My home town is gone!

sneaky

"DADDY"
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There is so much shitty info about this fire. And starting to see it even in this thread..Most of the fire (about 98%) on the first couple days it blew up occurred on private land that has been intensely logged and in fact burned 10 years ago. To read comment sections you would think it was all old growth forest that was all beetle killed and sitting there waiting t to be logged but held up by environmentalists. That just isn’t true... of course now we learn that if we had just raked our leaves like they do in Finland this would not have occurred.


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I think the environmentalist comments were directed towards those who refuse to trim defensible space around homes. That's not something limited to CA or this fire in particular. Everyone wants to be tucked out of sight, but that adds a whole new set of challenges when things go south. Doesn't matter one damn bit where the fire started, that whole part of the state is one big tinder box from lack of rain. I had a conversation with an officer on Beale AFB that said they have had fires started from hawks flying into power lines and catching the grass on fire when they hit the ground. That's about as dry as it gets. This was just the nightmare scenario for a fire, and it unfortunately came true.

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OP
Huntindog45
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Mar 13, 2017
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Chico, California
A fart could have started a fire in the conditions we have right now.
Luckily we have rain coming...lucky for me anyway...I have a roof over my head.


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Joined
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3,951
I feel for everyone that was living there, what a hell of a thing to go through. I have been there and traveled through there numerous times. I am in So-Cal, and have looked into jobs in my field in that area, planning for a future move (I really need to get away from this city traffic and all the crap that comes with it). I'm confident they will rebuild. My only concern is that when they do, will Paradise still have the same charm. Don't get me wrong, the charm isn't just the buildings, but also the people. Considering the death and missing number, and that the entire town has been displaced, only time will tell.
 
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I grew up in Santa Rosa, live near by in Petaluma. My moms house burnt down last year as well as many of my friends parents homes. Most of the people I grew up with came out of the same suburb which all got leveled. I can totally understand the level of devastation, the pictures and news coverage does no justice.
 

tdhanses

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Sep 26, 2018
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I feel for the people affected by this fire but can’t believe CA politics isn’t part to play in this tragedy. Truthfully though our forests all over the west could use some help clearing out all the tinder just waiting to burn. I almost bought a property in CO that was burned in the spring creek fire, that burned 108,000 acres in 2 weeks pretty much. Our forest management policies across the west have left us at a point where we’ll see bad fires, thanks environmentalists.

Some of us almost missed out on hunting sw CO due to all the fires and had family at the ready to evacuate, just that area isn’t as populated, these issues don’t seem to hit the news when they affect small towns or less populated areas, didn’t see posts like this when others in the west lost their homes to fires this year of which many have.
 
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realunlucky

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I feel for the people affected by this fire but can’t believe CA politics isn’t part to play in this tragedy. Truthfully though our forests all over the west could use some help clearing out all the tinder just waiting to burn. I almost bought a property in CO that was burned in the spring creek fire, that burned 108,000 acres in 2 weeks pretty much. Our forest management policies across the west have left us at a point where we’ll see bad fires, thanks environmentalists.

Some of us almost missed out on hunting sw CO due to all the fires and had family at the ready to evacuate, just that area isn’t as populated, these issues don’t seem to hit the news when they affect small towns or less populated areas, didn’t see posts like this when others in the west lost their homes to fires this year of which many have.
Most of the brush in that country would need to cleared by hand who's going to fund that? You can blame whatever politics you want for the never ending drought conditions.


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sneaky

"DADDY"
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Most of the brush in that country would need to cleared by hand who's going to fund that? You can blame whatever politics you want for the never ending drought conditions.


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Gov Brown declared the drought over in 2017 and took away a lot of the funding for those kinds of projects... just a thought. I will say that I haven't seen a lot of houses in that part of the state that have a lot of cleared space around them. Probably would have been a moot point with this fire and the winds that fueled the maelstrom.

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Broomd

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There is so much shitty info about this fire. And starting to see it even in this thread..Most of the fire (about 98%) on the first couple days it blew up occurred on private land that has been intensely logged and in fact burned 10 years ago. To read comment sections you would think it was all old growth forest that was all beetle killed and sitting there waiting t to be logged but held up by environmentalists. That just isn’t true... of course now we learn that if we had just raked our leaves like they do in Finland this would not have occurred.


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This is an absolute tragedy, but the truth is that many of the places we see vaporizing in the West have been completely neglected with regards to forest management. The Frank Church comes to mind. There will be time in CA to point fingers, but until we start eliminating the excess 'fuel' with controlled burns, breaks, and logging, these fires will be the new norm.
 

tdhanses

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This is an absolute tragedy, but the truth is that many of the places we see vaporizing in the West have been completely neglected with regards to forest management. The Frank Church comes to mind. There will be time in CA to point fingers, but until we start eliminating the excess 'fuel' with controlled burns, breaks, and logging, these fires will be the new norm.

I agree and much of the west is a huge tinder box just waiting to burn, something has to be changed. There seems to never be funding yet we have paid billions after the fires have burned. I think I saw just in CA the last few years the feds have paid out 6 billion to the state, I could be wrong and not sure of the time frame but that’s crazy to me.
 

Beendare

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Prescribed burns HAVE been held up by environmentalists in CA...and that is a fact. They argue "Air Quality"

Some of the worst areas for potential fire ARE the areas that have burned prior....a 10 yr accumulation of dry brush is a tinderbox waiting to happen.

This type of thing is a perfect example of the extreme view getting in the way of common sense....all too common in US politics...ESPECIALLY California. A compromise solution is almost always the best solution- in this case utilizing prescribed burns.

Get ready for more stupidity from CA with this douchebag Newsome as gov, the former mayor of that turned SF into a pit due to liberal ideology.
 

Trogon

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CO
I lived for many years in Chico and Grass Valley. Beautiful country around there. People that dis of California have no idea how wild and lonesome the NE corner of the state is. People can say whatever they want about CA politics, but there are good people living there all the same.

Seems like yesterday you guys were getting so much rain they were evacuating Marysville and Yuba City. Now this. I wish you all a speedy recovery.
 

tdhanses

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I lived for many years in Chico and Grass Valley. Beautiful country around there. People that dis of California have no idea how wild and lonesome the NE corner of the state is. People can say whatever they want about CA politics, but there are good people living there all the same.

Seems like yesterday you guys were getting so much rain they were evacuating Marysville and Yuba City. Now this. I wish you all a speedy recovery.

I don’t think anyone is saying anything about the people affected by the fires but the people overall in CA elected these far left extremists as their leaders and this is partly due to their decisions. If the people of CA would vote for more common sense and not the sky is falling politicians then this entire fire situation could have been mitigated.
 

Trogon

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I don’t think anyone is saying anything about the people affected by the fires but the people overall in CA elected these far left extremists as their leaders and this is partly due to their decisions.

It wasn't here, but I have seen a lot of things lately like "Good, those commie's from California deserve this!" and such.
 

Loco4dux

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Dec 24, 2015
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It wasn't here, but I have seen a lot of things lately like "Good, those commie's from California deserve this!" and such.

After the way we were treated in Idaho this year when they saw my plates, this doesn't surprise me.

I went to Chico State...... Thoughts and prayers to the folks in Paradise and surrounding areas.
 

sneaky

"DADDY"
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After the way we were treated in Idaho this year when they saw my plates, this doesn't surprise me.

I went to Chico State...... Thoughts and prayers to the folks in Paradise and surrounding areas.
Unfortunately they do that with any out of state plates. I'll leave it at that.

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kicker338

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post falls idaho
I agree and much of the west is a huge tinder box just waiting to burn, something has to be changed. There seems to never be funding yet we have paid billions after the fires have burned. I think I saw just in CA the last few years the feds have paid out 6 billion to the state, I could be wrong and not sure of the time frame but that’s crazy to me.

Similar situation here in Nth. Idaho, thay the farmers used to burn the grass fields each fall, huge clouds of smoke but gone in an hr. People from Sandpoint Id. complained of all things about their view of the mountians being blocked for a few hrs.

Forrest service logged one of my hunting areas a few yrs. ago and controlled burns the following fall. I had a chance to talk to the person in charge of the burning and they told me that if they had their way, there would be a lot more controlled burns but got their hands tied at every turn.
 
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I relocate nationwide for 3-12 month long construction projects. I've spent roughly 5 of the past 9 years in various parts of CA. One thing that this lifestyle has taught me is that you can't assume what type of person you'll run into based on the state you are in. CA is just like almost every other state, the big cities vote blue and more rural areas vote red. It's surprising how often people have made comments like "I don't know how you can live there, I could never, crazy commies".. Uh, I live in a little mountain town full of rednecks, ranchers, and construction workers. Yeah, it sucks I can't bring some of my AR's and pistols but there are much better public land shooting opportunities where I can ring steel from a long ways than there are in my home state of MN. There were 4.4 million people that voted for Trump in CA, 400k in Idaho, 280k in MT, yet people will have dumb ass thoughts about CA "deserving it" for their politics.

Most frustrating is how hungry certain people are to feed their hate and seemingly focus directly on finding a way to use this mess as a way to try to validate their political identity. Left wants to crucify the right for their eagerness to ignore climate change, right wants to crucify left for their overboard natural resource management. Maybe if people would think for themselves they could see that both sides have a point and there were other non-political factors at play as well.
 
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