California: No Money, No Fire!
In July 2008, while touring wildfires in N. California, the Governator declared:
“There is no more fire season as we know it — the fire season is now all year-round.”
“That means that we don’t have enough resources.” Added Mr Schwarzenegger.
He needn’t have worried! As it transpires, and this blog has always maintained, Calif wildfires are no ordinary fires; they are intelligent fires. When the state runs out of money, seriously out of cash, the fires disappear—or at least the firebugs do!
It’s pretty curios this relationship between the state bank account (including its ability to borrow) and the intensity of fire!
“Lucky” [Luciano?]
The Mercury News called it “lucky.”
“The economy struggled, unemployment was sky-high and swine flu raged across the landscape. But California actually got lucky in 2009 in one big area: fires.” They said.
But instead of putting two and two together…
“Despite enduring a third year of drought and some major blazes in Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties, California experienced a surprisingly mild wildfire year last year, according to final tallies this week by the state’s leading fire fighting agencies.”
If only the Internet mafia didn’t filter, block and bury about 98 percent of the critical information and analysis posted on this blog, perhaps Mercury News would have been all the wiser.
The final Toll:
Total acreage charred in 2009 was 402,181 (on lands under Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service watch) . [Cf, 1.3 million acres consumed by fires in 2008. Also wildfire destroyed 490 structures in 2009, down from 2,219 in 2008. ]
They have gone as asserting reasons: “The reason: the weather. There was less dry lightning, fewer bursts of Santa Ana winds, and generally cooler summer temperatures than normal.”
Mercury quoted Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services in Saratoga as saying: “Some years are just luckier than others. It’s like going to the craps tables. A lot of this is the luck of the draw.”
Aha, so it’s to do with Las Vegas science.
It was the best fire year since 2005, with little more than half as many acres burning as the state’s annual average of 711,060 acres over the prior five years.
“Our expectations were for another big fire season,” said Jason Kirchner, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service in Vallejo. “We’re in a drought and we had a lot of dry conditions out there.”
“A lot of people thought that was going to set the tone for the season,” said Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant. “But as the season continued, we didn’t have the same large growth of fires that we were seeing in other years.”
The fact is, as the fire season was about to continue, the State ran out of money!
Related Links:
Fire Earth 