unit for crap.

Things are changing, and I hate to say this due to all of those who suffered extra warm weather this summer east of the Rockies, but global warming is not. Too many cold places to drop the average. We are in a weather cycle determined by the amount of hot or cold water along the equator in the Pacific.

The rains have slowed down some, but still are coming down. Just dandy. Gonna be 8 A.M. soon, and I have lights on in the house to see. AS IT IS FRIGGING DARK OUT AND GREY AND DEPRESSING. And cold. Not my kinda summer. I am wearing a sweater.

Other than that, whoop dee doo. Thank God for putting the fires out, because the humans weren’t with the program or up to the task.

– bear bait

Alas, it all makes sense.

Connecting Corridors Wilderness. And us tiny hamlet dwellers, pesky private property “owners” have “foiled” the plans to give bunnies super-highways all over the USA. Therefore it is our government’s “rightful duty” to steal our land, give it to the bunnies via H.R. 5101.

Waste millions and billions or gazillions of taxpayer dollars while the Chinese, Iranians, Russians and other foreign governments, not friendly to our own, sit back and laugh at our stupidity while we free-fall into socialism, communism, Marxism. Or worst of all, environmentally induced chaos!

Barack Obama truly has put the “mental” into “environmentalist.” He’s outdone decades of efforts by the KGB to weaken the USA from within, with the passage of one stupid bill. God save our country now. And I say that as an agnostic!

[Here] is a link to enlighten yourself about the trainwreck just thrust upon our nation, far worse than ANYTHING perpetrated by former president Jimmy Carter.

I can hear Jimmy Carter breathing a sigh of relief, to no longer be the worst president in history. I can hear the Russians breaking open champagne, the Chinese dancing in the streets, Kim Jong Ill preparing a speech about “victory over America” and Iran saying “at least we’re not so stupid we willingly run our own country into the dirt for the benefit of bunnies. Now we don’t need to bomb the infidels with nukes. Their pain under environmentalists is greater than any Allah could bestow upon them.”

Maybe Obama should have at least worked a real job before becoming president. Like working on a farm, before selling America the farm. Give him a basic understanding of how us taxpayers “earn” those dollars he’s throwing around loosely, through something called “sweat, blood and tears.”

On the brighter side of things, two more months until we stand a chance of repealing this law written by demon-bureaucrats suffering from a bad experiment with psychotropic drugs, or unlimited graft, or something. I sincerely hope this issue becomes a voting issue in the next two months.

The USA is flat broke and our representatives are spending untold sums of money borrowed from the Chinese, Russians, soon Iranians, or anyone else with credit better than our own. They are spending this borrowed money to steal our private property, close our only access roads, burn our houses down and bankrupt our rural communities. And people of the USFS are standing in line salivating at the chance to destroy many more rural communities.