Video shows the Dixie Fire tearing through historic California town

[mountain grammy]

Source: NBC News

Dramatic video captured the Dixie Fire, the largest wildfire burning in California, tearing through the small community of Greenville on Wednesday.

The footage showed homes and vehicles engulfed in flames, commercial structures gutted and buildings collapsed in the mountain community of around 800. The fire destroyed much of the historic California town and left it completely unrecognizable.

Among the buildings lost were a former sheriff's office, stores, restaurants, saloons and gas stations.

https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-1120w,f_auto,q_auto:best/newscms/2021_31/3496845/210805-dixie-fire-al-0742.jpg

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/video-shows-dixie-fire-tearing-through-historic-california-town-n1276021

[Mz Pip]

1. Such a beautiful area.

Greenville is very close to where we have a vacation cabin. We left nearly 3 weeks ago when it was too smokey to go outside and there was ash on our deck. Our place is near Chester and as of now Chester doesn’t look too good. So far, Lake Almanor Peninsula, where our cabin is, seems safe but that could all change. Even if our house is spared I wonder what we will be coming back too. The area is just devastated.

[blm]

3. ((Mz Pip))

[pfitz59]

19. Chester is being evacuated

Such a beautiful area. It will grow back, but will take many years..

[brer cat]

2. So sad.

I don't know the area, but it is devastating to see a town disappear in flames.

[Warpy]

4. The west in general is suffering from a longstanding lack of fire

The sickest forest I've ever seen was the forest near Los Alamos many years ago, the floor choked with brush and dead wood, bleached white by age. Forests here are supposed to catch fire every few decades, burning off the brush and dead wood and leaving the tops of the trees untouched. Fire is the only way some of the trees germinate their seeds and those seeds have no competition in areas where brush has burned off.

A few years later, a controlled burn got away from the Forest Service when the weather changed and the area burned over. Unfortunately, there was so much fuel that it turned into a particularly intense crown fire, destroying trees as well as forest floor fuel, and part of the town, as well. It was so hot that the soil was sterilized a couple of feet deep.

The tribes knew this and archaeology has shown that they used fire strategically to prevent the destructive crown fires we're seeing now. As usual, white folks failed to listen to them and now we're all screwed.

[Farmer-Rick]

6. I've heard that in some areas American tribes used fire to clear the forest floor.

But this country was practically ALL forest except for the plains and drought areas. Before European settlers started clearing off all the trees, there were only large forests with lots of huge trees. And lots and lots of dry forest litter because many earthworms are not native to this continent. (Earthworms help distribute forest litter deep into the soil and break down surface waste.)

How could the tribes have kept up with such a monumental task? Even at a high estimate of 56 million adults living among the tribes, it would have been a never ending job.

I think they did it in only in certain areas or at certain times, and it wasn't a common practice among all tribes.

Using fire to clear land is very risky and dangerous work. I've done it and have helped others do it. A fire can get out of control so easily with just a slight wind change. The high temperatures from Global Warming also ensures lots of dried out grasses and brush litter that can suddenly catch and turn the fire.

The reason so many fires are all over California is not poor management, but simply Global Warming ensuring ignited, dried out, forest/grass/brush litter keeps burning and keeps spreading into inhabited areas.

[Warpy]

7. It was a practice among most, confirmed by archaeology

Even the Plains tribes used fire strategically, burning off old prairie growth knowing the new growth in such areas would attract the herds of various animals to the sweeter grass, making the migration route slightly more predictable, important before horses came along.

[Farmer-Rick]

9. Can you give me a link?

[Warpy]

10. Search "archaeology of intentional fires in the americvas"

but I'll spoon feed one for you: https://www.archaeology.org/issues/272-1709/letter-from/5826-letter-from-california-fires

There are others. Determination is made from studying fire scars and their ignition points. Fires that spread out from a point are most likely caused by accident or lightning. Fires that start a long a front of tens to hundreds of meters are most likely set.

[Farmer-Rick]

17. Man that must have been a full time job. Probably took every able bodied adult.

Keeping an entire continent with little earthworm activity free of forest litter/dried grasses/underbrush.They did it all with controlled fires. And they had very little in the way of stopping the fires when they got out of control. Almost a super human feat, just totally amazing.




.

[Warpy]

18. Brown opeople are a lot smarter than you give them credit for

Time of year and weather conditions were chosen as carefully as the targeted area was.

Or just discount the work of archaeologists who have turned this information up along with the intelligence and longstanding experience of the brown people who lived here before the rest of us did.

Your choice.

[csziggy]

11. Locally, Tall Timbers Research Station studies fire ecology

And is known "As a national hub for prescribed fire science, bringing fire managers and researchers together to identify and fill the gaps needed to increase the pace and scale of prescribed fire use." https://talltimbers.org/

Prescribed burning was found to increase wildlife so was important to the plantations that segued from cotton to hunting after the Civil War. Tall Timber turned the use of prescribed burning from a verbally shared science to a scientifically supported practice.

While their research is now mostly used in the Southeast - Tall Timbers is outside Tallahassee, Florida - it could be applied to many other places. Although places that have not been regularly burned are not good choices, as there is regrowth, prescribed burns could keep the new forests healthier with less risk of uncontrolled fires.

Tall Timbers: https://talltimbers.org/

[Warpy]

13. It has taken over 500 years to figure out

what the tribal people knew from 13,000+ years of observation and experimentation. Yay, the scientific method is finally being applied and it does work. Unfortunately, fire suppression has done a hell of a lot of damage.

Thank goodness it is finally being abandoned, but we're not out of the woods (awful pun) yet.

The wight of mile after mile of forest chocked with dead wood will stay with me forever. Finding out it was illegal to go in and harvest that dead wood for fireplaces and wood stoves was the true shocker, the height of insanity. I hated being proven right a half decade or so later when this happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Grande_Fire

[csziggy]

14. I've been guilty of not doing prescribed burns on my 60 acres

When I moved here, we were surrounded by plantations that did yearly burns, but I have a horror of fire - had third degree burns as a child - and would not do it in our wooded areas. The other half of the property is pasture with scattered trees so not as susceptible to uncontrollable fires.

Now, the areas to our east and north are residential and are no longer burned yearly. As a result we don't see quail or fox squirrels as we used to. Since I became unable to drive our tractor, trees have come up in the pastures, so there is more fire danger.

My plan is to get the pastures cleared of bushy small trees this winter and we've found someone who can keep the pastures mowed regularly to keep them from coming back. That will help reduce fire danger a lot.

Even here in the Southeast where the drought and fire danger are no where near as dangerous as out West, there have been years when there have been uncontrolled fires. While we were building our house, fires in Georgia got really bad to the point we had a week when the smoke was so bad you couldn't see the sun except as a small red dot.

Oh - now that I connect that fire with Los Alamos, I remember it. My husband's uncle worked at Los Alamos in the late 40s, early 50s (his cousins' birth certificates list a PO Box in Albuqueque, LOL!). Since his father also had top secret clearance they got to visit when mu husband was a kid. So when the fire happened my husband was paying attention.

We drove through on our honeymoon in 1978 and I remember how dense the woods were then. The pictures at Wikipedia make me so sad to think of all that was lost.

[Warpy]

15. Nature heals itself remarkably quickly

I can't drive and couldn't see it if somebody drove me, so I don't know how well new forest has filled in beyond rare pictures here and there on the net. It has to be better than it was, if even a non forest manager thinks a forest looks pretty sick and like a bomb waiting to go off, you know it was really, really bad.

Deep forests are pretty to look at and I love to visit, but I'd never live there.

Also, I remember a particularly bad fire season down south, the air in Boston was filled with fine particulates and our sun was red, too. That was mid to late 80s, I think.

[csziggy]

16. We don't get very many uncontrolled fires around here

Maybe because of the influence of Tall Timbers.

2007 was the year we were building and the first really bad uncontrolled fire in years. It was known as the Bugaboo Scrub Fire and was in the Okefenokee Swamp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugaboo_Scrub_Fire

[Fla Dem]

5. Very sad. I'm glad citizens were evacuated in advance of the fire. So sorry for the wildlife.

All the wildlife lost to these fires is heart breaking.

[Marthe48]

8. Destroyed by fire in 1881

Most of the town burned then, too. I don't know the origin of that fire.

If they can rebuild and want to, I wish them luck.

[getagrip_already]

12. I guess they slacked off on raking the forest again?

Yes, sarcasm. I can't even imagine losing not only your home and property, but your entire community.

So sad.

[Mz Pip]

20. Sarcasm aside

It’s just not feasible. So much of this region is pretty much inaccessible. It’s rugged, steep terrain with few roads. Good luck with “raking” that.

A heavily logged area just burned in a flash. The forests along the roads are pretty well maintained and cleared of brush. Didn’t matter.

We’re in totally new territory with these fires. I’m starting to think we’ve already passed the point of no return in doing much about climate change. I’ve been coming up here for over 40 years. 90degree temperatures were rare. It started changing about 4-5 years ago with more and more hot days and less and less rain. Now 90+ temps are common in the summer. 2 years ago we put in a small air conditioner just to keep the house below 80 in the late afternoon. Never even considered it before.

Even if my house on the peninsula is spared, so much of why we come up here is destroyed.