Someone in Bend must be reading this blog, or at least thinking along the same lines. In 2017, after the Wine Country fires had burned homes in Santa Rose, the Antiplanner noted that the problem was the homes were too dense and needed a buffer of low-density homes around them. I made the same point after the Camp Fire burned homes in Paradise.
Now Deschutes County is zoning a buffer between Bend and the national forest for low-density housing. The zone calls for one home every 2.5 acres, which is probably not dense enough — one home every acre would be sufficient and would make it more likely that homeowners would treat their entire properties to minimize fire risk.
The land that Deschutes County is zoning as a fire buffer is outside of Bend’s urban-growth boundary. Under Oregon land-use planning rules, lands outside of but adjacent to the boundary may be zoned “rural residential” with 5- to 10-acre minimum lot sizes. It is likely that the county is going for 2.5-acre lot sizes because it fears it couldn’t get away with one-acre lot sizes.
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While many free-marketeers object to zoning of any kind, this is one situation where zoning creates huge positive externalities. If low-density development of a buffer area can protect more conventional Bend neighborhoods from suffering the fate of those in Santa Rosa, the benefits may outweigh the costs. In this particular case, the county is upzoning from the ultra-low-density zoning that preceded it, so the rural landowners benefit as well.
Ironically, after fires failed to harm homes in southern California shelter-in-place neighborhoods, a representative of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection criticized developers for building such homes because they encouraged people to live in fire-prone areas. But, as the fires in Santa Rosa, Paradise, Malibu, and elsewhere demonstrated, most of California is fire-prone; the solution is to build low-density fire-proof neighborhoods and use them as a buffer around denser cities.
Common sense teaches you to take various preparations when living in an area prone to various phenomena.
If you live in an area prone to hurricanes, houses should be sturdier to withstand the wind shears and possibly elevated.
Flood prone areas your house should be several feet off the ground to incase of a surge or rise in water level.
If you live in a place prone to fire, house should be made of materials less prone to burn.
Volcanoes……………fuckin move, there’s really no preparation for that…you’re talkin wrath of god type shit.
wildfires are the result of two things, it’s land management practices and water management are what exacerbated the fire problem. Fire has always been a circumstance in Mediterranean climate regions. It’s part of the regenerative ecology that keeps invasive weeds out of the ecosystem, it also recycles nutrients back into the soil that could not be obtained in other ways. While we think of Mediterranean as “Europe” the word in ecology encompasses a broader geographic region. Generally located between 30 and 43 degrees latitude North/South, Situated below the cool wet oceanic influenced climates of Pacific Northwest or Great Britain and Above the equatorial dry regions. Vegetation is very scrubby, short and seldom do trees grow above 50 feet. It’s perfect beach and bum weather.
For the last 100 years, the big cities and agriculture business have pulled water from the Colorado river, diverted other rivers, dug the Sierra Nevada mountains and sub surface wells and springs which have been tapped to accommodate domestic water consumption so LA County residents and suburbanites can have jungle plants in a xeric climate. Combine a drastic reduction in the natural ground water, the replacement of native vegetation with weedy, invasive (and oil rich plants like Eucalyptus) is a recipe for disaster. So the subsurface water has been depleted; California’s forests have lost significant ground water they often depend on for the summer season; soil moisture has heavily declined, the plants thus have little reserves so they dry up or die making them perfect kindling.
Add onto that, the federal and state government, 57% of the states forests owned by the feds. Both federal and state regulators were making it more and more difficult for loggers and forestry experts to do their jobs. As a result, timber industry employment gradually collapsed. Timber permits grew in cost, people who felled trees and planted them for a living looked for work elsewhere. Plus forestry workers who’d otherwise set prescribed fires or contract to extract dead wood (unlike wood in the Eastern US, they biodegrade at a much slower rate thanks to the dryness) Combustible fuel wood built and built to a level, that a catastrophic blaze was inevitable… California spends 10 times more money subsidizing electric cars than clearing flammable brush. California’s energy policy and air quality laws also played their part. Before, Wood waste like twigs, branches and leaves/needles unusable for timber were burned as a fuel source for electric power; Since it was a renewable resource, burning it for power seemed like the wise option but burning wood is cleaner than coal, it’s energy density is inferior and thus more had to be burned; wood is also not as clean as natural gas. Once prevalent in the state, when the state and feds started enforcing stricter air pollution laws burning wood in general became a huge wag of the finger. Also the state started subsidizing renewable power, namely solar and wind to the tune of billions, the artificially deflated solar power and wind power replaced wood burning plants as a source of electricity the demand for wood fuel collapsed. With no need to consume tree waste for fuel and the demand for timber satiated by imports, there was no demand to extract wood and the available fuel grew in volume, instead of burning safely in power plants the fuel now burns horribly in the wild. The policies enacted reduce the economic value of the forest to zero. And, with no intrinsic worth remaining, interest in maintaining the forest declined, and with it, financial resources to reduce the fuel load. And Now, it’s all burning up in one go.
But like I’ve said before the way we govern in the US requires a true crisis or disaster for people to care enough to act. So expect more houses and acres to burn until California decides what priorities are essential. Having Tesla’s on our highways or keeping houses from going up in smoke. I don’t know how much CO2 is saved driving a Tesla over a Toyota, but I can probably guess 10 million acres of wood going up in flames more than makes up for it.
Lazyreader,
I was just reading an article in the Verge, an unabashed proponent of all things liberal, about a scientific study from 2014 that admitted even widespread EV usage would essentially not change the emissions output of society. Bottom line is that cars emit a small portion of gases humans produce.
https://www.theverge.com/2014/1/23/5337326/electric-cars-gas-emissions-research
I don’t care about present Co2 emissions of cars vs electric cars.
I’m simply pointing out, sporadically humourously, Devastating Wildfires are the result mostly of human interactions and living in proximity of fire prone areas. Which have been exacerbated by several human induced factors
– the Diversion/depletion of rivers that feeds forests and grasslands, the depletion of underground water supplies that support arid vegetation during droughts
– the replacement of native vegetation with water sucking invasive varities
– the building of “FLAMMABLE” material homes in once dry regions with expectations that they’d never encounter a fire.
Jennifer Marlon, a scientist at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and colleagues, looked at charcoal accumulation in sedimentary rocks, among other data, to understand the impact of fires in the West over the past 3,000 years. The “lowest levels” of Western fires occurred in the 20th century and between 1400 and 1700, while prominent peaks in forest fires” took place between 950 and 1250 and during the 1800s, the paper found. The researchers add that the 21st century rate of burning “is not unusual” based on patterns over the past 3,000 years. based on this data, To sum it up; We’re in a fire deficit.
We suppressed fire for over a century and turned the forests of the US west into an insect infested, weed choked, firey tinder box…. The 1988 Yellowstone fire and the reintroduction of wolves, were the ultimate experiment that showcased nature doesn’t really need human chaperone constantly, just needs it’s elements to deal with. FIRE, has been a part of natural ecology of these regions for thousands of years. Nature recycles nutrients; it’s one of it’s more amazing abilities, a technique humanity has yet to figure out. It’s part of the regenerative ecology that keeps invasive weeds out of the ecosystem and recycles nutrients back into the soil that could not be obtained in other ways. In tropical or wet climates decomposition is a fast and easy process. In cooler or dryer climates decomposition is slow………..To aid that, nature has other ways of recycling it’s wastes, they burn it. And the resulting ashes dissolved in rain water seeps into the soil to feed the next generation. A fire also produces great volumes of ethylene gas, which as an organic plant hormone trips plants to ripen and bear seeds and fruit aiding in reproduction.