Cal FireStorms

mfrench

Addicted Member
Free ranging thread.

Starting out with,... Neil Youngs house burned to the ground. Hopefully all is well stored there, and all are ok.

I've been working extremely hard for years clearing brush getting ready for these events. But I still feel like I'm buried in chaparral brush.
Its pretty, and, its sketchy; its pretty sketchy.

To remove all of everything around here leaves you living on a moonscape. To actually try to remove it would take a bulldozer, and create huge brush piles. So, I've gone in and hollowed things out, removed as much dead material as possible. This has been at an almost obsessive level, going on for a long while now.

What eats at me the most, when the weather does this, is that we have a major conduit, in the form of I-15 just two miles or so to our east. This is the direction that the winds blow from. Between us and the freeway is two miles of chaparral brush that is seriously deep; can range to 50' deep in oak canyon areas, with a good average of 20' tall abundant immediately near.
I was just picking up burned to the filter cigarette butts from near our mailbox. This is in an area with abundant dead grasses, and now, large diameter bone dry tumbleweeds. A spark on one of those, in these winds, is like the devils bowling ball.
OK,... my road is a dead end road, without much traffic. Where did all of those dang butts come from?
Can all of those people driving the I-15 be trusted to not throw cig butts out the window?

OK,... so I spent the morning doing more fire fuel abatement removal, and watching the horizon, when I hear sirens getting louder. I was hoping that it was just the cops, seriously. But no, it was a series of those bulldog-style stubby yet massive wild land fire fighting trucks rolling down th road to town, and, one after the other, sirens and lights blazing.
This, just a mile or so from us, and just this afternoon,... and where they were heading., It is downwind from us.
https://www.villagenews.com/photos/big/54577/12
 
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If you dont have Fire Insurance coverage,get it. I live in the desert but I keep my yard watered and free of dead vegetation. Be vigilant.
 
I've got hillside behind me with large oaks. Brush clearance is an annual event for me. I have a street pressure water line installed in my backyard. That's 90 psi from a one inch line. I have a fighting chance.
 
Thanks, Rich. We'll be fine.

I've been working on a project that is partly related to this fire fuel abatement endeavor.
We had to have a gigantic Eucalyptus tree cut down to a stump several months ago. The tree had taken a lot of hits in its life, and finally succumbed to an internal rot in the trunk, and a non-native bark beetle invasion.
The tree was 150'+ tall, and at least a hundred years old, and browned out, but, just recently dead, and full of dead leaves.
They cut it down, and, the trunk is really broad across. So I had them cut it flat, horizontally, and, with the trunk tall enough to create a planter out of. I then chainsawed out the internal rot areas, just this past weekend, and hollowed it out to clean wood, and to a depth of 20" I cut holes into the sides to pass plants thru, and also cut thru natural knot holes, and, planted the trunk with succulents and various cactus-like plants that grown on zero water.
I also peeled back the bark to the raw base of the trunk, and found a layer in it that revealed a very serious burn that happened here long enough ago that it had totally healed and skinned over the burn with new bark growth. It was not apparent at all from the outside, until I started peeling bark.
When we got here, in part of my fuel abatement effort, I removed a few burned off lime tree trunks, and native shrub stumps from a fire here in 2007. That year, our town nearly became what Paradise has become.

come on rain! this sort of excitement sucks.
 
This past weekend was my daughter's engagement party. Her fiance' recently became a San Diego area fireman. He got called for a strike team Thursday night. Our daughter had to fly up to attend the festivities while he worked. He's still on duty at the Woolsey fire.
 
Germany's most popular tv moderator Thomas Gottschalk lives in Malibu and he is the neighbour of Miley Cyrus. Last year he sold his guesthouse to Miley. Thomas lost his 12 million $ villa and Miley's property is destroyed as well. However he said that there are things in life that are much worse than losing a house.

My thoughts are with all the people who lost their beloved ones.

The picture shows Thomas hosting Miley in his tv show.

99.jpg
 
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[...] come on rain! this sort of excitement sucks.

Wishing you some of the rain we've had here that we don't really need more of. I think August (!), September and October have been the wettest months we've had since records have been kept and having any sort of rain here in August is almost unheard of.
This spring I bought a new glass cylinder rain gauge for my little weather station out back and bought an 8" cylinder instead of a 5" because we can get a 5"+ rain easily. There are places in my back yard that haven't dried out in well over a year.
Mike, if I could send you some of our rain I gladly would and we would never miss it here.
 
This is a new planter that I just built, I guess inspired by these fires.
We had an ancient Eucalyptus tree in our yard (not sure what type). It was giant, at least 150' tall, according to our tree specialist friend. It had had a rough life, and, finally succumbed to a case of a bark beetle invasion, and, as it turns out, a bad case of internal rot. So, we had it taken down. Just getting it down was alll we could afford, and a stump grinding was actually mmore, due to its location, and difficulty.
So, I asked that it be stumped flat across the top, and, above a certain knothole that had skinned over.
My thought, another stump planter (my third or fourth here like this). This all played out 6 to 9 months ago.
flash forward to a few days ago,....
It just so happens that the day that I decided to create this planter was the day that the winds started blowing, and, the Malibu/Ventura Thousand Oaks fire started burning.
The winds that day were not that hard, at first, and, it was the first day of them. I had already started into my chainsaw work, and found the wind to be refreshing in drying off the sweat, and for blowing away the rot dust that was being churned up by the chainsaw.

By the time I was done chainsawing, the wind was blowing a whole different level of hard, feeling like a desert wind, and word was out about the Red Flag Warnings.
My chainsaw work was done. The resulting hole was 20" deep, and amounted to three whole wheel barrows full of soil to be hauled up by buckets.

DSCN5599.jpg

Sarge, the spousal unit, has long commented on how this plant, the tall vertical one, looks like fire rising up from the ground.
And, in fact, its common name is Stick of Fire (or something close to this). When the sun gets to cooking hot this next summer, it will turn all forms of shades of flames; just intensely colored and beautiful.
I also planted an Agave (aloe?) along the base of it, in the planter, that Sarge calls the CampFire Agave, because it looks like a campfire burning.

DSCN5625.jpg DSCN5626.jpg DSCN5628.jpg DSCN5629.jpg

I peeled the bark back to reveal the base wood, which has a neat lacy-like effect, and to get rid of all of the insects living in it. In doing so, it reveaed that the tree had been in a fire at one point in its existence, and, had lived thru it, and self-repaired the damage and had grown new bark over the burn. That area of bark was held firm, and was insect free. The loose bark that peeled easily was full of insects, had not been effected by that past fire.

So, this is the Fire on the Mountain planter, inspired by the Cal Fires of 2018
 
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Aside from the devastating flames, the air quality has become unhealthy and affecting most of the state. In some areas it's at the highest level of Hazardous.

I feel helpless. The best I can do is donate, send prayers and best wishes to all my friends and folks who need help.
 
Our thoughts and prayers are with all on the west coast that are experiencing the wildfires.

Last I remember...and it's been while!...the "Firewise" recommendation was to have all vegatation within 40 feet of a dwelling cut back/removed ...but that may not be enough for the intensity of the fires in Ncal, if they can jump a highway...

We have not had that intensity of fire here in Massachusetts since the late '70's/'80's on Cape Cod...there was similar on Long Island in NY...and in NJ in what is called (at least in the fire service) "the Pine Barrens."
 
Agave 007.jpg Agave 006.jpg Agave 008.jpgTop pic: Blue Agave
Middle pic: Variegated Agave. Bottom pic: Spiny Agave:D
Unfortunately in my neck of the woods I can only grow these in pots and they cannot survive outdoors in the winter but believe me, come spring to the patio and front porch they go!
 
I had this installed a couple of years ago.

gXoIAgy.jpg


ZMaJC48.jpg
 
MFrench, your creation is plant poetry with our times on fire. Fire on the Mountain indeed. I commute through the Bay Area every day, the smoke has been so thick it's like a constant apocalyptic fog.

Thanks for sharing
 
This is a new planter that I just built, I guess inspired by these fires.
We had an ancient Eucalyptus tree in our yard (not sure what type). It was giant, at least 150' tall, according to our tree specialist friend. It had had a rough life, and, finally succumbed to a case of a bark beetle invasion, and, as it turns out, a bad case of internal rot. So, we had it taken down. Just getting it down was alll we could afford, and a stump grinding was actually mmore, due to its location, and difficulty.
So, I asked that it be stumped flat across the top, and, above a certain knothole that had skinned over.
My thought, another stump planter (my third or fourth here like this). This all played out 6 to 9 months ago.
flash forward to a few days ago,....
It just so happens that the day that I decided to create this planter was the day that the winds started blowing, and, the Malibu/Ventura Thousand Oaks fire started burning.
The winds that day were not that hard, at first, and, it was the first day of them. I had already started into my chainsaw work, and found the wind to be refreshing in drying off the sweat, and for blowing away the rot dust that was being churned up by the chainsaw.

By the time I was done chainsawing, the wind was blowing a whole different level of hard, feeling like a desert wind, and word was out about the Red Flag Warnings.
My chainsaw work was done. The resulting hole was 20" deep, and amounted to three whole wheel barrows full of soil to be hauled up by buckets.

View attachment 1331381

Sarge, the spousal unit, has long commented on how this plant, the tall vertical one, looks like fire rising up from the ground.
And, in fact, its common name is Stick of Fire (or something close to this). When the sun gets to cooking hot this next summer, it will turn all forms of shades of flames; just intensely colored and beautiful.
I also planted an Agave (aloe?) along the base of it, in the planter, that Sarge calls the CampFire Agave, because it looks like a campfire burning.

View attachment 1331388 View attachment 1331389 View attachment 1331390 View attachment 1331391

I peeled the bark back to reveal the base wood, which has a neat lacy-like effect, and to get rid of all of the insects living in it. In doing so, it reveaed that the tree had been in a fire at one point in its existence, and, had lived thru it, and self-repaired the damage and had grown new bark over the burn. That area of bark was held firm, and was insect free. The loose bark that peeled easily was full of insects, had not been effected by that past fire.

So, this is the Fire on the Mountain planter, inspired by the Cal Fires of 2018
Careful with that "stick of fire" pencil cactus.
The sap is extremely painful if it finds its way to your eyes.
I spent some time in the emergency room while getting my eyes flushed.
A horrible experience.
 
I've lived in Southern California for quite some time.
The area is arid and subject to drought.
I'm actually surprised if we don't experience a yearly maelstrom.
 
Cal fires in November have happened for as long as I can remember; totally normal. What gets me are the ones in April, May.
 
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