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tomf
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Kids lit fire destroying beautiful area

I am devastated one of the most beautiful places in the world has been burnt. P Some kids one a 15 year old were playing with fireworks on one of the trails in the woods and started a fire that in a few days has grown to over 33,000 acres of the most beautiful scenery you have ever seen. I have posted photos of this area here, ones with waterfalls and the Columbia River.
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tomf
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What we lost. This is not far from our home.
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applestar
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Oh.... what a shame. :(

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One consolation is that it will grow back. Forests are resilient.

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I was going to say something similar. it will grow back. and will be beautiful again. I know forest fires can be devastating, but even a burnt forest retains some beauty.

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I am so sorry. I've enjoyed your photos of the area.

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tomf
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jeff84 wrote:I was going to say something similar. it will grow back. and will be beautiful again. I know forest fires can be devastating, but even a burnt forest retains some beauty.
It will take many years to grow back, and the steep hillsides that were held by the trees and growth will slide; I may never see it like it was. They so far have saved most of the historical buildings. Many people have been evacuated and their homes and animals are in danger. The fair grounds are taking horses and livestock. Pets are being sheltered at places, as are people. I fear homes and animals will be lost. The fire the kids started also stranded 150 hikers over night; they did get them out with out any being killed. The kids were tossing firecrackers and smoke bombs into the woods on a steep trail and videoing it with their cell phones, laughing. They showed no remorse when confronted by people on the trail or stopped by the police.

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Well Tom, there's no way to justify what these kids did, but it's not something that has only cropped up the past few years. Kids will do stupid things, and have been doing stupid things for eons and will likely do stupid things till the end of time. There's not much thought that goes into the consequences of their actions. I know as a kid I did stuff that makes me cringe when I think about it and luckily I didn't seriously hurt anyone or do extensive damage to any property.

I remember when my stepson was about 17 and still in high school and we were visiting his grandfather in the country. One of the rituals was to build a bonfire every night we were there and sit around it stargazing, BS'ing, having a few cocktails, kids roasting marshmallows, etc. Well, my stepson decides on the spur of the moment to run toward the bonfire and leap over it. We had a pile of wood at least 10 ft. around and 3 ft. high with the flames shooting a good 8-10 ft. in the air.

Dumbass did clear the pile but singed off his eyebrows and most of his hair. There were several cousins his age there that were roaring with laughter and cheering, and every adult was ready to grab the kid and try to shake some sense into his thick skull. Me, being his stepdad and a retired fireman went into a tirade about how stupid his actions were and how if by some chance he slipped and fell into that fire, how his life would have been profoundly changed----if he could have survived it. He never did that again.

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A heartbreak. As a teacher I fear for our younger generations. - Disconnected.
In the past few years it seems teens have taken a negative turn. They are entertainment addicts and are increasingly divorced from the natural world which makes it difficult for them to stand alone in choosing right from wrong. It's all about the rush. The bad one are much worse and the good are spectacular but increasingly rare. The middle or average kid is disappearing. I know every generation says something similar.

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It's not always kids. Stupid "adults" have started most wildfires around here in past years.

My sister and her husband are planning a vacation in the next couple of days to Oregon, Washington, Montana and Idaho. They don't really watch the news so didn't know what's going on. I told them they might wanna postpone that trip for awhile.

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tomf
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webmaster wrote:One consolation is that it will grow back. Forests are resilient.
We have lost many trees well over 100 years old.

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Yeah Tom, it's not coming back in your lifetime or your kid's lifetime either to be where it was prior to the fire. Those areas do regrow if left alone, but not all trees are like pines and grow fast.

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We could put people to work cleaning underbrush

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tomf wrote:We could put people to work cleaning underbrush
I say put the kids that started all this mess to work after school and on weekends======and into the summer months when they have all that free time.

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tomf wrote:We could put people to work cleaning underbrush
Really sucks to see the Green Grace destroyed.

I have woods on three sides and have been working for years to decrease the fuel load on the ground... one of the reasons I have so much wood stuff slowing down my composting and why I am looking for ways to incorporate hugelkultur.

When I was a kid out in the westerns part of the state, there were always a couple of days the local volunteer fire dept would volunteer myself and a bunch of other kids for controlled burns in the local forest.

Forests and forest fires are normal things. Humans are the problem. They wont cooperate about getting the fuel load off the forest floor (pay for it nor do the work), let the fuel load build up to and extreme and then whine about the devastation of the forest fire.

It is no big secret that allowing small, low intensity brush fires to clear the dead underbrush and remove the slight buildup of fuel on the forest floor is actually good for the forest and isn't intense enough to harm the full grown trees. It is also one of the best ways to prevent large scale forest fires... take away the fuel load and the fire can't get hot enough to consume the healthy living trees.

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gumbo2176 wrote:
tomf wrote:We could put people to work cleaning underbrush
I say put the kids that started all this mess to work after school and on weekends======and into the summer months when they have all that free time.
Even if you could manage to get them out there, would they work? Could they work and actually accomplish anything productive?

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tomf
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Nothing the kids could do would make up for what they did, they knew they were being stupid and they laughed about it. I have no sympathy for them jail time is in order. Maybe they could be made to fight fires on the front lines like the brave men they put in danger doing such. As the law say starting a fire due to one's own fault the responsable party will have to pay for the cost of fighting it and damages the families of the kids that were under age will be bankrupt; at least the one that set the fire. People need to know and face the consequences of their actions.
Last edited by tomf on Wed Sep 13, 2017 9:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

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tomf
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Ksk wrote:A heartbreak. As a teacher I fear for our younger generations. - Disconnected.
In the past few years it seems teens have taken a negative turn. They are entertainment addicts and are increasingly divorced from the natural world which makes it difficult for them to stand alone in choosing right from wrong. It's all about the rush. The bad one are much worse and the good are spectacular but increasingly rare. The middle or average kid is disappearing. I know every generation says something similar.
Sad thing to see, as a teacher you would see it more than most of us.

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tomf
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ID jit wrote:
tomf wrote:We could put people to work cleaning underbrush
Really sucks to see the Green Grace destroyed.

I have woods on three sides and have been working for years to decrease the fuel load on the ground... one of the reasons I have so much wood stuff slowing down my composting and why I am looking for ways to incorporate hugelkultur.

When I was a kid out in the westerns part of the state, there were always a couple of days the local volunteer fire dept would volunteer myself and a bunch of other kids for controlled burns in the local forest.

Forests and forest fires are normal things. Humans are the problem. They wont cooperate about getting the fuel load off the forest floor (pay for it nor do the work), let the fuel load build up to and extreme and then whine about the devastation of the forest fire.

It is no big secret that allowing small, low intensity brush fires to clear the dead underbrush and remove the slight buildup of fuel on the forest floor is actually good for the forest and isn't intense enough to harm the full grown trees. It is also one of the best ways to prevent large scale forest fires... take away the fuel load and the fire can't get hot enough to consume the healthy living trees.

Good for you for helping out, we could use more people like you. I have been working cleaning a number of acres of underbrush and thick areas around our house, thinning trees and limb them up high to protect us if a fire did come through. Fuel build up is a big problem and winter burns when it is wet are a good thing to do, plus good forest practices like you and I have been doing is needed. One problem out West is it rains in the late fall to the spring but we have very little rain in the hot summer.

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tomf
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It is raining and I hope that helps, we have had our eyes burning and breathing smoke for weeks now. It started yesterday and it was one of the few days the air was not full of smoke, on some days the wind blew it away from us.

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ID jit wrote:
gumbo2176 wrote:
tomf wrote:We could put people to work cleaning underbrush
I say put the kids that started all this mess to work after school and on weekends======and into the summer months when they have all that free time.
Even if you could manage to get them out there, would they work? Could they work and actually accomplish anything productive?
If you make it under the conditions they have tasks to accomplish and until those tasks are completed, they will keep coming back until it is finished. Bottom line is, they need to be held accountable for their actions in some way----------and I'm not talking about mom and dad bailing their precious little darlings out of this mess.

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ID jit
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You are more of an optimist than I am.... "Show up and work until it is done."... Who is paying the baby sitters for the next 30-50 years?

If you gave them a bucket or mesh shoulder bag of saplings, that funky tree planting adz tool and told them 1 sapling every 10 feet, would they even comprehend it, even if you showed them what to do many times?

Slam adz into soil, pull back, drop sapling in gap, step just short of the sapling and push the soil back against the sapling, take 3 more steps and repeat.

Am pretty sure they would spend the next 30 - 50 years searching their phones because there has to be an app for that.

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Fire is good for the forest it is natures way of getting rid of the old to make room for the new. Lightning is natures way of starting fires. When lightning starts a fire no one gets arrested. When people start the fire they get arrested, that is stupid fire is good for the land.

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Gary350 wrote:Fire is good for the forest it is natures way of getting rid of the old to make room for the new. Lightning is natures way of starting fires. When lightning starts a fire no one gets arrested. When people start the fire they get arrested, that is stupid fire is good for the land.

I can't agree with your logic? here. Sure, lightning and other events occur in nature to start forest fires, but this was not the case. It was kids playing with fireworks on wooded paths and not giving a damn about the consequences. According to the OP, over 33,000 acres were affected, so just how much manpower and man hours do you suppose it took to fight this massive a fire? How much equipment had to be used and who is going to pay for this endeavor? How many people's lives were interrupted with having to evacuate and who is going to absorb that cost?

Bottom line for me is, these kids shouldn't get a free pass for their misdeeds. At age 15, I would believe these kids had to know the potential consequences of their actions, but did it anyway.

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Now that the rains are here they are worried about landslides.

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tomf wrote:Now that the rains are here they are worried about landslides.
Yep, the domino effect. Take away the brush, grasses and trees and have the ground exposed to the elements and watch it wash away in heavy rainfalls.

I was looking at some land many years ago in Southern Mississippi and came upon some 10 acre tracts for $400 an acre. This was a great price and the land looked beautiful with plenty of pines mixed in with some hardwoods and it was both hilly and flat in spots. The only problem was, it was paper company land and they wanted to retain the timber rights for a couple years after purchasing, thus the $400 an acre price.

I passed and was glad I did. I went back to that area about a year later and the land looked like a scene from a WWII movie with all the trees gone, huge brush piles stacked up and erosion on a level that was nothing short of a crying shame. I'm not sure if the paper company went back in there to burn the brush piles and plant saplings, but that land had lost all its value in my books.

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There is a place in southeastern Maine, I think, called The Desert of Maine. Maybe a century ago, a Mainer was angry with his town policies or costs or whatever. He had some acreage, but the location of the house was relevant to whatever it was all about. He got a few teams of oxen or one longshoreman, and pulled the entire structure across the land, ripping up meadow, cutting off young trees, flattening out shrubs, and incidentally scraping off the top soil. Hence the Desert of Maine. It continues to be barren land.

I'm sure this has happened in lots of localities, sometimes with natural events and sometimes manmade. Despite all the feel good images of volcanic islets showing birds nesting and tufts of emerald green grasses, it can take longer than our lifetimes to restore a natural ecosystem once we've destroyed the topsoil. Despite all the work we as individuals do to enrich the soil, there are so many more that believe in denuding it.

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thanrose wrote:There is a place in southeastern Maine, I think, called The Desert of Maine. Maybe a century ago, a Mainer was angry with his town policies or costs or whatever. He had some acreage, but the location of the house was relevant to whatever it was all about. He got a few teams of oxen or one longshoreman, and pulled the entire structure across the land, ripping up meadow, cutting off young trees, flattening out shrubs, and incidentally scraping off the top soil. Hence the Desert of Maine. It continues to be barren land.

I'm sure this has happened in lots of localities, sometimes with natural events and sometimes manmade. Despite all the feel good images of volcanic islets showing birds nesting and tufts of emerald green grasses, it can take longer than our lifetimes to restore a natural ecosystem once we've destroyed the topsoil. Despite all the work we as individuals do to enrich the soil, there are so many more that believe in denuding it.

Your story intrigued me enough to look it up on the net and it truly is a strange story, not quite like you related it, but definitely a lesson there to be learned. The family who originally bought the land did have a big hand in its demise however.

The land was bought by the Tuttle family in 1797 and they acquired 300 acres. Years of bad farming practices of not using crop rotation, overgrazing by cattle and then sheep who tore the grass out of the ground resulted in severe soil erosion.

The story says the first the spot that was denuded of topsoil allowed glacial silt to be exposed. This initial spot was no larger than a dinner plate, but over time it had spread to over 40 acres and had swallowed up farming equipment and out-buildings, thus rendering the land useless. The family held on to it until the early 1900's before selling it in 1919 to a man named Henry Goldrup who turned it into a tourist attraction several years later.

It goes on to say this is a precautionary tale of how bad farming practices can sometimes lead to desertification of once productive areas.

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The Dust Bowl was largely created by bad farming practices; they did not leave trees as a wind barrier and tore up the ground too much. When it turned dry the winds took away much of the soil.

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tomf wrote:The Dust Bowl was largely created by bad farming practices; they did not leave trees as a wind barrier and tore up the ground too much. When it turned dry the winds took away much of the soil.
Yep, the story about the Desert of Maine also mentioned the Dust Bowl and it even touched on some of the farming practices in California and how a prolonged drought could see some of those places face desertification if the conditions were right.



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