So, a bit of what's been going on with me. Still in Ruidoso, today is day 9 of a 14 day assignment dropping trees in the scar of the little bear fire. Today I've dropped some of the biggest trees so far in my career one 4 feet across, the other 4,75 feet across. Otherwise been seeing a lot of deer and elk which is alway nice. Also, gotta love government houses, coming home to the smell of mouse poop because the garage is used by the biologists for their mice, the drains back up, all of them, amd there's no tv, Internet, or even anything on the walls. At least I brought my hotspot with me.
We did get an earful from a local at the gas station the other day, started out with "I'm glad you guys are happy with burning our forest down." we kinda had to back peddle and tell him we don't work here normally and we weren't even on the fire. He went on to bitching about how the fire has brought in all this industry to the town including people working on Sunday. I may not have an economics degree, but wouldn't bringing in industry be a good thing? Oh well, he also went on to saying how bad it is that 250 something homes were lost in the fire. While, yes, that is a bad thing, and I've gone to fires where homes were lost and I had to go house to house and asses the damage, I've even been a family to lose a house to a fire, so I've been there.
But what I'm willing to bet as with most houses that are lost to wild fires is that the homeowners thought, "oh there will never be a fire here it's always someplace else". With said attitude, they may have done nothing to protect their house form a fire, or anything to give the fire crews a fighting chance in hell to save it. Of course now, after the fire, people are probably outlasting saying that the government should have done something to protect their property before hand, which I also know from experience we try to do thinning project and fuel diction treatments to reduce the size and severity should a wildfire occur, but since it's public land, and everyone has a say, some one from Maine could say "I don't want the forest doing this there because it will take away shade", or even local people saying the same thing, but then a wildfire happens and the same people come out of the wood work and say "well the forest service should have done fuel reduction treatments and the fire wouldn't have been so bad". Thus basically we can't win, the general public as a whole are idiots some time, it's also those same people that go around protesting oil and yet wearing all gore-tex and oil based products driving huge gas guzzling vehicles.
Oh well, I apologize for the rant if you actually read thru it, but just following my favorite philosophers in the idea of speak your mind reguardless of what others may think.
We did get an earful from a local at the gas station the other day, started out with "I'm glad you guys are happy with burning our forest down." we kinda had to back peddle and tell him we don't work here normally and we weren't even on the fire. He went on to bitching about how the fire has brought in all this industry to the town including people working on Sunday. I may not have an economics degree, but wouldn't bringing in industry be a good thing? Oh well, he also went on to saying how bad it is that 250 something homes were lost in the fire. While, yes, that is a bad thing, and I've gone to fires where homes were lost and I had to go house to house and asses the damage, I've even been a family to lose a house to a fire, so I've been there.
But what I'm willing to bet as with most houses that are lost to wild fires is that the homeowners thought, "oh there will never be a fire here it's always someplace else". With said attitude, they may have done nothing to protect their house form a fire, or anything to give the fire crews a fighting chance in hell to save it. Of course now, after the fire, people are probably outlasting saying that the government should have done something to protect their property before hand, which I also know from experience we try to do thinning project and fuel diction treatments to reduce the size and severity should a wildfire occur, but since it's public land, and everyone has a say, some one from Maine could say "I don't want the forest doing this there because it will take away shade", or even local people saying the same thing, but then a wildfire happens and the same people come out of the wood work and say "well the forest service should have done fuel reduction treatments and the fire wouldn't have been so bad". Thus basically we can't win, the general public as a whole are idiots some time, it's also those same people that go around protesting oil and yet wearing all gore-tex and oil based products driving huge gas guzzling vehicles.
Oh well, I apologize for the rant if you actually read thru it, but just following my favorite philosophers in the idea of speak your mind reguardless of what others may think.
kay:
You are right. Protection and safety starts with the home owner, and they need to take responsibility for that. You cannot win. Damned if you do, and damned if you do not. 