My uncle was in charge of a wildland fire battalion for almost 20 years in the mountains of Central Valley, CA. He has fought some of the largest wildfires in the country. Why do we have such big fires in the west? One reason is cyclical weather cycles. La Niña and El Niño cause us significant problems in our civilization, causing droughts and floods, which means that you have growth and the fuel that is burned when it dries up. We understand that many fires are started by lightning and occur naturally, but unfortunately some are man-made. These are for total negligence or related to arson. We’ve been through severe droughts before, as you can see, as well as years with too much water. If you’re interested, I’ve written a free 21-page online eBook on creating a neighborhood arson watch program in your area.
http://www.lancewinslow.org/arsonwatch.pdf
2005 appears to be a troublesome year for such wildfires, so we must be diligent. Did you know that up to 20,000 small wildfires each year occur this way? Most are quickly caught and it is a fact of nature.
The early voyages of Spanish explorers noted in the log books the many wildfires along the California coast. There are indigenous plants that require fire to help them reproduce and spread their seeds. As the forest service reduces the number of roads each year due to environmental lobbyists, these fires are getting harder to fight. President Bush recently reversed this problem, but the roads won’t be built in time to help with the 2005 or 2006 fire seasons. And if the brush doesn’t thin out for years because the logging industry doesn’t harvest old trees or fires communities near forest areas will have no rest from the danger. This fact tends to make big fires even bigger and almost invincible. This makes the forests and lands controlled by USDAFS extremely vulnerable to this natural disaster.
Once a fire is out of control, it can burn without any additional heat or wind, creating its own fire. Having built our business model at my company for the last 25 years in harsh and sometimes extreme fire risk areas, we have come to understand that our little yellow mobile car wash trucks that drive all day can be used for other things when needed. Our team says, “when the going gets tough, we’ll be there for the community.” If we can put out or help control a small wildfire until the real fire department or forest service arrives, we will be more than happy to do so, in fact we feel it is our duty as Americans. Over the years this has happened several times and we are quick to help.
http://www.carwashguys.com/history/museum139.shtml
http://www.carwashguys.com/history/museum230.shtml
However, after putting out or at least slowing down the fire in its early stages, we thought it would be much better if we could help deter man-made fires through conspicuous observation in an Arson Watch Program. These fires can dispossess those who live near such areas, as well as well-preserved land reserved for public use and future generations. Although small efforts in our humble beginnings show that we have always cared about people, property, wildlife and public lands. I know all the small businesses because of your community and want to help, maybe you can volunteer to set up an arson watch program in your area. We have been designing this type of programs for governments for more than a decade. It seems that our drought problems are in fact related to climate change, which is perhaps a completely natural cycle and only partly a factor in the pollution of humanity, but whatever happens, we are going to have to deal with these problems. . These droughts will continue, and as our population grows and uses more water, they will seem to get worse.
It is more serious than you imagine. We discussed this information with a Los Alamos scientist who said that Santa Fe/Albuquerque was preparing for a 23-year drought and they were discussing ways to mitigate it and the possibility of fires and running out of water if they try to fight them. . This happened in CA in 1993 when they ran out of water and didn’t have enough water flow to put out fires that were raging in seven counties simultaneously.
We are in the car wash business and the car wash industry is pretty concerned and a lot of us in the industry know it. But we are not the only industry severely affected, it extends through any industry that needs water, think about it; Golf courses, agriculture, manufacturing, hydroelectric power generation, fishing are also severely affected and if it hurts those industries, it hurts all of us. We need water like you. Droughts are severe, fires are most intense when the land is dry, and we must be proactive in preventing arson and putting out fires that endanger human life as quickly as possible; Think about it.