MAGA: Today, President Donald J. Trump made additional disaster assistance available to the State of California by authorizing an increase in the level of Federal funding for debris removal and emergency protective measures undertaken in the State of California as a result of wildfires beginning August 14, 2020, and continuing. Under the President’s major disaster declaration issued for the State of California on August 22, 2020, Federal funding was made available for Public Assistance, Hazard Mitigation, and Other Needs Assistance at 75 percent of the total eligible costs. Today, President Trump authorized a 100 percent Federal cost share for debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, for a continuous period of 30 days established by the State of California.
Orange scum is gonna scum https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/15/politics/trump-california-fire-disaster-assistance/index.html Trump administration rejects California's disaster assistance request for wildfires (CNN)The Trump administration has rejected California's request for a disaster declaration for six destructive wildfires that burned hundreds of thousands of acres across the state, including a massive central California wildfire that has become the single largest in state history. "The request for a Major Presidential Disaster Declaration for early September fires has been denied by the federal administration," Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, confirmed to CNN. The state plans to appeal the decision. The denial comes after California Gov. Gavin Newsom requested financial aid from the federal government in a September 28 letter to the Trump administration outlining the financial impact of the wildfires. Writing that infrastructure damage estimates exceeded $229 million, Newsom asserted that "federal assistance is critical to support physical and economic recovery of California and its communities." https://www.latimes.com/california/...p-administration-blocks-wildfire-relief-funds The Trump administration has rejected California’s request for disaster relief funds aimed at cleaning up the damage from six recent fires across the state, including Los Angeles County’s Bobcat fire, San Bernardino County’s El Dorado fire, and the Creek fire, one of the largest that continues to burn in Fresno and Madera counties. The decision came late Wednesday or early Thursday when the administration denied a request from Gov. Gavin Newsom for a major presidential disaster declaration, said Brian Ferguson, deputy director of crisis communication and media relations for the governor’s Office of Emergency Services. Ferguson could not provide a reason for the federal government’s denial. President Trump has threatened to withhold federal dollars in aid before, including in 2019 unless state officials “get their act together, which is unlikely.”
Bottom line: California needs to properly deal with its forest management issues. For years they have refused to do proper forest management -- only recently signing an agreement to perform joint forest management with the Feds after rejecting it for decades. Even the California state documents outline the terrible job they have done with forest management in recent years and the likelihood of wide-spread forest fires as the result. Certainly the Trump administration's refusal to provide disaster assistance so close to an election is related to politics --- but it should also serve to underline that California needs to get its forest management act together. Trump administration rejects California's disaster assistance request for wildfires https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/15/politics/trump-california-fire-disaster-assistance/index.html The Trump administration has rejected California's request for a disaster declaration for six destructive wildfires that burned hundreds of thousands of acres across the state, including a massive central California wildfire that has become the single largest in state history. "The request for a Major Presidential Disaster Declaration for early September fires has been denied by the federal administration," Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, confirmed to CNN. The state plans to appeal the decision. The denial comes after California Gov. Gavin Newsom requested financial aid from the federal government in a September 28 letter to the Trump administration outlining the financial impact of the wildfires. Writing that infrastructure damage estimates exceeded $229 million, Newsom asserted that "federal assistance is critical to support physical and economic recovery of California and its communities." "The longer it takes for California and its communities to recover, the more severe, devastating, and irreversible the economic impacts will be," he said. Recent fires included in the disaster declaration request were the Creek Fire, the largest wildfire in the state's history, which has scorched 341,722 acres across Fresno and Madera counties, the Bobcat Fire, which has burned 115,796 acres in Los Angeles County, and the El Dorado Fire, which was sparked by a gender reveal party in San Bernardino County over Labor Day weekend. The three other wildfires in the request were the Valley Fire in San Diego County, the Oak Fire in Mendocino County and the Slater Fire in Siskiyou County. The White House said California's request for a presidential major disaster declaration was rejected because it was "not supported by the relevant data." In a statement Friday, deputy press secretary Judd Deere highlighted other areas the federal government had provided assistance to California during its historic fire season. "This summer, President Trump quickly approved wildfire relief for the State of California that was supported by damage estimates. In fact, this week the President made additional disaster assistance available to California by authorizing an increase in the level of Federal funding to 100% for debris removal and emergency protective measures undertaken as a result of the wildfires, beginning August 14, 2020, and continuing," Deere wrote in a statement. "The more recent and separate California submission was not supported by the relevant data that States must provide for approval and the President concurred with the FEMA Administrator's recommendation," the statement read. The Federal Emergency Management Agency told CNN in a statement Friday that damage assessments "determined that the early September fires were not of such severity and magnitude to exceed the combined capabilities of the state, affected local governments, voluntary agencies and other responding federal agencies." "FEMA approved four Fire Management Assistance Grants in five counties for wildfires included in the state's disaster request, allowing reimbursement to state, local governments and other eligible agencies for 75 percent of firefighting, evacuation and sheltering costs," FEMA spokeswoman Lizzie Litzow said in the statement. Since the beginning of this fire season, more than 8,500 wildfires have burned well over 4.1 million acres across the state, Cal Fire said in a press release on Thursday. Thirty-one people died as a result of the wildfires and more than 9,200 structures have been destroyed. The Trump administration's decision falls in line with the President's combative history with the reliably Democratic state. During a visit last month, Trump refused to acknowledge the effects the climate crisis is having on California's forest fires and instead continued to highlight the need for better forest management to clear dead trees that can serve as fuel for the fires. When Wade Crowfoot, the secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency warned of the dangers of ignoring science and putting "our head in the sand and thinking that it's all about vegetation management," Trump responded by telling Crowfoot: "It'll start getting cooler. You just watch." "I wish science agreed with you," Crowfoot told him.
Proper Forest Management -- even as outlined by California's state government documents -- is the key to stopping large, uncontrollable forest fires in California.
Gonna need a bigger rake. Seriously, how the hell do you "clean up the underbrush" of millions of acres in a timely manner? You don't. You simply let these fires burn now, so in 20 years when a new one starts in the same area it doesn't rage as long, or spread as large, because fire is a natural process in nature.
Decades of mismanagement led to choked forests — now it's time to clear them out, fire experts say “Forest management is a lot like gardening. You have to keep the forest open and thin," said Mike Rogers, a former Angeles National Forest supervisor. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...d-choked-forests-now-it-s-time-clear-n1243599 The Western United States is enduring yet another devastating fire year, with more than 4.1 million acres already scorched in California alone, at least 31 people dead and hundreds of others forced to flee their homes. Wildland fires are increasingly following a now-familiar pattern: bigger, hotter and more destructive. A recent Los Angeles Times headline declaring 2020 to be “The worst fire season. Again” illustrated some of the frustration residents feel over the state’s fire strategy. For decades, federal, state and local agencies have prioritized fire suppression over prevention, pouring billions of dollars into hiring and training firefighters, buying and maintaining firefighting equipment and educating the public on fire safety. But as climate change continues to fuel dry conditions in the American West, many experts say it’s long past time to shift the focus back to managing healthy forests that can better withstand fire and add to a more sustainable future. “Fires have always been part of our ecosystem,” said Mike Rogers, a former Angeles National Forest supervisor and board member of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees. “Forest management is a lot like gardening. You have to keep the forest open and thin.” Federal forest management dates back to the 1870s, when Congress created an office within the U.S. Department of Agriculture tasked with assessing the quality and conditions of forests. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt oversaw the birth of the U.S. Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of public land across the country. In California, forest management also falls under the purview of the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire. Since 2011, Cal Fire has spent more than $600 million on fire prevention efforts and removed or felled nearly 2 million dead trees. In 2018, California set the goal of treating — which can include slashing, burning, sawing or thinning trees — 500,000 acres of wildland per year, yet Cal Fire remains far from meeting that target. “It’s an ongoing process,” said Cal Fire spokeswoman Christine McMorrow. “There is always going to be more work.” Cal Fire is steadily receiving injections of money to do what it can to reduce wildfire risk, including better land management and training a new generation of foresters. In 2018, former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that will allocate $1 billion over five years to Cal Fire to be used on fire prevention measures. But experts warn that more money is needed. “Is it enough? Well, it’s enough for what we’re doing right now, but is that enough to get all the work that needs to be done in one year or five years or 10 years? It’s going to a take lot,” McMorrow said. Long before the country’s founding, Spanish explorers documented wildland fires in California. In 1542, conquistador Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailed along the coast and noticed smoke billowing up from what is now known as the Los Angeles Basin. He called it “la baya de los fumos,” or “the bay of smoke.” Studies by archaeologists and historians support a theory that Cabrillo might have been witnessing an early form of land management, including the burning of shrubs and chaparral to clear dry brush and promote better conditions for hunting big game. Prescribed and controlled burns were integral to the American landscape for generations. In 1910, focus started to shift away from forest management and steer toward fire suppression after “The Big Burn” ravaged 3 million acres across Washington, Idaho and Montana, killing at least 85 people and reshaping U.S. fire policy for years to come. The U.S. Forest Service ordered that all wildland fires be extinguished as soon as possible, eventually settling on the so-called 10 a.m. policy, which emphasized suppressing fires by the morning after they started. The state’s policy to stop fires as soon as they ignite resulted in a backlog of trees in forests now choked with brush and other dry fuels. According to the U.S. Forest Service, one researcher studying the Stanislaus National Forest in Northern California found records from 1911 showing just 19 trees per acre in one section of the forest. More than a century later, the researcher and his team counted 260 trees per acre. With denser tree cover comes the danger of bigger fires, Rogers said. “We have more large trees per acre than we’ve ever had because they have continued to grow, and underneath these large trees are young shrubs that fuel fires in the crown of the trees,” he said. “When a fire starts in there, it’s unstoppable.” Drought, climate change and bark-beetle infestations have all contributed to the backlog of trees, leaving some experts to push for creative solutions to managing California’s crowded forests. One potential solution could be turning dead and diseased trees into biomass energy before they start massive wildfires. Jonathan Kusel founded the nonprofit research organization Sierra Institute for Community and Environment in 1993 in an effort to better understand how state and federal agencies could put leftover organic material to use. The institute is now working with federal and state partners on ways to supply wood chips made from low-value vegetation to biomass facilities that can then burn the organic matter to produce heat and electricity. Kusel estimates the process, when done correctly in confined barrels, is exponentially cleaner than relying on natural gas for energy. It also facilitates what Kusel calls “the appropriate thinning of forests,” or the clearing of smaller growth, to not only lower the risk of wildfires, but also to contribute to cleaner waterways and lower carbon emissions by promoting healthier forests. “We aren’t going to be successful if all we do is try to stop fire,” he said. “But we can make it less damaging … and we can try to introduce smaller fires that can maintain habitats in a healthy state.” But finding buyers for biomass remains a big question for the Sierra Institute. Biomass is considered a dirty word among environmentalists who warn that burning plant material and releasing it into the air can increase carbon emissions. Removing small growth from forests is also more expensive and not as economically attractive as focusing on large-growth removal that can be turned into timber, Kusel acknowledged. Still, as wildfires threaten to become bigger and more dangerous, Kusel is hopeful that a new locally based biomass market could offset the cost of thinning out the state’s forests by creating smaller, better-maintained facilities that do not release dangerous pollutants into the air. “Societally we have to think differently about our forests, but we have to invest and manage differently them, too,” he said. “We have to do better.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ion-acres-forests-help-prevent-wildfires.html Trump was RIGHT! California will spend $500 MILLION this year to thin its 33 million acres of forests to lessen the chance of wildfires - after former president was laughed at in 2018 for suggesting raking the woodland floor Groups of 12-person crews are combing the 33 million acres of California forests and cutting down trees to lessen the chance of wildfires During the 2020 California wildfires, 31 people died and another 37 suffered non-fatal injuries due to 9,639 fires spread across the Golden State Former US President Donald Trump had blamed the Cali's ongoing and deadly wildfire problem on the state's failure to clear its forests of dead trees and debris Trump ultimately ended up withholding government aid to California until they put the plan into practice, which recently began with cleanup crews statewide California will be using $500 million in government aid specifically to combat its deadly wildfire problem But Los Padres ForestWatch conservation director Bryant Baker warns that controlled burns threaten the native plant areas of SoCal’s national forests