Wednesday, October 11, 2017

I'm not blaming the victims.

People in California are a little mental about their trees. For a while if the city or a developer tried to cut down a large tree on a property - all the old people would pop up and have a die in.

A lot of those houses would have been saved if they just had a defensible space. And I'm not Sunday morning quarterbacking this thing. My family's house burnt down. Although I'd spent the night at my boyfriends that night. I came back the next morning to get ready for work and the fire trucks were ay my house. We lost my cousin.

People don't understand how little time you have in a fire. Your house can be fully engulfed in three minutes. Seriously. THREE MINUTES.

The first thing I did when I moved into my house was tear the shake roof off and start cutting down anything that had pine in the name. Those trees are matchsticks.

Mr S. and I have had a million conversations about fire. ( and that is not an exaggeration) I told him we'd have a big fight because I'm not leaving. I'd start dropping (cutting down) all the sources of fuel.  Fire loves to climb, and if you have a 20 foot tree in your front yard, the fire could potentially be 40 feet. A house will never survive being next to that.

People always like to say that things can be replaced... and they can. But when your house burns down, it's like your past doesn't exist anymore. Your pictures are gone. That is the part that is long lasting.

Additionally, these fires would be a lot better if California was allowed to manage the forests again. Now you can't touch them because "nature". It's mental. Trees grow back. And what kind of stupid die in do you have for a burnt tree?

5 comments:

  1. THOSE EUCALYPTUS TREES IN CALIFORNIA ARE TERRORISTS, I TELL YOU ...

    No, really, they are.

    Exploding eucalyptus trees

    They're not native to California either -- the Australians brought them into California.

    When eucalyptus trees dry out, it's possible for the trees to reach flash point, and the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the trees are combustible enough that some people have been working on engines that burn eucalyptus fuel.

    No, really, they are.

    Potential use of eucalyptus biodiesel in compressed ignition engine

    Naturally, I have a solution, pun intended. :-)

    These old farts who will "defend" the trees with strong words but do nothing to actually keep these forests from igniting can put their money and time where their mouths are, or they can shut the hell up.

    I don't see these ancient weasels out watering the damned trees just enough to keep them from going up in flames, do you?

    Otherwise, these guys in Australia and India have a great solution: why not harvest the explosively combustible trees for biodiesel?

    It burns nearly 2/3 cleaner than regular diesel, at least according to this research done in 2015.

    I really dislike "Not In My Back Yard"-types who will do nothing at all to work on their actual back yards.

    So my alternate proposal is this: the tree huggers can hug the trees, and if a few of the trees ignite or explode while the tree huggers are hugging them ... well, obviously they weren't hugging the trees hard enough. :-)

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  2. If you only knew!

    Here. and Here.

    They imported those trees into Berkeley and then figured out as you say, they are like rocket fuel. Now they can't even get rid of them because of the hippies. These people are flat out crazy.

    It is interesting they are trying to use them for biodiesel though.

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  3. I needed a warning for one of those links, you know ...

    MEDIC! EYE BLEACH, STAT! :-)

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  4. NO. I'm the giver of things you can't unsee.

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  5. Capital of Texas RefugeeFriday, October 13, 2017 4:53:00 AM

    WELL THEN ...

    Maybe this is something good, maybe this is something bad ...

    (but it's not a shiny red button) :-)

    ReplyDelete