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If you want a safe place in the woods it requires work.

ahawkeye you are correct, people should be allowed to build their dream homes in the woods they own. What they should not expect, however, is for others to put their lives on the line to protect their homes. Or for other taxpayers to foot the bill for suppression costs. People need to start doing the kind of work BullBuster is going to do, and we should also demand more work like that on our public lands. We need to be more proactive than reactive, because out west it is not a question of if any particular place will have fire, it is more a question of when. The only real thing we can control is the fuels available for wild fire.

Smoke has inundated Missoula today. Good news is it keeps things cool. Bad news is it sucks. Not even thinking about climbing the hills until this clears out. Hoping we get some weather later this week to clear things out, and would love to see the coast get some rain and stop the smoke production.

Really worried me

In ‘88, we had a few week of orange skies in Laramie, but I don’t recall it being dark grey like that - not even in August up on the Bighorn,.,,

But over the weekend, I could see the smoke all the way out here where the water is salty...

If you thin a productive area the low lying stuff will be back in a few years.

In California much of the land is not covered in timber but instead is loaded with solid gasoline (manzanita, etc.). We aren't going to thin that out but efforts should be made to remove fuels around towns and houses. People want brush right up under the eves and then expect firefighters to go in and save their homes.

Your choice, your problem.

My mom’s place is pretty well surrounded by willows, so my dad had a huge amount of dead stuff to clear out when they built. Good buffer as long as the pines don’t blow up, but they’ve always got water.

And we have a steel roof....

First the disclaimer, I do own remote land that is surrounded by public land, It has been at risk of major fires (had spot fires) twice in recent years. I work hard to reduce fire risk on my property, (I sell at least a load of logs each summer and I slash pile more than you can imagine). I understand it is still high risk of burning someday due to location. It can burn I have insurance, that is why I have insurance, and I do not live there.

Now my "opinions" based on some of the above reading.

I chose to be remote so it is my responsibility to mitigate fire danger. Yes I agree. I also am responsible to not let a fire I may create to pass onto public land but therefore Public land is also responsible to not let fire move from their land to mine. I commend the forest service on this point they have thinned all the land surrounding me in the last 5 years, a great benefit in reduction of risk of fire traveling to my land. Thank you John Q Public. The thinning crews are fire crews working in the spring and early summer before forest fire season. For many years thinning was contracted to migrant crews that traveled in and worked then left. Then the trend was no thinning at all. Now we are back to thinning but it is fire crews doing the work.

Logging has changed. The forest service has a difficult time getting cutting units through the courts due to lawsuits trying to stop them. To the point I don't think there is ever any income from logging, it all goes to litigation and trials to get the work done. Therefore it is my opinion that the environmental groups are the issue with logging and therefore the cause of forests being too dense and thus huge fires.

Global warming is not a human issue. I will agree yes we are warming, but that is what the earth has done for Millions of years. The earth warms and cools, Ice ages, etc. Yes the earth is warming but you cannot take 100 years of data and say it is a new trend on an earth that is millions of years old. Earth has warmed before Earth has cooled before, we are in a cycle, and we are in a warming cycle and we are not the cause.

We are too busy fighting ourselves to accomplish what needs to be done for our own preservation.

Enviros and loggers need to hug it out and come up with a policy that reduces the density of our forest without endangering any spotted owls. Liberals and conservatives need to hug it out and quit fighting about health care or we will be socialist before we realize what is going on.

When we are listening to 16 year olds to set up our gun policies we are in trouble.

Wow longest rant I have posted in 13 years on bowsite and I don't think I covered it all. I know I didn't

oz

oz

Fact is the majority of these fires were lightening caused. Canada doesn't get a lot of dry lightening and they don't have the population densities of CA or OR so their forest management isn't the sole reason there aren't fires north of the border.

Then add gender identification smoke bombs to dry lightening! WTH?!?!?!

Liberals blame climate change.

Conservatives blame lack of forest management.

Both Trump and the CA governor looked and sounded like children and idiots at the press conference last weekend (or was it Monday?).

Both sides are right and too beholding to their radical constituents to admit the other side might have a point and work together to get something done. Pretty much the state of the country and politics in the U.S.

^^^^

I agree with Oz on pretty much everything but the “we are not the cause” part; we may not be the SOLE cause, but to deny that we bear any responsibility is as ridiculous as one political party denying any responsibility whatsoever for the national debt,

I've had shortness of breath and some cramping chest pains but feeling better this early AM

I've been home 1 1/2 days so it has improved.

I did a Virtual with my Dr. yesterday and she had me do some breathing ect stuff and she felt it was smoke related.

Good luck, Robb

That’s some kind of service to help you get the trailer back, though....