In my line of work, we have investigators and crews sent out to scout origin. I know it sounds crazy to look for a lightning struck tree in what is essentially a continent sized forest but often times, we can find the exact tree/s in which a particular fire started from. What I'm saying is, they will find some of these origins. Also, fire can burn and smolder in root systems underground with little oxygen, for days. (just some extra info)
Drone Fire Fighting Night & Day -- Set up in a bucket brigade format from water source to fire line to continuously drop water on or in front of fire line. few thousand drones needed for operation.
Just saying: If you're a psychopath in a position of power looking to set a country on fire, saying "let's do a controlled burn since that will save us from a fire in the future" is the perfect cover to commit legal arson and call everyone who suspects you a conspiracy theorist that's too stupid to know how the world works instead of listening to -our- the experts.
Da Vinci, everyone is missing why wildfires are becoming more explosive, its simple physics and its called the ignition temperature, the warmer it get, the warmer the mass and the closer to its ignition point, which also means that it takes less radiant heat from the fires to cause ignition further away
Sorry but at the end of the video you talk about forest management, creating "roads" and breaks, cutting undergrowth and dead fall... I don't think you have any comprehension of the vastness of the forests you're talking about. You can drive for days, thousands of kilometers, along the most northern routes across Ontario and Quebec alone and you're still only seeing a tiny fraction of forest (what's visible from the road). Forest management is fine in small doses around where we live, but 99% of it is barely accessible and way too vast to manage. Do what we can to keep humans from making it worse and let nature run it's course.
My brother has been operating a caterpillar fighting forest fires for the past coupe of months. He has worked with Amercans, Aussies New Zealanders, etc. In order to save an area near Edson, they had to work a 35 hour shift, they had brought lunch, however due to the severity of the fire, roads were closed, and there was no way to get them additional food. We thank everyone from every where for their help in our battle!
Been there done that twice. A long as there is a safe place where the fire can't get to you being without drinking water is the worst. Hopefully everybody makes it home safe.
From Coastal BC, it’s been an extraordinarily dry summer and we still have months to go. It’s frightening watching the forests dry out as we have a couple more months with no rain forecast. A sincere Thanks to all the fire fighters! A side note is that often the burnt wood can be logged. My brother bought a piece of land after the fire went through the Kettle Valley and built his house and shop from the burned trees. Inside the wood was good. Surprisingly, some of the trees even revived despite looking like crispy telephone poles.
Commercial lumber mills don't like the burnt logs as they are really hard on their sawing equipment. There is an attachment that can be put on smaller portable sawmills that scrapes off the burned material where the saw runs. Can't remember the guys name, he lives in Oregon and he saws a lot of salvage logs on his TH-cam channel. Perhaps they will come up with a similar item for commercial mills.
And here's another 'conspiracy' fact: the retired Canadian firemen offered their services to the Canadian government and they received a NO, THANKS. What the hell is going on? Qui bono?
Canuck here, I think one really important fact that we forget and we should take advantage of is that the indigenous people had a good deal of experience, tending to areas and preventing serious fires from encroaching where they stayed. I think we have a lot of wisdom to learn from their techniques, history and elders.
had a conversation with an idiot. his family came on the mayflower.Sent to north america.Well he was not making some bodies daughter happy.i have to watch idiocracy the move.Before i start ending some idiots.ya sure free trip to visit the titanic. Is jimmy hofffa there
Yes 2nd and 3rd growth trees are just match sticks they are not fire or drought resistant like the old growth Forrest the Problem is Human stupidity in Forrestry
I live in eastern Ontario close to the Quebec border. One thing that fascinates me every year, is how rapidly we transition from winter to summer. This year for example, at the beginning of April we had an ice storm (very annoying) which caused a huge power failure and flooding. At the time I still had close to a foot of rapidly melting snow in my yard, a lot of mud patches, and a lot of bare tees. Less than 3 weeks later, we had summer-like temperatures, grass urgently in need of cutting, and trees covered in leaves. Fires cannot start until winter subsides and the forests are dry but, my point is, this happens over a very short period of time. This is undoubtedly caused by a quick movement of the jet stream, that people south of the border may not fully appreciate, and which gives the appearance of everything happening all at once.
@@ChrisZoomER I've noticed this in NZ too. the ground dries out so fast the stock don't get chance to even out the hoof pocked land before it does. It's very rough to walk on all summer.
I was born in the late 50s and live in central Canada. I remember spring and fall seasons being much more distinct, and longer lasting back in my youth.
The one thing that is overlooked is that fire firing equipment got better about 20 -40 years ago. Every time a fire starts it keeps getting put out faster and faster. From 10 to 40 years ago the amount of forest that we saved is greater than over 40 years ago. This means some areas have 40 years of undergrowth and combustibles built up that has never been there in recorded history. This is all extra fuel for the fires. The better our fire fighting equipment gets the more stuff collects at base of trees. Eventually no matter how Good our equipment gets we will loose against nature.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms This speaks to the need for a massive labor force out in the woods, bringing out usable lumber & clearing brush, doing small controlled burns, and not under profit motive. No one wants to "talk politics" but indie progressives have been calling for a WPA or CCC style work program since before the 2008 crisis put so many people out of jobs and carelessly wasted hundreds of thousands of homes to utility shutoffs & foreclosure. Extreme profit mongering has destroyed so much over the decades even as companies invent miracle tech. We need balance. Imagine a fraction of military spending put into firefighting, too. Then replanting. Spend now or burn more later.
I've been saying that for decades. We should be just letting mother nature do its thing. And concentrate our efforts into protecting property. Also ban the building of new structures in heavily forested areas.
I don't think most people reading this comment even get what exactly this means and how serious the problem is... It might look more like a joke to some, but it's basically true. The only thing is, that we've been breaking the nature way more than 40 years.
I think we could accomplish a lot of this could be improved by removing dead trees & thinning or removing dried & drying underbrush! Goats are very effective at clearing underbrush… Doing those will make firebreaks more effective at clearing underbrush!
I think the other issues that's a great concern is the reignition from fires that get into peat deposits underground. They can easily burn for months, and peat moss is common in Canadian boreal forests.
As a forester who worked in the woods and fought fires from time to time over 40 years, I saw fire size and duration grow. Fire ignition 40 years ago was 80% lightning caused. Now fire ignition is about 80% human caused. The largest factor is fuel built up then major changes in forest vegetative elements. These elements are often invasive grasses, brush and dense timber stands that carry fire. In Idaho, forests are out of balance in species distribution due to, " high grade", timber harvest going back for many years. For a variety of reasons quality forest management has lagged, (warning; the opinion of an old retired guy). Climate change has resulted in extended fire seasons in many forest eco-systems. I wish I could be more positive about the problems but I doubt that people are ready to do the hard and expensive things it will take to bring some balance to wildland fire management.
New research studying carbon shows forest fires were stronger and more damaging 200 yrs ago before there were fire reports and records, so this may be the worst year since records were kept, but it was much worse many years ago.
@@BrothaJeff I think there is a significant difference between “human caused” and “intentional”. I have no doubt that a bunch of these fires could have been caused by humans, but I would believe that it has more to do with negligence than intentional destruction. Many people in rural areas burn their brush in the spring. It accumulates over the winter as snow and ice break off branches and knock down trees. The spring is usually a good time to burn all of this debris. But people may not have been aware of just how dry it had been, and they may have started a small brush fire not knowing that it would grow out of control. That is not the same thing as intentionally starting these fires. I think if you’re going to claim intentionality then you better have some strong evidence to support that. I haven’t seen any of that evidence, only certain sources saying that a high percentage of these fires were caused by humans, which doesn’t give any indication that there was intention involved.
So, in my 20s and 30s, I was a firefighter here in California. After I started having issues with heat illness, I had to retire so I went back to school and became a biologist. That's my experience just for some context as to why I might have at least a little insight into these things. The problem is humans, not only that we accidentally and sometimes intentionally start fires, but that we have built our houses in the way of where fire would naturally burn every so often before there we came in and built our houses. Of course we can't just up and move away from anything that could catch on fire because, at some point, everything is flammable. So the best thing we can do is prevent fires from burning near our homes. We can do this by clearing out dead trees and dry brush from our house since the main way we put wild fires out in the fire department is by basically clearing out all the vegetation to a certain width depending on the height of the vegetation burning and the strength of the wind. If I'm remembering correctly, you clear a width of 1.5 times the height of the vegetation on the burning side of the line (or where you want to stop a fire if it's coming towards your house) and this is in calm winds. If you get strong winds and especially if you are clearing a space around your house, well wider is always better. If you do have trees on your property, don't just automatically cut them down to avoid them catching on fire unless they're dead. Do cut dead branches and low branches on the tree so that even if the grass in the area is on fire, it will probably go out before it gets hot enough to set your living tree on fire. Anyway, we put wild fires out by starting at the heel of the fire, which is where the fire started and build these fire lines on both sides of the fire, eventually performing a pincer maneuver to prevent the fire from continuing to spread since we've cut off all the new stuff to burn in front of it. Then, it goes out on its own but we also help it go out and make sure it's out using water or burying it with dirt. It is so hard to put a wild fire out because, as you can imagine, the fire can burn a lot faster than we can do a bunch of yard work in the way of clearing a fire line. This is why things like bulldozers help a lot. Then the air drops of retardant slow the spread of the fire to help us catch up and, at least in my experience, the water drops from smaller aircraft are to tamp down flames in the area so we can pass through, say, with more water for the engines on scene and that's why the fire department owns some water trucks because fire will start wherever it wants whether there's a hydrant nearby or not. This is also why the main way we put out wild fires is not with water but with containment. If you make a fire line around your house, it is much more likely to survive if and when a wild fire burns through the area and, when firefighters assigned to protect people's homes in the event of a fire burning towards them, if we see such a nice fire line, best believe we're going to park the engine in your driveway and fight the fire from there because it's the safest spot to do so. So, on the biological side, fire has been burning through since long before humans were around and there are quite a number of plants that actually benefit from fire burning through every so often. There are some pine trees that won't release their seeds unless the pine cones have caught fire. There are other plants whose seeds won't sprout until water that has passed through ash from a fire gets to them as a strategy to sprout when it is the least likely that another plant will be blocking their access to sunlight. Ash from fires also enriches the soil in an area with needed nutrients and it a natural way to clear out dead trees and other plants. One of the things that causes these unusually big fires, in addition to the fact that we're heating up our entire planet like crazy, is when there is a winter with an above average amount of rain so that lots of plants start growing only to dry out and die when the summer heat comes. This means there is more dry vegetation and at some point somewhere, it will eventually take a spark and start on fire. There's really not a realistic way to go through every part of wild land and clear all of it out, which is why it makes sense to clear it out near where people live and to have prescribed burns at times when it isn't very hot and it isn't windy. The people who light these fires have extensive training in what the safest way to light either a back fire or a controlled burn is and the vast majority of fire fighters are not authorized to light such fires. Prescribed burns are probably the most efficient way to get rid of a a lot of dead vegetation because it piles up and is therefore more likely to set the nearby trees on fire, which is when you get a really bad wild fire. Probably the only controlled burns that people hear about are the very few that get out of control and perhaps ones nearby one's house if one checks to see what's going on there. Lots and lots of these prescribed burns happen each year without a hitch. So that's what I know and I hope it helps people protect their homes as much as they can from the potential of a wild fire.
I think one of the hardest things about this is that a lot of the human caused fires could have legitimately been caused by people burning their brush in the spring. It usually isn’t an issue because the spring is still kind of cold and wet, but the hot and dry conditions means that these brush fires can easily get out of control. I think it’s so important to burn safely and have lots of water on hand in case things get out of control. I’ve literally had a small island I was camping on start burning out of control due to heat from our fire pit spreading out underground. It can happen very quickly, and it’s very difficult to put that genie back in the bottle once it starts burning.
I am in Alberta, this is the first video I have watched of yours. You have done a better job explaining this situation than ALL CANADIAN MEDIA!! THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU!! WONDERFUL JOB!! LOVE THE STATS!! Greetings from Canada🇨🇦
Environmental Scientist Here. I used to work for the Forest Service. You're pretty much spot on, only i would have added the concepts of Relative Humidity and Fuel Loads. As we continue to prevent wildfires from occurring, the fuel loads continue to increase. The taller the fuels, the more likely they will get into the canopy and thus evolving into a fire that will kill large legacy trees that would otherwise have survived. The perfect solution is to do bottom up thinnings (where you remove all of the smaller diameter, leaving most of the larger diameter), but they are expensive, and many fundamentalist environmental extremist groups use all sorts of legal tactics to prevent that (their view is to let it all burn). Also, congress was supposed to give the FS money to thin a lot of the plantations from the 60' 70' 80' 90's, but they didn't, so they grew too dense and are now density locked and ready to burn. It's a combination of bad management in the past with a total swing to the other side with inability to do bottom up thining (which is a monumental task, legal sabotage aside). Thus, enter controlled burns. Knowing that the ongoing accumulation of fuels is a ticking time bomb - eventually it WILL burn, and severely so - we attempt to introduce controlled fires in the shoulder seasons. Don't do it, and it will burn at some point in the middle of the season, or burn it now and hope that the weather doesn't screw up your plans. Yes, there is risk, but understand this: that land WILL HAVE BURNED eventually. So saying "they caused the fire" is nonsense. They are attempting to reduce fuel in a controlled manner so that firest don't rage uncontrolled after lighting storms in the middle of the fire season, where they would burn hotter and faster. And that brings me to the next concept. Relative Humidity (RH). That's what causes forest to burn. Humidity prevents fires. Dry air dries fuels -fast - making them suceptible to ignition sources. Yes, you need an ignition, but when you have low RH, you could fart and it would cause a forest fire, figuratively speaking. Enter Climate change, which exasterbates existing natural patterns so that they become more extreme and then you have lightning strikes and Human stupidity (fireworks, cigarrets, raging campfires, arson, etc) you now have a serious problem because of the extremely low RH. Plus a lot of fuels. And of course, this goes back to Climate Change. Yes, there are natural paterns at play, of course, but Climate Change has tipped the scales towards lower RH worldwide. I love that people that can't handle the reality of Climate Change come up with all sorts of excuses, but the reality the last 23 years have been the hottest 23 years in recorded history, EVEN CONSIDERING we had 3 consecutive la niñas. Dry winds with low RH can turn a forest that was recently rained on into a crisp in 2-4 days. I've seen it. It is incredible, it is dangerous, and it's the reason that so many fires started. Lighting with a high RH isn't a big deal. Even with lots of fuels. But low RH? it's like having a hair dryer on all the fuels. And the number one contributor to such low RHs is climate change, which makes extremes more extremes but in particular by increasing temperatures and thus lowing the RH more and more, and apparently, sometimes when things line up, incredibly early. So take off your tin hats, and get your N95 masks. in 2017 in my forest in Oregon i didn't see the sun the entire summer. The smoke will make you lethargic beyond belief. The maks are worth it. But after not seeing the sun all summer long, that's when i realized, oh snap, this is only going to keep getting worse. We're at an average of 422ppm of CO2 (up from 300ppm pre industry). Going up by 2.2ppm each year. And the amound of CO2 we are releasing from these forests is going to increase. It's like we don't give a f. That's not even getting into the absurd amounts of Methane stored in the permafrost; enough to increase Methane some 500+x. Mind mumbing numbers. We need to remove fuels. Fast. Bottom up thinnings work. You leave most of the largest trees and remove everything else. You then reintroduce fire on a 5 to 10 year rotation. or we just let everything roast, kill everything, and let it reset. I guess that works too. Irony is the "environmental fundamentalists" that don't let us do bottom up thinnings because "there are animals in there", ignore that "no-action alternative" leads to wildfires that will destroy everything. We can mitigate. Bottom up thinnings work. But whatever. The system is mostly dominated by politics and legalese, not science. So i guess we just let everything go to hell. That's part of why i left the FS. I loved the mission, but sadly politics dominates management, with groups lying to the public to get attention and thus funding, so they can continue their smear campaign and legal attack on every project, preventing or seriously delaying management. I didn't want to see the slow destruction of the forests i loved nor deal with the absolute legal-political nonsense.
Thing is we don’t have the same amount of legal challenges in Canada. We do have humongous forested areas in very thinly populated areas, and a very small population across the country. There are some groups trying to save old groves, but for 99% of the forest fires we are seeing, it is not at play. Most people understand that forest fires are part of life here, maybe not this intense tho. I know it’s the big “no no” for you but climate change is 100% at play here, and that is not political! It is 100% scientific. The only people who scream politics are those who don’t believe in it. If you see a gigantic train going towards you, you can deny its existence all you want but it will still kill you if you don’t move away from it.
@@yannirugby yet you yourself cherry pick "the science" (oh no , that abused phrase again). There are those of us who also read "The science" who fundamentally disagree with you! And politics, sadly, is a huge part of "the science", and those two bed mates aren't parting ways for the foreseeable future! You are guilty of the very myopia you accuse others of!
Every forest is different and requires people on the ground with an understanding and incentive to attempt to create sustainable forest conditions. Thinning from below in a stand with 100% dwarf mistletoe infection rate doesn't work. Having a mosaic of multi aged and multi species stands consisting of single, clusters, clumps and groups of trees interspersed with clearings, has the best chance of maintaining tree vitality, minimizing pathogenic insect outbreaks with a minimal risk of stand replacement during fire events in western North American dry inland forests. Except for aspen stands where hot stand replacing burns or clearcutting renew and invigorate.
Climit change is a hoxe. Oprah and JFK Jr. inventid it in 2000 to trick us into waring masks so that they can distract us and then we don't notice that there building a secrit base on the moon for the elites to hide all the dinosaurs that they reverse DNA bioengineered. They startid the wild fires by dipping squirls in diesel fuel then shooting bottle rockets at them then let them run through the forest. The reasin they startid the fires was to make the smoke so that at nite we woodint be able to see the moon base construction project (there bilding the pools now, it's easy to see if you just use a home made telescope you can build from empty beer bottles or the better version uses a kids kaleidoscope and seran wrap.) This is why I won't leave from inside my Faraday cage.
It's also worth noting that the shape of the jet stream in May was a big factor. An atypical "Omega block" of high pressure was in place over central US and Canada. This one pulled hot air far North into Canada, then blew the smoke Southeast into the US. Under a more typical jet stream smoke from Canadian fires mostly blow over sparsely populated areas or out to sea.
Thank you for doing this video, many Canadians believe there are many other factors to the starting of these fires, the rate which they have burned at and the ability to manage and suppress these fires. Not just “how did the fires start”
If you want to see another area with a history of wildfires burning out of control for long periods of time, look up the Tillamook Burn. They had to figure out how to get that area where is wasn't so susceptible to burning because you can't control the wind through there. They had to take other measures.
Ret CDN army here, I agree they happen yearly. Been in Northern Ont and seen them. This year's situation IMO demonstrated more than a natural occurrence.
Sid, you so right. People just don't understand how vast these areas are. I live in British Columbia, most of these fires are 100's of miles away from the closest road.
I live in bc, and this is one of the worst ever I see water bombers going out every 20 min. I'm so glad that Mexico,Australia, and the usa and other countries that are here helping as right now we need all the help we can get. It's so hard to breathe and eyes are buring from all the fires please have your prayers and thoughts for us thank you all the firefighters be safe and come home to your families
I live in Alberta and want to thank all the firefighters from around the world that have come to help. This year the fires started early in Alberta. This was before any spring greening of plants had begun, so it was very dry because the wind had melted any snow. The fires started in several places and our local resources of equipment and people were overwhelmed. So thank you to everyone who is giving support.
My man and I wish we could help out, but our health is not in the best of shape to help. We are in the D of michigan 🇺🇸, all of you are in our prayers that you come out victorious. We ❤ Canada, and wish, hope, and pray that all of you are safe. ✌❤, and lots of prayers from the 🇺🇸 to Canada..... Greatest friends to the great North... God bless Canada, and god bless the 🇺🇸
I was working at a golf course a couple decades ago, where some random golfer decided to discard his lit cigar into a swale (typically dry, acted as a micro-creek when it rained a lot) that bordered the course and a adjacent farm. It turned out that the soil was peat moss and ended up catching fire, but underground. Another worker and I were the only people out in that area sometime later when I noticed a tiny stream of smoke. I investigated, realized the ground was on fire, took a 3 minute golf cart trip back to the groundskeeping barn to inform the head groundskeeper, and about 8 minutes later we were all out there with 2 pumps drawing from a nearby creek and spraying a absolute shitload of water onto this fire (from a 4" line). I watched the ground literally open up and shoot flames nearly 15 feet high. I'd drown the hole and move to the next, but it'd already be flaming again before I put the next one out. I don't know how much time passed, but out of nowhere there were a bunch of different fire departments arriving and directing us away from the area while a small group of helicopters took turns doing fly-by's as they poured huge tanks of water onto it. It took forever to get it under control and ultimately (presumably) extinguished entirely. All because some idiot decided to throw his lit cigar into a ditch, instead of just snubbing it and taking it with him to put in a garbage can like a normal person (ironically, there was a small garbage can about 100ft away, which he would have encountered immediately after finishing the hole he was playing).
The northern areas of Canada have no roads, Ricky. You don't go for a car ride beside Hudson's Bay . It's hard to fight a fire without a pumper . Planes are the only way , formidable logistics. Distance is another factor. These fires are burning 500 miles away ,or more ,from infrastructure. Its an overwhelming situation when there are hundreds of fires. Sorry about our smoke.🚒
Airfields without roads are no help as you can’t truck in the fuel and retardant needed by the air attack folks. I spent a few years doing detection in northern bc during the early 80s. We plotted all lightning strikes in our district and saw some flare up as much as a month later. The other thing many don’t understand is those huge hot fire will often smolder all winter and flare up again as soon as things dry out in the summer. Another detail many don’t comprehend when they say we should just get them while still small and manageable is just how fast they can grow. I remember clearly one we spotted from the air in 83, it was just a pinpoint smoke in the middle of nowhere so we called for an air attack high priority. Tankers already in the air were diverted and arrived on scene within 20 minutes, fire was reported to be 40 acres crowning and running by the time they got there. By sunset it was over a thousand acres.
Fires can jump a lot more than just streets. A street is a minor obstacle to a large wildfire. I was there to see a fire jump a lake years ago from the cinders being blown across the lake into the untouched area across from it.
That's crazy! Can you mention what lake that was? how wide was it? I wonder how broad these backburns would need to be to prevent a huge fire from spreading.
Look into the Okanagan Mountain Park fire in 2003. Strong winds during that fire had it jumping two Km. at a time. We were building houses and theought it would take the fire three days to get there. We had to evacuate the next day.
I've only witnessed one major structural fire. It was an all wood construction single storey office type. It burn so hot you couldnt stand comfortable within 200 to 300 feet. 100feet away and the other buildings were scorched up and had to be cooled.
Here in the southwest we often have embers falling thirty minutes ahead of the fires arrival and in climax Pinion /Juniper (PJ) that can be real exciting!
One of the most overlooked aspects to boreal forests is that unlike temperate forests, boreal forest floor is peat. Our fires can start and burn underground for months, even years. The fires in the north, like the one in Fort McMurray years ago (called The Beast) burned for 18 months in Athabasca peat bog. Our forests have an entire ecosystem beneath the trees that touch the permafrost, and now that the frost isn’t coming back, a little lightning goes a very long way… 😢
For the record, I’m in northern Alberta and have seen the fires from the west end of our city. It’s been frightening. I also saw the South African firefighting troops last week. ❤
YES ! Thank you, you nailed it precisely ! By the way I'm ashamed total lack detail ONE from CBC, CTV GLOBAL etc. let alone a single reporter showing wildfires. just here is where SMOKE is going. We ain't totallt stupid yet
@@fractuss I’m sorry, is my vocabulary imprecise for the standards of this TH-cam thread? Are troops only soldiers employed by his majesty of the commonwealth? I’m but a mere civilian. 🤪
You neglected to mention the extreme lack of forest management that seems to have be in vogue since the early 2000s. In California, for example, our worst fires burned so out of control that the fire services couldn't prevent them from wiping out towns and suburbs. A very hard look needs to be given that particular practice of not clearing the dead wood and clearing the brush, and cutting down some of the trees to thin the forests a little bit.
Agree. Oregon has same issues. Since logging has been reduced in some areas, this has allowed over-growth of bushes and smaller trees that typically die off and provide fuel. Also with logging reduced, the roads that companies put in and maintained are disappearing, which reduces access and fire breaks. Very complicated issue.
Trouble is Canada has so much thick boreal forests you can't even get to and it's all mature thick dry soft woods stands 70 to 80 ft high and there was a new beetle that migrated up hear they kill spruce and any soft woods with moss floor so some are started by carelessness but most are lightning caused they strike and burn under ground for days before surfacing I was ff and I said in another comment you can't fight these fires when you have a walk70 ft high you can't get close to it even water bombers it's useless spruce burns so hot it all evaporates
Thank you for your report, I am from Alberta Canada, and survived the 2003 lost creek fire in the Crows Nest Pass Ab. Loggers were able to haul out trees for two years after the fire for lumber, taking them to Spray Lakes Lumber in Cochrane Ab. to be cut into lumber.
In Latin America they use goats and sheep to clear dried brush. This concept was recently implemented in Laguna Beach to clear out dried brush from the hillsides in the canyon. It is a cool sight to see a herd of goats on the hillside just doing what nature designed them to do.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms it's a lot harder for a fire to catch on if all the leaves/grasses are gone(eaten short) instead of a 3-4 foot high dry grasses that acts like gunpowder when it burns
Alot of these fires are occurring in a timber type with few grasses and leaves but rather have dead and down trees, branches and needles on the ground. A fire can smolder for weeks after lightning starts it until conditions exist that allow it to get up into the forest complex of fuels. I don’t think the goats are going to eat needles and little branches. They work great where there are bushes and grass. There is no fire proofing of the forest. Even clearcutting of the forest leaves residual fuels on the ground that don’t stop fires but allows them to usually burn even faster through them and cause lots of spotting. The best way to fire proof the forest is to burn it in prescribed burns that remove all the dead and down and limb up the trees.
One thing you missed about the content of the smoke - UV from the sun converts some of it into VOCs like formaldehyde and other things that contribute to the burning plastic look smell. Also in order to filter VOCs you need respirators with a carbon filter layer as well as a particulate filter.
Our ability to suppress fires has created forests full of dry fuel on the ground. I have been cleaning my two acre heavily forested property every fall for the last four years, burning the dry dead material. It has gone from an area too thick to walk and even see through to something I can walk around in now. Every fall it is a five day continuous fire burning the dead fuel. This year it will be the same again. Native's did controlled burns all the time. They knew how and when to burn to suppress extreme fires and provide more food
One of the big fires in California a few years back, I'm not sure which one it was, but there was Native American land near this fire and they had no problem. The Native Americans know if there is no fuel, there is not a forest fire. They have been doing this for years.
As a logger of 44 yrs ,the bush has always dried out in the summer and fire hazard always increased to the point of shutting the industry down til the weather changed .What's incomprehensible is the forest service doing prescribed burns in the springtime and if you didn't put out fire when it was small you couldn't get them out till the weather changed .Its always been that way .
Statics shown is this very video prove your anecdote wrong. It not been that way, burned areas are bigger each year, and drought is getting worse. Where are the all ice road gone in Finland and Canada? How anyone be that blind?
@@HVM_fi It was loggers that put the fires out before the forests service took it over and the previous generation of the forest service put out the fires when they are small because you couldn't get them out without a weather change . The current gen of the forest service does not do that anymore ,they put a guard around it and call it good unless it is close to a townsite .Canada never had ice roads in the summertime ,that is a winter only thing .Also its not an anecdote ,that's how we did things before the current gen took over.
@@markgallicano 50 years ago there were 20-30 official ice roads in use, and those were open 1.5 to 2 months in a winter. Last winter there were only three, located in the Northern Finland, and those were open only ~two weeks due lack of ice thickness/quality. There are droughts and fires in California Canada Australia and Mediterranean islands, and those are getting larger in each year, those can't explained just by firefighting practices.
The skies clouded over here in Spain last week, which is not unusual as we often get sand blowing up from the Sahara. However it came as a shock to learn that on this occasion it was smoke from the Canadian fires!
Prescribed burns have been something that has been relearned over the past few decades as Australia always has had a history with bushfires for tens of thousands of years. Once the modern "experts" finally started listening to the First Nation's people here, the method/skills/procedure for doing prescribed burns greatly improved. I can imagine that doing prescribed burns isn't as easy as "put fire here, done" and hopefully more people can get trained tho I can imagine it would sometimes get out of hand. Which has happened occasionally here in Australia. I have recently heard about 500+ Aussie firefighters have flew over to North America to fight your fires with and I wish them the best of luck and all those who have and will get caught up in this to stay safe >.
OK. But here in Canada prescribed burns have been around as a method of controlling wildfires long before the natives discovered their voice again and started talking it up like they'd invented it. In my years in East Africa decades ago, regular burning of dried grass and brush to encourage green sprouting has been going on for probably a million years. The natives in Canada didn't invent it, they just conveniently re-discovered this ancient practice that pre dated their existence in North America, when a bunch of compliant well funded experts started to listen to them and green gold started flowing their way for their 'ancient' knowledge.
It hit me hard when you mentioned a group that wants the population to ALL be clustered in cities. TRUE! In the early 90's I was having a horrible time with the planning office in The Dalles, OR. I had two properties to build on ( one which had already previously been permitted ). We went from two to 10 county planners, and I was not being allowed to build on my two properties. To get to the point" I went to a planning meeting "! I was shocked to see their plan "!!! It's was exactly as you mentioned. On the large chalk board they wanted NO people living rurally including no dogs, no horses, cows etc.etc. etc. And ALL people forced to live in the city...NO RURAL LIVING! We also had a group that illegally in a 3:00am vote without the opposing voters being present, voted in the Columbia Gorge Commission. You'll have to investigate their agenda yourself, but I believe they still have control in the Columbia Gorge.
As I have been trying to get across on social media for a decade. A new approach is needed in order to fight such fires. My recommendation would be a heavy lift helium aircraft fitted with water cannons/fire retardant. Bottom and sides fitted with tiles that were used on the space shuttle for reentry in the event the craft gets too close to the blaze. There are currently this type craft a helium filled ship that can lift 250 tons. When you compare the amount of water/fire retardant that this craft can carry compared to say a 747 at 19,000 gallons to 250 tons at 68,000 gallons. There are also others that carry heavier weights. The helium filled craft can pinpoint where the water flows and can stay on site for longer period of time. After becoming empty the craft would be replaced with another if needed while 1st craft goes to refill at nearby body of water or source.
I was told by family who have spent their entire adult life fighting forest fires that most of the fires were lighting caused. That with no thinning, past fire suppression policy, allowed the undergrowth to be way out of control and it allows major fires. No matter how they started it is a shame. To the firefighters....be safe. Those who did arson I hope they get whats coming. Now, I vote for aliens.. 😂😂😂😂😮😮😮 Thank you Ricky. Be safe everyone.
@@michaelkolbe5963So what? If the management policies didn't have the forests in a state of having severely overloaded undergrowth an arsonist would not be able to do any significant damage. Everyone is so quick to blame the initial cause, while what is really at fault is what caused the forest to become such a tinderbox.
@@michaelkolbe5963 The largest (and most unusual because of their location) fires are in Québec, and they indeed started last June 1st after we had some massive thunderstorms.
@@davepeterschmidt5818 How could Canada manage forests that are larger than entire countries? It is done on a smaller scale in the semi-arid parts of Western Canada, but managing all forests of the country is an impossible task
I don't know about the rest of Canada but here in Alberta we didn't have much of a spring season this year. Temperature went from -20C to +20C over about a one week timespan, the snow completely melted and all the grass and shrubs were completely dried out and brown, it takes about 2 weeks of above freezing temperature for all the trees and grass to turn green again. Combine that with no rain and very low humidity and its the perfect conditions for wildfires. I don't blame anything specifically for the fires, its just going to happen no matter what. When you look at a map of Canada, pretty much all the population and cities exist along one highway that stretches across the country, the rest is just endless trees and farmland. Just getting access to the areas these fires are burning would not be easy.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms True even in the South such as Nashville, Tenn. Lots of "evergreen", well, leyland cypress, other, got burned and toasted after this past Winter.
Really difficult topic for you to tackle. Thanks for your courage. I didn’t really expect you to provide a definitive answer to “why” the fires are happening (and you didn’t), but you were completely honest about the possibilities. Thank you! 😊
@@incognitotorpedo42 Well, there's death threats on weathermen discussing climate change, so yeah. If you mention climate change, you might just be in the cross-hairs.
I think its also important to say that in ontario, unless the is encroaching upon a community or other important location. They tend to let the fire burn. The boreal is a fire origin forest and some trees like Jack Pine and other conifer species only open their cones and disperse seeds after they have experienced high heat like a fire. Fire also makes the ground more fertile for the new vegetation to thrive.
Another factor to consider is the effect of banning logging. Save the trees sounds beautiful. But controlled logging can be essential as a way to reduce fire risk. Cleared zones and logging trails provide effective fire blocks.
Excellent presentation Ricky. We are so aware of this in southern Oregon and Northern California. Where we have had devastating forest fires that have taken out towns. I spend a lot of time in the woods and come across massive amounts of deadwood. The bottom line is we do not harvest any of this material. And there is a strong movement by certain environmental groups to encourage the burning. If you look at data provided by the Oregon Department of forestry you will find that this increase in forest fires has a strong correlation to when we stopped harvesting. I would suggest that we need to start thinking sensibly about proper harvesting of wood. And especially when it comes to cutting lines in the forest. The environmental groups here went as far as to shut down the fire roads because I didn’t want people traveling through that area.This made fire fighting and search and rescue very difficult. Yes this is deeply engrossed in our politics also.
That's what Disney style management will get ya... "Those things once the ruin of the forest may now be it's salvation. Fire, the ax the gun and the COW." ~ Aldo Leopold~ Get the logger and cowman beck on the forest!
Selective harvesting would help, but no corporate wood company wants to do that. They want to clear cut until it's all gone. This leads to sick forests that get overly dense young trees that burn easily. That just adds to fire danger. Sure cut down all the trees no fire....but that's simplistic thinking. This issue is more complex than just cutting trees. It needs billions of dollars in gov't funding for SURVEYS, SCIENTIFIC STUDIES, then and only then, harvesting. I say this as someone who worked in the woods as a data collector.
@@earnthis1 Billions huh? How bout going back to what works. Until the l70's the Forest Service operated in the black with a profit . "Billions" just get more Gummint parasites involved. Here in the states even the most virulent nature Nazis now admit that the logger and cattleman have their place in any well run forest plan. I work on the forest as an inholder.
@@earnthis1The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Only permit strip logging, and that's what will be done. That way, we will have both lumber and fire breaks.
I didn't hear about those conspiracy "theories" until your video. It made me realise that humanities end is inevitable. If not from climate change itself then from the stupidity of our fellow humans.
You can filter the air in your home using a box fan and a furnace filter. Get a filter that handles smoke & particulates the same size as your box fan, place the filter on the inlet side. The suction of the fan will keep it on place. Keep your windows closed and run the fan anywhere in the house. Replace the filter as needed. It's a cheap and effective solution
In the western US, it could be days to weeks before a fire starts that a lightening strike hit. The tree that was hit will shoulder until conditions like wind and heat are optimal. We always dread lightening storms that do not produce rain.
You need to take your weather analysis further beyond just lightning. Prevailing winds, humidity, etc could all play a part. Lightning strike fires could easily smolder for several days - then one weather system (say - change in wind direction and intensity) could move through the area and make them all become more intense on the same day...I wouldn't be surprised at all to see the jetstream move over the area or some other pattern shift on the day they all appear to "start".
Half this video wasn't for me. Eco-terrorists going around in flame-shooting helicopters was never something I considered as a legitimate possibility, so debunking it didn't really teach me anything. It's like debunking flat-earth before talking about anything global.
@@tycurtin7565 Never had smoke like this until last year from the US western fires but that didn’t last as long or be as thick. We had plenty of crap in the air until the early 70’s from the now extinct steel mills but this was new to us.
@@john-or9cf My point is that the history of the weather is very long. If you look at old newspaper articles from the 1800s, this used to happen all the time. Because it's rare now is because wild fires are much more rare than they were 130 years ago or even 90 years ago. People's memories are basically useless.
@@tycurtin7565 I understand your point - and you’re right - I merely remarked in the last 80 years, this is the first time I remember this kind of smoke in north east Ohio. Undoubtedly it’s happened before, just not in my 80 years.
I don't think Ricky understands how vast Canada is, and that there are no roads there for the millions of fire firefighters / brush clearing crews required.
I live in Alberta. West of Edmonton by 40 min. I've never heard of some of these theories here but I can tell you what many people I have talked to have experienced. Some of the fires were about 15 min drive for me and I know plenty who have been evacuated and some who stayed and saved their houses. Some of these fires are not arson, for example one fire was started in the middle of winter burning bush which smoldered till spring, someone actually called the fire department about this but the fire fighters looked at the wrong bush pile and missed it. But its also become well know many of these fires were intentionally started. Someone i know was stopped at a rockblock near niton junction and at that roadstop there were two trucks that had the bed full of diesel fuel gerry cans, the police themselves said they had arrested those individuals for arson. Multiple accounts of people pulling up to trucks in the ditch with piles of wood and diesel starting fires, someone like this was scared off on my range road, so the story goes. I agree that we have had a unique spring weather pattern, it was intensely hot and dry which isn't typical creating a tinder box. I tell you what though, nature isn't waiting anytime renewing. I drove through some burned areas last week and the grass is already so lushly greeni was amazed.
Thanks for the video, good info. While in Colorado Rocky Mtns a few years ago "10+" noticed very large areas "hundreds to thousands of acres" of dead pine trees. Asked Park Rangers about it, they indicated with the increased warmer winters it was not killing off pine beetles which has increased their population significantly creating large dead areas in both Northern states & Canada. This could be another factor with increased dead trees increases fuel available for wildfires not to mention Pine trees are very high in resin. Add that with a warmer/dryer climate, lightning strikes and or human carelessness/ulterior motives we will see more wildfires even in areas not prone to them.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms In British Columbia Pine beetle logged trees have been one of the largest sources of structural lumber in Canada and with huge annual exports to the US for well over two decades. All the recoverable dead pine is now gone but the remaining standing dead is now being converted to wood chips for energy production. Most of which goes to England and Europe. Because there is the odd green cut in the process however, the shrieking Karens are all on about this now. So 'girls' leave it standing and create even more forest fires? You all good with that? Smoke in your big city living rooms...
Interesting vid - well presented. I'll add some critical info here - I'm a meteorologist specializing in tornadoes/field research 35 yrs. & applied mechanical/aeronautical engineering - there's a lot more to this environmental disaster than was covered in this video. To keep it brief - the fires are a product of several large scale unprecedented variables all playing out at the same time - there is a global effort collectively known as 'geo-engineering' (stratospheric aerosol injection SAI) that uses high altitude aerosol spraying of various metals (aluminum, strontium, barium to name a few), nano particles (graphene, glass) to reduced & reflect the sun's energy back into space or dim the radiation coming through to help curb global warming - retrofitted jetliners have been spraying globally for decades - in theory it's a large-scale experiment on climate, but in reality it's a short-sighted ill-conceived fiasco that's jeopardizing the earth's biosphere. The various aerosols don't stay in the stratosphere and eventually precipitate down to the surface - with serious unwanted repercussions. The ph of soils/natural chemical compositions are being altered that's interfering with soil biomes & how they function under normal conditions - leading to basically depleted or dying soils - prolonged exposures weakens trees/forests, which leads to accelerated accumulations of diseased/dead trees. In normal conditions, dead wood is quickly broken down by healthy soil biome & converted back into fertile soil to regenerate a new generation of healthy forest - that cycle is being interfered with now so that soil degradation is increasingly unable to breakdown & covert dead wood - leading to an over accumulation of dead wood. In addition, metal aerosols can act like an accelerant - on the surface of a tree, soil, a structure, it can make fires burn hotter & longer. In addition to this, aerosols can also interfere with the formation of rain - spreading out water vapor in the atmosphere with smaller hydroscopic nuclei that fails to get large enough to fall as rain & contributing to regional aridity. Entire regions can get much drier than normal, and when rain does eventually fall, compromised soils fail to hold the precipitation resulting in flash floods - instead of a moist, living, healthy forest that stores rainfall & recirculates it into the hydrologic cycles. So whether or not a fire is the result of lightning, camping, arson, the current environment is now set to amplify a natural yearly fire cycle into something not seen before - a very serious situation is developing right before our eyes. So to look at solutions like clearing swaths of forest to mitigate fires spreading would be contributing to the problem - the earth needs more trees, not less - this is basic physical geography, geology, ecology, climate science. Approaching this problem through an engineering lens is using the wrong metric - nothing needs to be 'engineered' to solve this problem - we just need to stop interfering with natural processes that already work. The stratospheric spraying needs to be stopped now, or this will get worse. In nature, there are no countries, borders, oceans, rivers, hemispheres - it's all one system that's symbiotic - with or without humans - what's happening to Canada, Siberia, Australia, & California affects everywhere else - and these disasters can get much worse - we're tampering with systems that aren't well understood - with a backlash that could be cataclysmic in scale. A resource to check out is Dane Wigington on YT - he does a thorough job of reporting these existential threats. Corporations need to be upgraded to run more efficiently & cleanly - allowing industries to remain inefficient is irresponsible - dirty, out-dated, obsolete technology needs to be left in the past - not protecting it for profit's sake & then spraying the atmosphere in a desperate attempt to block something natural - we're all in this together people... ignorance is dangerous - we need to do better as a species.
@@hendrico8 I understand the info presented is a lot to take - but this is our new reality - and it's hard to 'stay strong' when entire countries may be on the verge of burning up - Canada could turn into a burnt ash wasteland - with the U.S. next in line - 'Stay aware, informed, & educated' will be a very important mindset in the future -
I'm a truck driver and in particular, I do specialized, which includes tying down complete Jenga puzzles of loads, tarping, climbing up and down. All around, very heavy exertion in all sorts of conditions. A couple weeks ago, I was outside with the air quality at 269 (very unhealthy, sub category dangerous) 31 points away from hazardous. I was untarping and putting equipment away for about 1½ hours. When I was done working, I was feeling the effects in my throat and others could hear the effect in my voice. The effects wore off after almost a week of lighter exertion and being further south in cleaner air. A couple of times, it was making me tired when I normally am at my peak energy during the day because I wasn't getting the oxygen I need, especially with some sort of breathing issue and having Reynauds Syndrome (blood flow disorder) reducing the amount of properly oxygenated blood to my extremities at random. These fires have had their toll taken on me and I blame Trudeau personally for not having the proper measures taken to minimize them. The US has some of the best forest fire fighters and equipment in the world. He could've asked for help from here at the beginning to drastically decrease them but didn't. He didn't ask until later on in them (not sure on exact date off the top of my head). All that said, just be safe out there, especially in the affected areas.
I knew someone who always claimed that forest fires are a natural process and that working to control them with fire gaps and controlled burns would come back to bite us. This was twenty years ago, he said that the dead brush has to be cleared, and the longer we prevent that clearing by wild fires, the worse the fires will be when they do get out of control. I think we need to decide if we are going to let nature take its course or if we want to embrace the notion of engineering the world. This seems to be one of the situations where half measures make things worse.
I think we'd be better off clear cutting an area then controlled burns within it. This would allow us to put use to the resources, vs them burning away, clear up the forest floor of flammable material, and function somewhat analogous to natural processes.
I get your point and it's true to some degree. But the thing is there are people living in some of those places, so you can't expect to just "let the fires burn" unmanaged. Natural disasters are "natural," but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do what we can to prevent them.
@@Israel_Two_BitYes, nature will do its thing. It's unfortunate and there really isn't much that can be done about it. Build smart and hope that you are fortunate that you can live your whole life without a disaster. If you can't, pick up the pieces and move forward. It is what it is.
Australia learned this decades ago. Aborigines would perform planned burns long before Europeans arrived. They recognized that there's a buildup of dead, dry foliage, and the more time between bushfires, the more severe a fire will be because of the excess fuel. The Europeans put a stop to the planned burns, and it eventually resulted in larger, more intense, and more uncontrollable fires. Same is true in the U.S. and Europe, but we tend to forget/overlook our histories the longer it's been. There are some regions where the Aborigines have continued to do fire management for thousands of years, and with bad bushfires in recent years, people are considering having asking Aborigines to use their long developed knowledge to manage other areas as well.
Natives use to set fires in the spring when the snow was not all melted. This made fields and fresh grazing for wildlife and hunting. Historically we had more fires than we do now. I use to fight fires and it became obvious that the fires were used as employment in the back country, when one was coming to an end amazingly another one would spring up close by.
I’m a Firefighter in Australia. Grass and bushfires start all the time. Weather affects how easily we can put them out or how large they grow when we can’t. Climate change affects weather, the end.
It's like people especially in America forgot a huge part of Australia was on fire before the beginning of 2020. But too many choose to not accept accountability for inaction or grasp at Whatever the lobbyist fund media outlets say it's a mixed bag of warmer climate and poor land management and bad actors, because we can't blame oil and coal that's just unamerican. 🙄 I live in a region where as a kid we had snow piled in parking lots into early spring before they were melted away now they barely are around a week or two in winter. But people my age and well over 50 say it's just a cycle and volcanoes. Speaking of which how did you manage the flooding after Hunga Tunga disrupted the entire hemisphere weather patterns the past year+?
I completely agree. When you see what the media are showing to both camps of the issue, you realize how hard it is to get an unbiased view of the situation. As someone once said, all conspiracy theories have some degree of truth baken into them. The rest seems to be just a very strong confirmation bias at play. We all have a predetermined idea of why things happen and when we see someone explaining it in a way that aligns with that preconceived idea, our brain tends to overlook the clear red flags and misjudgments that were made in the process. It's veeeeeery hard to avoid falling into this trap since it involves a level of self-criticism most of us aren't comfortable with.
@@KoRntech yes we can't blame oil and coal or animal agriculture that is definitely unpatriotic. Lots of money and thought goes into climate denial,: lobbying, paying journalists to give too much weight to minority views, people arguing in the media instead of peer review, as well as starting conspiracy theories I think!
A friend who spent 20 years as a Ventura County fireman set me straight on controlling the fuel load. Letting fuel load build up eventually causes unnaturally hot fires that are uncontrollable, damaging the indigenous plants and animals. But frequent fires, matching the pattern of nature, every few years, clears out the fuel load. The fire is less intense, quickly running through areas without harming roots or burning through bark of indigenous trees. These kinds of fires can also release seeds of some plants, like the Jack Pine of my Northern Michigan home. In some cases, goats (yes, goats) have been used to clean areas of their fuel load, especially where the land is rough and challenging to climbing. Having a "Zero Tolerance" of fire isn't an option. Dead wood and other debris will accumulate. If we don't clean it up (either by collecting or using it, or allow burns), then it will eventually it will burn at a rate the we have no choice, we won't be able to put it out.
Yah goats do a great job.. it could be a way to produce a massive amount of cheap meat as well. If the government gave money to farmers that were willing to move their goats around in the forests they could drive down costs. Could even have the government give college students jobs working with the goats over the summer. Basically ensure their education for the next year is paid for by working June - August. The military pays for school. This could be a similar type program. Grocery stores could negotiate a good price to hopefully get the price of meat down. Not the answer a vegetarian would like to hear though.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms I think they would eat a bit of it. They would be walking all over stuff too which would maybe help break down the materials quicker.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms so it looks like Llamas will eat the brush. They are great for protecting other animals as well. Just get like 4 Llamas in with like 40 goats and let them deal with it.
I heard experts on talk radio say, If the PINE BARK BEETLE gets into the Canadian forests it will be a catastrophe for the planet. But the beetle will not be able to cross the Rockies and leave British Columbia." At that time, I was RV camping in N. California and the trees around me were mostly dead from Pine Bark Beetles!
One of the major issues is that we clear cut. A healthy forest has a lot of moisture just below ground level. With clear cutting, all that is left is dry ground and the off cut brush which is perfect to make situation far worse. Usually the "normal" fires might take out treetops and then burn out but with much of the best trees removed, it can move very fast and overcome the natural ability of a healthy forest to dampen it. Our weather patterns are changing due to climate change so expect this issue to get worse. We will not be able to solve it with firefighting. It is too big for that. BTW, Nova Scotia, in a drive to get off coal, allowed massive clear cutting. I believe this is one big issue in that particular fire.
I would add that NS experiences hurricanes nearly each year for the past 2 decades compared to just 3 total hurricanes in 3 decades prior. The hurricanes left NS forest vulnerable with fallen debris and uprooted trees. The damaged forest hasn't been managed to mitigate the risk of fire. I agree that deforestation is responsible for the forest vulnerability. A satellite image of the province is a sight for sore eyes. So much of the province has been leveled due to deforestation.
@@stevenverrall4527that is the worst thing they can do been in forestry for 26 years and that ruins deer wintering areas and it waped out our deer heard.
I love that you kept it honest and wide spread. Gave the science guys AND the conspiracy theorists their due! Much appreciated, love the honest journalism!
People also seem to not realize that that part of Canada n the northern United States on the East Coast was all in a severe drought. From the beginning of May until almost the end of June we had zero rain here in PA. The grass was yellow we were in severe severe drought. Along with the rest of the northern states along with some of them going down south towards South Carolina. And most of that section of Canada. And when I would make a fire that would would light up instantly I had no trouble making fires in my fire pit. So I'm sure that had something to do with these fires getting started.
I got a front row view of the fires in Kelowna, BC. Till you see it with your own eyes, you will have no idea how fast these fires can spread. Evacuate if your told too!
What a lot of people seem to miss in this big picture is that with zero human input these fires will burn virtually the entirety of those forested areas within about 100 years. That is, even without humans starting fires or "changing climate" those forests would have burned. Those forests have only existed for 12,000 years, 15,000 years ago a large portion of Canada was covered with glaciers up to 2 miles thick. As those glaciers retreated forests moved in and those forests are burn dependent, burning is a part of the life cycle of the forest. For the last 100 years or so, fires have been suppressed and prevented to such a degree that the forests have grown to the point where fires are catastrophic. Look at Yellowstone 30 years ago and what is happening in California today. Fires have been treated as a catastrophe no matter how small they are and the net result is fires that are uncontrollable. It is interesting you mention "a new way of imagining forest management" but fail to realize it is actually the old way of forest management. A mile block of trees being cut down is a clear cut which the eco idiots have attacked mercilessly to the point where it isn't allowed to happen in many areas. Areas that haven't burned in a century are labeled "old growth" and protected as if they can be preserved. They can't be preserved, eventually and without fail, they will burn. What they can be is conserved, which means utilized by man so that when fires happen they won't be catastrophic because there won't be a huge fuel load just laying there waiting to burn. It isn't rocket science, we understand it well, but we allow emotional people to call the shots and they make short term decisions which ignore the long term reality. And huge uncontrollable fires which kill people and burn their stuff is the long term reality they force upon us.
As a Canadian, I feel compelled to do what Canada does best... Apologize. Sorry about the smokey air Eh. Fer sure, if it was some Hoser that started the fire they are going to get an enormous yelling at, yoo becha. Seriously though, I want to give my most sincerest thanks to everyone from around the world to help us through this.
One interesting fact I learned from the TH-cam channel Mistersunchinebaby is that as of the last week of June, for Vancouver Island alone, there's normally 2 wildfires but this year there'd been 48. Normally those wildfires are 50% human caused and 50% natural caused. This year, all 48 of those wildfires were determined to be human caused. I find this an interesting fact, and while human cased does include arson, it also includes simple negligence, and accidents too, so that does not mean some big conspiracy or anything, but it does mean it's not just the weather or lightning doing it, since not one of those fires to that point had been caused by nature. Another interesting thing is that stat about the reduction in the number of fires means all that dead brush, deadfall and other dry dead material that normally would burn in smaller fires, now is left to reach critical mass, triggering these raging, out of control crown fires where entire tress burn to ashes. This actually sterilizes the land and makes it very hard for the forests to regrow. Whereas the smaller fires help in the rapid decomposition of that dry, dead plant material, returning it to the soil to feed new growth, and fertilize the soil to keep the rest of the forest healthy. Many species of trees also rely on those small wild fires to germinate their seeds so new trees can grow. I guess you could say this year's fires are combination of some arson, some bad weather that's making out of control fires more likely, and mostly decades of very bad forest management creating this increasingly dangerous situation where fires can burn out of control so easily. Perhaps we should get back to letting natural fires run their course so the natural processes can happen, and focus on dealing with the out of control fires and those that threaten people?
@@counselthyself2591 Did the 2 solid weeks of rainy weather that hit the Lower Mainland area somehow bypass the island it needs to pass over to reach Vancouver?
@@Seriously_Unserious In Québec all the fires we have started on June 1st after we had some massive thunderstorms which occured after the warmest and driest month of May on record
@@counselthyself2591 Wow. Got significantly more then that where I am in Port Coquitlam. Then I am near the coastal mountains in a rain belt, so I guess I would get more rain then many others.
Amazing isn’t it. Have to go to independent reporters because the msm media is all controlled. Ever seen the video that showed hundreds of reporters saying the same thing… word for word? If not look it up
“All sides” shouldn’t include ‘space lasers government control plot’. A well research piece shouldn’t throw up it’s hands and say ‘no evidence’, it should call these theories out for being ridiculous misinformation that if accepted can lead people to even more harmful beliefs.
I live in Kelowna BC Canada. We are currently under evacuation alert. The fire is on our norther outskirts. It was started Thursday night when high winds blew embers across Okanogan Lake to the west of us. A distance of over 2 miles. That fire is currently threatening the city of Weat Kelowna on the west side of Okanogan Lake. They have lost their drinking water plant to that fire. Approximately 10,000 people have been evacuated. Currently the high winds have abated slowing the fires down and giving the fire fighters a break. Smoke is very heavy visibility is less than a quarter mile. Pray for Rain.
I live in a topographical recession, a large crater in front of a lake formed when glaciers scraped across the land, fully surrounded by trees - in Ontario. From time to time I see so much smoke drifting across the farm fields along the roads to town etc. But my actual home and living space there is 0 smoke, the air is fully shielded by the topography and it is fresh, beautiful, clean air. I was not considering fires when I purchased the property, but now it is really a relief. But country life is more arduous than city life. Air, food, drinking water, sewage/septic, connectivity/telecom - all those responsibilities are mine, no city assistance.
In the USA, decades of fire suppression have caused large amounts of brush and dead trees to accumulate. Also the failure to thin the forests (due to restrictions on logging) have produced extremely dense forests. As a result, the forests are filled with sick, dying, and dead trees -- in Yosemite National Park (California) alone, there are 2.4 million dead trees -- all of which are fuel for future forest fires.
You're right of course. In the US or Canada as soon as the word "logging' enters the discussion the shrill, shrieking urban karens of whatever gender suddenly appear on the urban new channels. I was a commercial thinning contractor in British Columbia for years, but the urban socialist parties just prevent anything now that involves killing trees. Funny how in countries like Germany or Sweden you never hear of large fires. Why? Because they thin their forests, is a main reason.
So exactly who "thinned the forest" before 1492 ? Sorry, i have never bought into this theory. Our new climate, arriving every day, has changed the forest to an entity much more flammable than in the past
Thank you, I've trying to cool down the conspiracy about the fire in Québec for weeks, we had weeks without rain, followed by some violent thunderstorm and followed by some strong wind. Not so hard to understand.
The perfect storm! The only good news is that if these fires burn through lots of the overgrown fuel, perhaps next year, which is forecast to be the hottest in record, won't see even worse wildfires.
I’m always suspicious of “the truth is somewhere in the middle”. If one side says 2+2=4 and the other side says 2+2=6, the truth is NOT 2+2=5. The impulse to average out the voices leads to punishing science and quality journalism, and rewarding propaganda and misinformation.
I live in South Africa and work on European development aid projects. Listening to the conspiracy theories I now understand why Europeans consider America as a second world country. We who live in Africa experience climate change daily
Thank 🐦 you very much for the details you went into. It would take an hour or so to respond as I spent many years in BC fighting wildfires. The system is almost totally incompetent and obviously ineffective in preventing wildfires in Canada. It's unfortunately also corrupt. We have massive fossil fuel subsidies though...
The Australian fires and Canadian fires have two things in common. Sappy trees ,with sappy leaves. Once the heat is into these fires it can cause the sap in the leaves ahead of the fire to super heat and vaporize. This vapor rises up to where it spontaneously combust a 100 feet or more. This causes the fire to roll ,you dont need a spark ahead of a forest fire , the infared heat directed at the foliage ahead is enough to dry it, vaporise and auto ignite the forest. It becomes a runaway ,self feeding breathing monster.
Bc in 2003 experienced this type of firestorm. The fire moved extremely quickly, burning a lot of homes in its path, occasionally jumping homes with what seemed like no rhyme or reason. A town in its path was saved by a cedar mill… the mill employees were ordered to evacuate, but stayed and ran the water system they had to reduce the flammability of the wood on site, otherwise the whole town would have gone up.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms Yes. A handful of arsons alone would not set the whole countryside on fire. [We] just experienced the warmest week in recorded history. This is a sign of things to come.
I remember here in Glendale California when the fire inspector was lighting hillsides on fire in multiple places off the 2 freeway. I was there on the freeway when they started and thought - shit! These are arson!! Turns out years later the guy was caught. All firefighters are not heroes; some are dastardly villains.
Its New Zealand ! Can't even imagine what's going to happen in Aust this summer. Fires via ember attack can travel 5 to 10 km once a firestorm or fire weather comes into play. The embers get under houses or evas and start fires in advance of the fire front.
So nice to watch a rational discussion on the cause of wildfires in Canada. Wildfire season is thing in Canada, for real! Weather factors, including the winter’s snowpack and the length/duration of spring snowmelt always plays a major part in when the fire season starts. Also the amount, or lack thereof, of rain before/during snowmelt. I worked for many years (34) in a job that had me observing all these factors at play real-time because my job was measure streamflow year-round (so yeah, I needed to pay attention to these factors!), how it affected wildfires in Western Canada was just a learning experience, as a side benefit. P.S.: The conspiracy/climate change nonsense was a real annoyance, including the distraction it caused from people being able to learn the, seemingly limitless, number of the causes for wildfires.
Hats off to TwoBitDaVinci for an incredible job putting this information together. I just wanted to remind everyone to approach statistics with caution. The chart shows significant variance between individual fire seasons and the 20-year average. This suggests that the 'average' might not best represent wildfire trends due to the data's high variance. This year's fire season started earlier, but doesn't necessarily present a higher number of fires compared to others.
'It's even going as far as the States.' Wow... that is very far away from Canada. * Walks outside, looks South about 200 meters, seeing the Canada/US border line. * It's incredible it travels so far away. How could things in Canada impact the States? Anyway, I thank all the fire fighters out there fighting against these raging fires.
Canada had lightning storms. Their winter was mild and spring was hot/windy. Canada's snow melted 2 months early, and now they're experiencing droughts. Sap inside of the trees holds heat (Even year to year). Lightning in dry areas causes internal heat within the trees. After a storm, with wind, trees will begin to burn from the inside out, it can take a few days for them to start to smoke and flare up, they are called holdover fires. From year to year, these fires are increasing due to.... dun dun dun.. climate change.
thanks for telling us baloney you picked up from climate change lovers of the msm, beat it, you dont live anywhere near these fires, here in Alberta the earliest fires, like a 100 in a week, there was no lightning, no trains sparks, they were lit, by wingnuts, its too easy, drive to the middle of nowhere , where its dry, light a match, drop it, drive away, its too easy
@iamamyb climate change did not start the fires, not did it cause them to get out of control. That strong cold North wind had a lot to do with the fire and smoke spreading. We had it all down the East Coast on America and here in NC. Horrible air quality after one of the coolest Mays in history.
@@JesseDavis7373 It's literally fact. Lmao. Canada tracks potential holdover-fires on a weekly basis. USA does as well. Even further, how the "fires hop roads and water-bodies" is through their roots capturing heat. With an increase of wind, this can spread the fires from tree to tree, across lakes and roads, and they continue to burn from the inside out. How is this "based in dogma"? How do you not know that wind+fire+heat+drough+lightning+sap= promotion and the literal cause of wildfires? If a tree can literally capture heat, and even has its own temperature, how can it not set on fire?
@@JesseDavis7373 Basing North Carolina's climate on forest fires ~1000 miles away is your problem. You're seeing smoke because of the climate change experiences in Canada, not NC.
Excellent as usual Ricky. In addition to what you said in the video, the north Atlantic is the hottest it's been since records began. We've had a lot of heatwaves across the northern hemisphere this year. A perfectly unlucky set of conditions this year that has brought about ill fortune for Canada, that's my reading of the situation. Here in Norway we have vast forests, many of which surround small and isolated towns and a very rugged landscape that hinders fire-fighting equipment that isn't airborne. I dread this happening to us. Sending my love to you Canada.
Maybe look into the numerous videos that have come across my feed with Canadian Volunteer Firefighters being told to go home. They are not needed during this time when most of the country is burning. Makes no sense to me to turn away free help, unless something bigger is happening.
As a wildland firefighter in the DNR. I have worked very closely with the BIA. They implement the techniques of their ancestors. Their lands are almost always in great shape and extremely healthy. Their secret? Prescribed burns and overgrowth removal. Canada's Forests are extremely overgrown. Minimal care is taken to keep their forests clean. An overgrown forest is not healthy. Trees need space. Native Americans knew this 1000 years ago, and weve only just started to adapt the process over the last 20 years
While at least for now the air quality and smoke has calmed down here in Northern Indiana, there was a few weeks just recently where the air quality was constantly in the dangerous or very bad levels and there was a few days where when it was sunset it really looked like the end of the world lol.. being from Northern Indiana it was actually very shocking and eye opening to experience the effects of wildfire haze and the effects it had on the weather and the sun looking so weird and the haze. And that's here in Indiana. I can only imagine the horrors some of those on the front lines in Canada are experiencing. But even here there was a few days where the air even faintly smelt weird and I've been experiencing all these allergy like symptoms when I've never had allergies in my life, and some people I know who do have them were taking twice their medicine lol. But, the good news at least for us here in Indiana, is that these past few days have looked great and finally have had some sunny days after that perma-haze. Just a week ago I was in Indianapolis and the haze was so bad that it looked like a thick fog everywhere. And it's weird when you look at the weather and it dosen't say "sunny" or "cloudy, partly cloudy" but just "Haze" lol. These wildfires have been pretty devestating though and I don't see as much national media coverage on it as I think their should be. But I'm glad you made a video about this because when this stuff first happened it was freaking me out, now I'm more at ease with this week showing significant improvement, but they do say it's suppose to continue for the rest of the Summer.
I suspect this is simply natural variation. Different things run in cycles with different periods. When you superimpose multiple sine waves of different periods (say rain cycles, underbrush cycles, etc.) every so often you get a “perfect storm” where a few cycles hit their peak at the same time. I suspect something like this is what is happening in Canada this year. I suspect after a year or two of this, we will have a stretch with fewer than average fires and acres burned. That is just how the world works.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms Possible, but not probable. It is rare to have droughts for many years running. And a year or two of extensive fires leaves less fuel for future years. Nature seems quite good at having such useful feedback control loops … until humans interfere.
I'm curious to the relation of campsites, holidays, and the beginning of fires. I had a conversation with a BC forestry ministry field worker in April. He said the ground was already as dry as it normally is in June. Environmental terrorists aren't widespread enough to make conditions like that. "Never ascribe to malice what you can ascribe to incompetence" The same week that Lytton BC burned, RCMP found people from Vancouver who had started a campfire in Joffre Lakes Provincial Park, because covid restrictions had been lifted and they wanted to go camping. That was the same week that we hit +50°C. A BCWFS rep said "don't even fart in the forest" because it was so dry. Humans are morons.
The deal is Canada is the second largest country on the planet. Most of the population live in the southern part near the American border. The rest of Canada is mostly covered in forests. When a fire starts in the middle of nowhere it's logistically impossible to get to and it just burns and burns. Usually firefighters go from each province but this year each province is on fire not a good situation :-( Peace
I was a fire tower lookout person and my whole job was to watch for lightening, try to pinpoint it on my area map, and wait for the smoke to come up. Waiting minutes, hours, days, even weeks for any smoldering strikes to take off. Of course not all lightening strikes ignite a fire. 🔥🔥
I was born in 1952 in Ontario and lived in the country. All the farmers had wood stoves and cut firewood. Fallen and dead trees were cut and used every year and the woods were easy to walk through, there were few fallen trees to walk over. If there wasn't a surplus of dead, dry trees, my father would ring a live tree to dry for a year and cut it the next year. Nowadays, fossil fuels are used for heat, and anyone who uses wood doesn't use dead wood as a rule. At least every woodpile I see is mostly cut, split, and dried. Go for a walk on any forest in my area, Cambridge, On. and there's a path cleared through fallen trees. They rot and produce CO2, or eventually burn and produce CO2. So we're burning the fossils, the living, and the dead, and now we're choking the rest. Our illustrious leader Doug Ford cut the forest service budget 67% in 2019 and gutted the clean energy and electric cars incentives and doesn't think climate change is an issue. Last year we were 23 fire crews short and this year 50 fire crews short, and Graydon Smith, the Minister of Natural resources tells us "Ontarians can have all the confidence in the world" our safety is paramount. He brags about our firefighters going all around the world helping fight fires and that the other nations reciprocate. Imagine if we had 67% more to reciprocate with.
My lungs were damaged in a house fire as a teenager and now my asthma is pretty bad at times. An N95 has been the only way I'd be able to go outside recently. One day I didn't wear one and it wasn't even bad that day, and by the end of the week I needed Prednisone from the pulmonologist due to an asthma exacerbation. I'm not sure why a mask would ever be controversial, you don't want to end up like me!
Canuck here. As the winters warm, the spruce beetle does not die off. As a result, thousands of acres of standing dead trees make for a predictable outcome.
In Australia the fossil fuel funded right wing govt cut funding for Fire Fighting & climate forecasting for a decade before 2020 fires.. ignoring all the desperate pleas for help. But then minimized the harm & gaslit the nation saying it was normal. We voted them out in a landslide.
The smoke near Chicago has been horrible for several weeks. Starting to wonder if they would let it keep burning until the northern hemisphere cools down several degrees. Enough smoke in the upper atmosphere and they will get their wish. The ultimate nuclear winter long term experiment.
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In my line of work, we have investigators and crews sent out to scout origin. I know it sounds crazy to look for a lightning struck tree in what is essentially a continent sized forest but often times, we can find the exact tree/s in which a particular fire started from. What I'm saying is, they will find some of these origins.
Also, fire can burn and smolder in root systems underground with little oxygen, for days. (just some extra info)
Drone Fire Fighting Night & Day -- Set up in a bucket brigade format from water source to fire line to continuously drop water on or in front of fire line. few thousand drones needed for operation.
Just saying: If you're a psychopath in a position of power looking to set a country on fire, saying "let's do a controlled burn since that will save us from a fire in the future" is the perfect cover to commit legal arson and call everyone who suspects you a conspiracy theorist that's too stupid to know how the world works instead of listening to -our- the experts.
Da Vinci, everyone is missing why wildfires are becoming more explosive, its simple physics and its called the ignition temperature, the warmer it get, the warmer the mass and the closer to its ignition point, which also means that it takes less radiant heat from the fires to cause ignition further away
Sorry but at the end of the video you talk about forest management, creating "roads" and breaks, cutting undergrowth and dead fall... I don't think you have any comprehension of the vastness of the forests you're talking about. You can drive for days, thousands of kilometers, along the most northern routes across Ontario and Quebec alone and you're still only seeing a tiny fraction of forest (what's visible from the road). Forest management is fine in small doses around where we live, but 99% of it is barely accessible and way too vast to manage. Do what we can to keep humans from making it worse and let nature run it's course.
My brother has been operating a caterpillar fighting forest fires for the past coupe of months. He has worked with Amercans, Aussies New Zealanders, etc. In order to save an area near Edson, they had to work a 35 hour shift, they had brought lunch, however due to the severity of the fire, roads were closed, and there was no way to get them additional food. We thank everyone from every where for their help in our battle!
Thanks to your brother for his amazing work. Our prayers are with your family.
@@betterlife3574 not vaxed?
@@betterlife3574You sound MAGA to me🙄
@@DanaVastman for sharing real stories? That was deep, any interesting thoughts you'd like to share today?
Been there done that twice. A long as there is a safe place where the fire can't get to you being without drinking water is the worst. Hopefully everybody makes it home safe.
From Coastal BC, it’s been an extraordinarily dry summer and we still have months to go. It’s frightening watching the forests dry out as we have a couple more months with no rain forecast. A sincere Thanks to all the fire fighters!
A side note is that often the burnt wood can be logged. My brother bought a piece of land after the fire went through the Kettle Valley and built his house and shop from the burned trees. Inside the wood was good. Surprisingly, some of the trees even revived despite looking like crispy telephone poles.
Commercial lumber mills don't like the burnt logs as they are really hard on their sawing equipment. There is an attachment that can be put on smaller portable sawmills that scrapes off the burned material where the saw runs. Can't remember the guys name, he lives in Oregon and he saws a lot of salvage logs on his TH-cam channel. Perhaps they will come up with a similar item for commercial mills.
I live in Canada. You might want to know that 3/4 of these wildfires were manmade. Lightning causes about 2% of our wildfires.
Yup..the biggest fire in NS started by kids burning tires.
And here's another 'conspiracy' fact: the retired Canadian firemen offered their services to the Canadian government and they received a NO, THANKS. What the hell is going on? Qui bono?
All the fires in Québec started on June 1st after we had somme massive thunderstorms which occured after the warmest and driest month of May on record
That's true every year.
Nope, that's just not true. Lightning causes a lot of wildfires. Just look at the fires in northern Quebec, no one lives in these very remote places.
Canuck here, I think one really important fact that we forget and we should take advantage of is that the indigenous people had a good deal of experience, tending to areas and preventing serious fires from encroaching where they stayed. I think we have a lot of wisdom to learn from their techniques, history and elders.
No matter what, forests burn when they are set on fire.
Indigenous wisdom is sacred knowledge.
had a conversation with an idiot. his family came on the mayflower.Sent to north america.Well he was not making some bodies daughter happy.i have to watch idiocracy the move.Before i start ending some idiots.ya sure free trip to visit the titanic. Is jimmy hofffa there
Yes 2nd and 3rd growth trees are just match sticks they are not fire or drought resistant like the old growth Forrest the Problem is Human stupidity in Forrestry
The indigenous had an inferior culture and could not compete. Now they compete for victimhood status. What wisdom? Lol. Lmao, even.
I live in eastern Ontario close to the Quebec border. One thing that fascinates me every year, is how rapidly we transition from winter to summer. This year for example, at the beginning of April we had an ice storm (very annoying) which caused a huge power failure and flooding. At the time I still had close to a foot of rapidly melting snow in my yard, a lot of mud patches, and a lot of bare tees. Less than 3 weeks later, we had summer-like temperatures, grass urgently in need of cutting, and trees covered in leaves. Fires cannot start until winter subsides and the forests are dry but, my point is, this happens over a very short period of time. This is undoubtedly caused by a quick movement of the jet stream, that people south of the border may not fully appreciate, and which gives the appearance of everything happening all at once.
Woah...
@@ChrisZoomER I've noticed this in NZ too. the ground dries out so fast the stock don't get chance to even out the hoof pocked land before it does. It's very rough to walk on all summer.
I was born in the late 50s and live in central Canada. I remember spring and fall seasons being much more distinct, and longer lasting back in my youth.
The one thing that is overlooked is that fire firing equipment got better about 20 -40 years ago. Every time a fire starts it keeps getting put out faster and faster. From 10 to 40 years ago the amount of forest that we saved is greater than over 40 years ago. This means some areas have 40 years of undergrowth and combustibles built up that has never been there in recorded history. This is all extra fuel for the fires. The better our fire fighting equipment gets the more stuff collects at base of trees. Eventually no matter how
Good our equipment gets we will loose against nature.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms This speaks to the need for a massive labor force out in the woods, bringing out usable lumber & clearing brush, doing small controlled burns, and not under profit motive. No one wants to "talk politics" but indie progressives have been calling for a WPA or CCC style work program since before the 2008 crisis put so many people out of jobs and carelessly wasted hundreds of thousands of homes to utility shutoffs & foreclosure. Extreme profit mongering has destroyed so much over the decades even as companies invent miracle tech. We need balance. Imagine a fraction of military spending put into firefighting, too. Then replanting. Spend now or burn more later.
I've been saying that for decades. We should be just letting mother nature do its thing. And concentrate our efforts into protecting property. Also ban the building of new structures in heavily forested areas.
That’s right ! Fires are natural and the forests replenish because of them . Human intervention from all these years has set us up for this
I don't think most people reading this comment even get what exactly this means and how serious the problem is... It might look more like a joke to some, but it's basically true. The only thing is, that we've been breaking the nature way more than 40 years.
I think we could accomplish a lot of this could be improved by removing dead trees & thinning or removing dried & drying underbrush! Goats are very effective at clearing underbrush… Doing those will make firebreaks more effective at clearing underbrush!
I think the other issues that's a great concern is the reignition from fires that get into peat deposits underground. They can easily burn for months, and peat moss is common in Canadian boreal forests.
As a forester who worked in the woods and fought fires from time to time over 40 years, I saw fire size and duration grow. Fire ignition 40 years ago was 80% lightning caused. Now fire ignition is about 80% human caused. The largest factor is fuel built up then major changes in forest vegetative elements. These elements are often invasive grasses, brush and dense timber stands that carry fire. In Idaho, forests are out of balance in species distribution due to, " high grade", timber harvest going back for many years. For a variety of reasons quality forest management has lagged, (warning; the opinion of an old retired guy). Climate change has resulted in extended fire seasons in many forest eco-systems. I wish I could be more positive about the problems but I doubt that people are ready to do the hard and expensive things it will take to bring some balance to wildland fire management.
I have low hopes too lol
Yeah RCMP is investigating the fires in BC and most of them were intentionally caused...
New research studying carbon shows forest fires were stronger and more damaging 200 yrs ago before there were fire reports and records, so this may be the worst year since records were kept, but it was much worse many years ago.
40 years as Forester great why in the 90s there was no fire but when the 2000s came suddenly forest fire get up year after year
@@BrothaJeff
I think there is a significant difference between “human caused” and “intentional”.
I have no doubt that a bunch of these fires could have been caused by humans, but I would believe that it has more to do with negligence than intentional destruction. Many people in rural areas burn their brush in the spring. It accumulates over the winter as snow and ice break off branches and knock down trees. The spring is usually a good time to burn all of this debris. But people may not have been aware of just how dry it had been, and they may have started a small brush fire not knowing that it would grow out of control. That is not the same thing as intentionally starting these fires.
I think if you’re going to claim intentionality then you better have some strong evidence to support that. I haven’t seen any of that evidence, only certain sources saying that a high percentage of these fires were caused by humans, which doesn’t give any indication that there was intention involved.
So, in my 20s and 30s, I was a firefighter here in California. After I started having issues with heat illness, I had to retire so I went back to school and became a biologist. That's my experience just for some context as to why I might have at least a little insight into these things.
The problem is humans, not only that we accidentally and sometimes intentionally start fires, but that we have built our houses in the way of where fire would naturally burn every so often before there we came in and built our houses. Of course we can't just up and move away from anything that could catch on fire because, at some point, everything is flammable. So the best thing we can do is prevent fires from burning near our homes. We can do this by clearing out dead trees and dry brush from our house since the main way we put wild fires out in the fire department is by basically clearing out all the vegetation to a certain width depending on the height of the vegetation burning and the strength of the wind. If I'm remembering correctly, you clear a width of 1.5 times the height of the vegetation on the burning side of the line (or where you want to stop a fire if it's coming towards your house) and this is in calm winds. If you get strong winds and especially if you are clearing a space around your house, well wider is always better. If you do have trees on your property, don't just automatically cut them down to avoid them catching on fire unless they're dead. Do cut dead branches and low branches on the tree so that even if the grass in the area is on fire, it will probably go out before it gets hot enough to set your living tree on fire.
Anyway, we put wild fires out by starting at the heel of the fire, which is where the fire started and build these fire lines on both sides of the fire, eventually performing a pincer maneuver to prevent the fire from continuing to spread since we've cut off all the new stuff to burn in front of it. Then, it goes out on its own but we also help it go out and make sure it's out using water or burying it with dirt. It is so hard to put a wild fire out because, as you can imagine, the fire can burn a lot faster than we can do a bunch of yard work in the way of clearing a fire line. This is why things like bulldozers help a lot. Then the air drops of retardant slow the spread of the fire to help us catch up and, at least in my experience, the water drops from smaller aircraft are to tamp down flames in the area so we can pass through, say, with more water for the engines on scene and that's why the fire department owns some water trucks because fire will start wherever it wants whether there's a hydrant nearby or not. This is also why the main way we put out wild fires is not with water but with containment. If you make a fire line around your house, it is much more likely to survive if and when a wild fire burns through the area and, when firefighters assigned to protect people's homes in the event of a fire burning towards them, if we see such a nice fire line, best believe we're going to park the engine in your driveway and fight the fire from there because it's the safest spot to do so.
So, on the biological side, fire has been burning through since long before humans were around and there are quite a number of plants that actually benefit from fire burning through every so often. There are some pine trees that won't release their seeds unless the pine cones have caught fire. There are other plants whose seeds won't sprout until water that has passed through ash from a fire gets to them as a strategy to sprout when it is the least likely that another plant will be blocking their access to sunlight. Ash from fires also enriches the soil in an area with needed nutrients and it a natural way to clear out dead trees and other plants.
One of the things that causes these unusually big fires, in addition to the fact that we're heating up our entire planet like crazy, is when there is a winter with an above average amount of rain so that lots of plants start growing only to dry out and die when the summer heat comes. This means there is more dry vegetation and at some point somewhere, it will eventually take a spark and start on fire. There's really not a realistic way to go through every part of wild land and clear all of it out, which is why it makes sense to clear it out near where people live and to have prescribed burns at times when it isn't very hot and it isn't windy. The people who light these fires have extensive training in what the safest way to light either a back fire or a controlled burn is and the vast majority of fire fighters are not authorized to light such fires. Prescribed burns are probably the most efficient way to get rid of a a lot of dead vegetation because it piles up and is therefore more likely to set the nearby trees on fire, which is when you get a really bad wild fire. Probably the only controlled burns that people hear about are the very few that get out of control and perhaps ones nearby one's house if one checks to see what's going on there. Lots and lots of these prescribed burns happen each year without a hitch.
So that's what I know and I hope it helps people protect their homes as much as they can from the potential of a wild fire.
I think one of the hardest things about this is that a lot of the human caused fires could have legitimately been caused by people burning their brush in the spring. It usually isn’t an issue because the spring is still kind of cold and wet, but the hot and dry conditions means that these brush fires can easily get out of control.
I think it’s so important to burn safely and have lots of water on hand in case things get out of control. I’ve literally had a small island I was camping on start burning out of control due to heat from our fire pit spreading out underground. It can happen very quickly, and it’s very difficult to put that genie back in the bottle once it starts burning.
I am in Alberta, this is the first video I have watched of yours. You have done a better job explaining this situation than ALL CANADIAN MEDIA!! THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU!! WONDERFUL JOB!! LOVE THE STATS!! Greetings from Canada🇨🇦
Environmental Scientist Here. I used to work for the Forest Service. You're pretty much spot on, only i would have added the concepts of Relative Humidity and Fuel Loads. As we continue to prevent wildfires from occurring, the fuel loads continue to increase. The taller the fuels, the more likely they will get into the canopy and thus evolving into a fire that will kill large legacy trees that would otherwise have survived. The perfect solution is to do bottom up thinnings (where you remove all of the smaller diameter, leaving most of the larger diameter), but they are expensive, and many fundamentalist environmental extremist groups use all sorts of legal tactics to prevent that (their view is to let it all burn). Also, congress was supposed to give the FS money to thin a lot of the plantations from the 60' 70' 80' 90's, but they didn't, so they grew too dense and are now density locked and ready to burn. It's a combination of bad management in the past with a total swing to the other side with inability to do bottom up thining (which is a monumental task, legal sabotage aside).
Thus, enter controlled burns. Knowing that the ongoing accumulation of fuels is a ticking time bomb - eventually it WILL burn, and severely so - we attempt to introduce controlled fires in the shoulder seasons. Don't do it, and it will burn at some point in the middle of the season, or burn it now and hope that the weather doesn't screw up your plans. Yes, there is risk, but understand this: that land WILL HAVE BURNED eventually. So saying "they caused the fire" is nonsense. They are attempting to reduce fuel in a controlled manner so that firest don't rage uncontrolled after lighting storms in the middle of the fire season, where they would burn hotter and faster.
And that brings me to the next concept. Relative Humidity (RH). That's what causes forest to burn. Humidity prevents fires. Dry air dries fuels -fast - making them suceptible to ignition sources. Yes, you need an ignition, but when you have low RH, you could fart and it would cause a forest fire, figuratively speaking. Enter Climate change, which exasterbates existing natural patterns so that they become more extreme and then you have lightning strikes and Human stupidity (fireworks, cigarrets, raging campfires, arson, etc) you now have a serious problem because of the extremely low RH. Plus a lot of fuels.
And of course, this goes back to Climate Change. Yes, there are natural paterns at play, of course, but Climate Change has tipped the scales towards lower RH worldwide. I love that people that can't handle the reality of Climate Change come up with all sorts of excuses, but the reality the last 23 years have been the hottest 23 years in recorded history, EVEN CONSIDERING we had 3 consecutive la niñas. Dry winds with low RH can turn a forest that was recently rained on into a crisp in 2-4 days. I've seen it. It is incredible, it is dangerous, and it's the reason that so many fires started. Lighting with a high RH isn't a big deal. Even with lots of fuels. But low RH? it's like having a hair dryer on all the fuels. And the number one contributor to such low RHs is climate change, which makes extremes more extremes but in particular by increasing temperatures and thus lowing the RH more and more, and apparently, sometimes when things line up, incredibly early.
So take off your tin hats, and get your N95 masks. in 2017 in my forest in Oregon i didn't see the sun the entire summer. The smoke will make you lethargic beyond belief. The maks are worth it. But after not seeing the sun all summer long, that's when i realized, oh snap, this is only going to keep getting worse. We're at an average of 422ppm of CO2 (up from 300ppm pre industry). Going up by 2.2ppm each year. And the amound of CO2 we are releasing from these forests is going to increase. It's like we don't give a f. That's not even getting into the absurd amounts of Methane stored in the permafrost; enough to increase Methane some 500+x. Mind mumbing numbers.
We need to remove fuels. Fast. Bottom up thinnings work. You leave most of the largest trees and remove everything else. You then reintroduce fire on a 5 to 10 year rotation.
or we just let everything roast, kill everything, and let it reset. I guess that works too. Irony is the "environmental fundamentalists" that don't let us do bottom up thinnings because "there are animals in there", ignore that "no-action alternative" leads to wildfires that will destroy everything. We can mitigate. Bottom up thinnings work.
But whatever. The system is mostly dominated by politics and legalese, not science. So i guess we just let everything go to hell. That's part of why i left the FS. I loved the mission, but sadly politics dominates management, with groups lying to the public to get attention and thus funding, so they can continue their smear campaign and legal attack on every project, preventing or seriously delaying management. I didn't want to see the slow destruction of the forests i loved nor deal with the absolute legal-political nonsense.
Thing is we don’t have the same amount of legal challenges in Canada. We do have humongous forested areas in very thinly populated areas, and a very small population across the country. There are some groups trying to save old groves, but for 99% of the forest fires we are seeing, it is not at play. Most people understand that forest fires are part of life here, maybe not this intense tho.
I know it’s the big “no no” for you but climate change is 100% at play here, and that is not political! It is 100% scientific. The only people who scream politics are those who don’t believe in it. If you see a gigantic train going towards you, you can deny its existence all you want but it will still kill you if you don’t move away from it.
@@yannirugby yet you yourself cherry pick "the science" (oh no , that abused phrase again). There are those of us who also read "The science" who fundamentally disagree with you! And politics, sadly, is a huge part of "the science", and those two bed mates aren't parting ways for the foreseeable future! You are guilty of the very myopia you accuse others of!
Every forest is different and requires people on the ground with an understanding and incentive to attempt to create sustainable forest conditions.
Thinning from below in a stand with 100% dwarf mistletoe infection rate doesn't work.
Having a mosaic of multi aged and multi species stands consisting of single, clusters, clumps and groups of trees interspersed with clearings, has the best chance of maintaining tree vitality, minimizing pathogenic insect outbreaks with a minimal risk of stand replacement during fire events in western North American dry inland forests.
Except for aspen stands where hot stand replacing burns or clearcutting renew and invigorate.
Climit change is a hoxe. Oprah and JFK Jr. inventid it in 2000 to trick us into waring masks so that they can distract us and then we don't notice that there building a secrit base on the moon for the elites to hide all the dinosaurs that they reverse DNA bioengineered. They startid the wild fires by dipping squirls in diesel fuel then shooting bottle rockets at them then let them run through the forest. The reasin they startid the fires was to make the smoke so that at nite we woodint be able to see the moon base construction project (there bilding the pools now, it's easy to see if you just use a home made telescope you can build from empty beer bottles or the better version uses a kids kaleidoscope and seran wrap.)
This is why I won't leave from inside my Faraday cage.
Manmade climate is not real. The last 23 years have not been the hottest. These are outright lies. Imagine being this dishonest.
It's also worth noting that the shape of the jet stream in May was a big factor. An atypical "Omega block" of high pressure was in place over central US and Canada. This one pulled hot air far North into Canada, then blew the smoke Southeast into the US. Under a more typical jet stream smoke from Canadian fires mostly blow over sparsely populated areas or out to sea.
@@HandleandgredleYup! 😂
Don't be scared, be prepared! 😎
@@flyaway1470 We can be a little scared, as a treat. 🍬
I saw very strange ones in May, different than any I have ever seen.
Buffalo here, thanx for sharing,⚡🔥🔥🔥lol
Thank you for doing this video, many Canadians believe there are many other factors to the starting of these fires, the rate which they have burned at and the ability to manage and suppress these fires. Not just “how did the fires start”
If you want to see another area with a history of wildfires burning out of control for long periods of time, look up the Tillamook Burn. They had to figure out how to get that area where is wasn't so susceptible to burning because you can't control the wind through there. They had to take other measures.
You must live down south, take it from a northern Ontario guy, they happen every year.
Ret CDN army here, I agree they happen yearly. Been in Northern Ont and seen them. This year's situation IMO demonstrated more than a natural occurrence.
Sid, you so right.
People just don't understand how vast these areas are.
I live in British Columbia, most of these fires are 100's of miles away from the closest road.
I live in bc, and this is one of the worst ever I see water bombers going out every 20 min. I'm so glad that Mexico,Australia, and the usa and other countries that are here helping as right now we need all the help we can get. It's so hard to breathe and eyes are buring from all the fires please have your prayers and thoughts for us thank you all the firefighters be safe and come home to your families
I personally think that 2007 and 2010 were worse in South bc , Kelowna area than this yr but that's just my opinion 🤷
I live in Alberta and want to thank all the firefighters from around the world that have come to help. This year the fires started early in Alberta. This was before any spring greening of plants had begun, so it was very dry because the wind had melted any snow. The fires started in several places and our local resources of equipment and people were overwhelmed. So thank you to everyone who is giving support.
My man and I wish we could help out, but our health is not in the best of shape to help. We are in the D of michigan 🇺🇸, all of you are in our prayers that you come out victorious. We ❤ Canada, and wish, hope, and pray that all of you are safe. ✌❤, and lots of prayers from the 🇺🇸 to Canada.....
Greatest friends to the great North...
God bless Canada, and god bless the 🇺🇸
@@HollyTimlick-du2zx Thank you so much to think of us. You are a dear.
@@westzed23 very welcome. 🍻🍻
I was working at a golf course a couple decades ago, where some random golfer decided to discard his lit cigar into a swale (typically dry, acted as a micro-creek when it rained a lot) that bordered the course and a adjacent farm. It turned out that the soil was peat moss and ended up catching fire, but underground.
Another worker and I were the only people out in that area sometime later when I noticed a tiny stream of smoke. I investigated, realized the ground was on fire, took a 3 minute golf cart trip back to the groundskeeping barn to inform the head groundskeeper, and about 8 minutes later we were all out there with 2 pumps drawing from a nearby creek and spraying a absolute shitload of water onto this fire (from a 4" line).
I watched the ground literally open up and shoot flames nearly 15 feet high. I'd drown the hole and move to the next, but it'd already be flaming again before I put the next one out. I don't know how much time passed, but out of nowhere there were a bunch of different fire departments arriving and directing us away from the area while a small group of helicopters took turns doing fly-by's as they poured huge tanks of water onto it.
It took forever to get it under control and ultimately (presumably) extinguished entirely. All because some idiot decided to throw his lit cigar into a ditch, instead of just snubbing it and taking it with him to put in a garbage can like a normal person (ironically, there was a small garbage can about 100ft away, which he would have encountered immediately after finishing the hole he was playing).
The northern areas of Canada have no roads, Ricky. You don't go for a car ride beside Hudson's Bay . It's hard to fight a fire without a pumper . Planes are the only way , formidable logistics. Distance is another factor. These fires are burning 500 miles away ,or more ,from infrastructure. Its an overwhelming situation when there are hundreds of fires. Sorry about our smoke.🚒
Airfields without roads are no help as you can’t truck in the fuel and retardant needed by the air attack folks. I spent a few years doing detection in northern bc during the early 80s. We plotted all lightning strikes in our district and saw some flare up as much as a month later. The other thing many don’t understand is those huge hot fire will often smolder all winter and flare up again as soon as things dry out in the summer. Another detail many don’t comprehend when they say we should just get them while still small and manageable is just how fast they can grow. I remember clearly one we spotted from the air in 83, it was just a pinpoint smoke in the middle of nowhere so we called for an air attack high priority. Tankers already in the air were diverted and arrived on scene within 20 minutes, fire was reported to be 40 acres crowning and running by the time they got there. By sunset it was over a thousand acres.
That’s why Canadian firefighters use a lot of dozers and excavators to create “roads” and then they burnout from those barriers.
Fires can jump a lot more than just streets. A street is a minor obstacle to a large wildfire. I was there to see a fire jump a lake years ago from the cinders being blown across the lake into the untouched area across from it.
Probably trudeau , he didn’t like the peaceful assembly, again
That's crazy! Can you mention what lake that was? how wide was it? I wonder how broad these backburns would need to be to prevent a huge fire from spreading.
Look into the Okanagan Mountain Park fire in 2003. Strong winds during that fire had it jumping two Km. at a time. We were building houses and theought it would take the fire three days to get there. We had to evacuate the next day.
I've only witnessed one major structural fire. It was an all wood construction single storey office type. It burn so hot you couldnt stand comfortable within 200 to 300 feet. 100feet away and the other buildings were scorched up and had to be cooled.
Here in the southwest we often have embers falling thirty minutes ahead of the fires arrival and in climax Pinion /Juniper (PJ) that can be real exciting!
One of the most overlooked aspects to boreal forests is that unlike temperate forests, boreal forest floor is peat. Our fires can start and burn underground for months, even years.
The fires in the north, like the one in Fort McMurray years ago (called The Beast) burned for 18 months in Athabasca peat bog. Our forests have an entire ecosystem beneath the trees that touch the permafrost, and now that the frost isn’t coming back, a little lightning goes a very long way… 😢
For the record, I’m in northern Alberta and have seen the fires from the west end of our city. It’s been frightening. I also saw the South African firefighting troops last week. ❤
Same in Nova Scotia, peat burns forever.
@@IdrisFashan South African troops?
YES ! Thank you, you nailed it precisely ! By the way I'm ashamed total lack detail ONE from CBC, CTV GLOBAL etc. let alone a single reporter showing wildfires. just here is where SMOKE is going. We ain't totallt stupid yet
@@fractuss I’m sorry, is my vocabulary imprecise for the standards of this TH-cam thread? Are troops only soldiers employed by his majesty of the commonwealth? I’m but a mere civilian. 🤪
You neglected to mention the extreme lack of forest management that seems to have be in vogue since the early 2000s. In California, for example, our worst fires burned so out of control that the fire services couldn't prevent them from wiping out towns and suburbs.
A very hard look needs to be given that particular practice of not clearing the dead wood and clearing the brush, and cutting down some of the trees to thin the forests a little bit.
Agree. Oregon has same issues. Since logging has been reduced in some areas, this has allowed over-growth of bushes and smaller trees that typically die off and provide fuel. Also with logging reduced, the roads that companies put in and maintained are disappearing, which reduces access and fire breaks. Very complicated issue.
Trouble is Canada has so much thick boreal forests you can't even get to and it's all mature thick dry soft woods stands 70 to 80 ft high and there was a new beetle that migrated up hear they kill spruce and any soft woods with moss floor so some are started by carelessness but most are lightning caused they strike and burn under ground for days before surfacing I was ff and I said in another comment you can't fight these fires when you have a walk70 ft high you can't get close to it even water bombers it's useless spruce burns so hot it all evaporates
Thank you for your report, I am from Alberta Canada, and survived the 2003 lost creek fire in the Crows Nest Pass Ab. Loggers were able to haul out trees for two years after the fire for lumber, taking them to Spray Lakes Lumber in Cochrane Ab. to be cut into lumber.
Survived? Lol
In Latin America they use goats and sheep to clear dried brush. This concept was recently implemented in Laguna Beach to clear out dried brush from the hillsides in the canyon. It is a cool sight to see a herd of goats on the hillside just doing what nature designed them to do.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms it's a lot harder for a fire to catch on if all the leaves/grasses are gone(eaten short) instead of a 3-4 foot high dry grasses that acts like gunpowder when it burns
Alot of these fires are occurring in a timber type with few grasses and leaves but rather have dead and down trees, branches and needles on the ground. A fire can smolder for weeks after lightning starts it until conditions exist that allow it to get up into the forest complex of fuels. I don’t think the goats are going to eat needles and little branches. They work great where there are bushes and grass. There is no fire proofing of the forest. Even clearcutting of the forest leaves residual fuels on the ground that don’t stop fires but allows them to usually burn even faster through them and cause lots of spotting. The best way to fire proof the forest is to burn it in prescribed burns that remove all the dead and down and limb up the trees.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms probably most of it even the needle trees
One thing you missed about the content of the smoke - UV from the sun converts some of it into VOCs like formaldehyde and other things that contribute to the burning plastic look smell. Also in order to filter VOCs you need respirators with a carbon filter layer as well as a particulate filter.
Yep, which is why all wildfires lead to people getting sick and complaining about a toxic burning plastic smell. LOL
Thanks for the explanation! I'm in Detroit, and all of us here were confused by the burning plastic smell.
@@RockitFX1 Theyre lying bro.
@@kidwave1 who's lying? And about what?
This is absolute BULLSHIT
Our ability to suppress fires has created forests full of dry fuel on the ground. I have been cleaning my two acre heavily forested property every fall for the last four years, burning the dry dead material. It has gone from an area too thick to walk and even see through to something I can walk around in now. Every fall it is a five day continuous fire burning the dead fuel. This year it will be the same again.
Native's did controlled burns all the time. They knew how and when to burn to suppress extreme fires and provide more food
Climate change people and politicians seem to be against proper forrest management almost as if they want a climate disater to happen.
It's like that old joke about bankruptcy: it happened slowly and just a little bit at first, but then it all happened suddenly and all at once.
One of the big fires in California a few years back, I'm not sure which one it was, but there was Native American land near this fire and they had no problem. The Native Americans know if there is no fuel, there is not a forest fire. They have been doing this for years.
As a logger of 44 yrs ,the bush has always dried out in the summer and fire hazard always increased to the point of shutting the industry down til the weather changed .What's incomprehensible is the forest service doing prescribed burns in the springtime and if you didn't put out fire when it was small you couldn't get them out till the weather changed .Its always been that way .
Statics shown is this very video prove your anecdote wrong. It not been that way, burned areas are bigger each year, and drought is getting worse. Where are the all ice road gone in Finland and Canada? How anyone be that blind?
@@HVM_fi It was loggers that put the fires out before the forests service took it over and the previous generation of the forest service put out the fires when they are small because you couldn't get them out without a weather change . The current gen of the forest service does not do that anymore ,they put a guard around it and call it good unless it is close to a townsite .Canada never had ice roads in the summertime ,that is a winter only thing .Also its not an anecdote ,that's how we did things before the current gen took over.
@@markgallicano 50 years ago there were 20-30 official ice roads in use, and those were open 1.5 to 2 months in a winter. Last winter there were only three, located in the Northern Finland, and those were open only ~two weeks due lack of ice thickness/quality.
There are droughts and fires in California Canada Australia and Mediterranean islands, and those are getting larger in each year, those can't explained just by firefighting practices.
@@HVM_fithank you for knowing nothing but hand-me-down information.
@@markgallicanothanks for giving us solid insight on your experience. Hope things get better soon.
The skies clouded over here in Spain last week, which is not unusual as we often get sand blowing up from the Sahara. However it came as a shock to learn that on this occasion it was smoke from the Canadian fires!
One World.
That’s crazy, thanks for sharing
Sorry from 🇨🇦
Prescribed burns have been something that has been relearned over the past few decades as Australia always has had a history with bushfires for tens of thousands of years. Once the modern "experts" finally started listening to the First Nation's people here, the method/skills/procedure for doing prescribed burns greatly improved.
I can imagine that doing prescribed burns isn't as easy as "put fire here, done" and hopefully more people can get trained tho I can imagine it would sometimes get out of hand. Which has happened occasionally here in Australia.
I have recently heard about 500+ Aussie firefighters have flew over to North America to fight your fires with and I wish them the best of luck and all those who have and will get caught up in this to stay safe >.
OK. But here in Canada prescribed burns have been around as a method of controlling wildfires long before the natives discovered their voice again and started talking it up like they'd invented it. In my years in East Africa decades ago, regular burning of dried grass and brush to encourage green sprouting has been going on for probably a million years. The natives in Canada didn't invent it, they just conveniently re-discovered this ancient practice that pre dated their existence in North America, when a bunch of compliant well funded experts started to listen to them and green gold started flowing their way for their 'ancient' knowledge.
It hit me hard when you mentioned a group that wants the population to ALL be clustered in cities. TRUE! In the early 90's I was having a horrible time with the planning office in The Dalles, OR. I had two properties to build on ( one which had already previously been permitted ). We went from two to 10 county planners, and I was not being allowed to build on my two properties. To get to the point" I went to a planning meeting "! I was shocked to see their plan "!!! It's was exactly as you mentioned. On the large chalk board they wanted NO people living rurally including no dogs, no horses, cows etc.etc. etc. And ALL people forced to live in the city...NO RURAL LIVING! We also had a group that illegally in a 3:00am vote without the opposing voters being present, voted in the Columbia Gorge Commission. You'll have to investigate their agenda yourself, but I believe they still have control in the Columbia Gorge.
As I have been trying to get across on social media for a decade. A new approach is needed in order to fight such fires. My recommendation would be a heavy lift helium aircraft fitted with water cannons/fire retardant. Bottom and sides fitted with tiles that were used on the space shuttle for reentry in the event the craft gets too close to the blaze.
There are currently this type craft a helium filled ship that can lift 250 tons. When you compare the amount of water/fire retardant that this craft can carry compared to say a 747 at 19,000 gallons to 250 tons at 68,000 gallons. There are also others that carry heavier weights. The helium filled craft can pinpoint where the water flows and can stay on site for longer period of time. After becoming empty the craft would be replaced with another if needed while 1st craft goes to refill at nearby body of water or source.
I was told by family who have spent their entire adult life fighting forest fires that most of the fires were lighting caused. That with no thinning, past fire suppression policy, allowed the undergrowth to be way out of control and it allows major fires. No matter how they started it is a shame. To the firefighters....be safe. Those who did arson I hope they get whats coming. Now, I vote for aliens.. 😂😂😂😂😮😮😮 Thank you Ricky. Be safe everyone.
Lightening was not the main issue this time around.
They definitely purposely set !
@@michaelkolbe5963So what? If the management policies didn't have the forests in a state of having severely overloaded undergrowth an arsonist would not be able to do any significant damage. Everyone is so quick to blame the initial cause, while what is really at fault is what caused the forest to become such a tinderbox.
@@michaelkolbe5963 The largest (and most unusual because of their location) fires are in Québec, and they indeed started last June 1st after we had some massive thunderstorms.
@@davepeterschmidt5818 How could Canada manage forests that are larger than entire countries? It is done on a smaller scale in the semi-arid parts of Western Canada, but managing all forests of the country is an impossible task
I don't know about the rest of Canada but here in Alberta we didn't have much of a spring season this year. Temperature went from -20C to +20C over about a one week timespan, the snow completely melted and all the grass and shrubs were completely dried out and brown, it takes about 2 weeks of above freezing temperature for all the trees and grass to turn green again. Combine that with no rain and very low humidity and its the perfect conditions for wildfires. I don't blame anything specifically for the fires, its just going to happen no matter what. When you look at a map of Canada, pretty much all the population and cities exist along one highway that stretches across the country, the rest is just endless trees and farmland. Just getting access to the areas these fires are burning would not be easy.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms True even in the South such as Nashville, Tenn. Lots of "evergreen", well, leyland cypress, other, got burned and toasted after this past Winter.
Really difficult topic for you to tackle. Thanks for your courage. I didn’t really expect you to provide a definitive answer to “why” the fires are happening (and you didn’t), but you were completely honest about the possibilities. Thank you! 😊
It's very hard to pitch in an opinion around these highly politicized topics, but I think Ricky did a good job at cutting through the noise, IMO
Courage? Have we gotten to the point that talking about forest fires is dangerous? Wow.
Rethink forest 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️really? WOW🤯
@@incognitotorpedo42 Well, there's death threats on weathermen discussing climate change, so yeah. If you mention climate change, you might just be in the cross-hairs.
I think its also important to say that in ontario, unless the is encroaching upon a community or other important location. They tend to let the fire burn. The boreal is a fire origin forest and some trees like Jack Pine and other conifer species only open their cones and disperse seeds after they have experienced high heat like a fire. Fire also makes the ground more fertile for the new vegetation to thrive.
What? Fires burns the ground destroying the diet
Another factor to consider is the effect of banning logging. Save the trees sounds beautiful. But controlled logging can be essential as a way to reduce fire risk. Cleared zones and logging trails provide effective fire blocks.
Excellent presentation Ricky. We are so aware of this in southern Oregon and Northern California. Where we have had devastating forest fires that have taken out towns. I spend a lot of time in the woods and come across massive amounts of deadwood. The bottom line is we do not harvest any of this material. And there is a strong movement by certain environmental groups to encourage the burning. If you look at data provided by the Oregon Department of forestry you will find that this increase in forest fires has a strong correlation to when we stopped harvesting. I would suggest that we need to start thinking sensibly about proper harvesting of wood. And especially when it comes to cutting lines in the forest. The environmental groups here went as far as to shut down the fire roads because I didn’t want people traveling through that area.This made fire fighting and search and rescue very difficult. Yes this is deeply engrossed in our politics also.
That's what Disney style management will get ya...
"Those things once the ruin of the forest may now be it's salvation.
Fire, the ax the gun and the COW." ~ Aldo Leopold~
Get the logger and cowman beck on the forest!
Selective harvesting would help, but no corporate wood company wants to do that. They want to clear cut until it's all gone. This leads to sick forests that get overly dense young trees that burn easily. That just adds to fire danger. Sure cut down all the trees no fire....but that's simplistic thinking. This issue is more complex than just cutting trees. It needs billions of dollars in gov't funding for SURVEYS, SCIENTIFIC STUDIES, then and only then, harvesting. I say this as someone who worked in the woods as a data collector.
Blaming Environmentalists?
@@earnthis1 Billions huh? How bout going back to what works. Until the l70's the Forest Service operated in the black with a profit . "Billions" just get more Gummint parasites involved. Here in the states even the most virulent nature Nazis now admit that the logger and cattleman have their place in any well run forest plan.
I work on the forest as an inholder.
@@earnthis1The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Only permit strip logging, and that's what will be done. That way, we will have both lumber and fire breaks.
I didn't hear about those conspiracy "theories" until your video. It made me realise that humanities end is inevitable. If not from climate change itself then from the stupidity of our fellow humans.
All Canadian social medias talking about the fires are filled with those conspiracy theories...
Wonderful video. We are in Northern Ontario, Canada. We are worried about being burned out some day. So much dead wood in the forests everywhere.
You can filter the air in your home using a box fan and a furnace filter. Get a filter that handles smoke & particulates the same size as your box fan, place the filter on the inlet side. The suction of the fan will keep it on place. Keep your windows closed and run the fan anywhere in the house. Replace the filter as needed. It's a cheap and effective solution
In the western US, it could be days to weeks before a fire starts that a lightening strike hit. The tree that was hit will shoulder until conditions like wind and heat are optimal. We always dread lightening storms that do not produce rain.
You need to take your weather analysis further beyond just lightning. Prevailing winds, humidity, etc could all play a part. Lightning strike fires could easily smolder for several days - then one weather system (say - change in wind direction and intensity) could move through the area and make them all become more intense on the same day...I wouldn't be surprised at all to see the jetstream move over the area or some other pattern shift on the day they all appear to "start".
Half this video wasn't for me. Eco-terrorists going around in flame-shooting helicopters was never something I considered as a legitimate possibility, so debunking it didn't really teach me anything. It's like debunking flat-earth before talking about anything global.
Never heard of the Banff fire but we have been smoke bound here in Ohio for weeks! We’ve never had this happen in my 8 decades!
I guess it's never ever happened before huh.
@@tycurtin7565 Never had smoke like this until last year from the US western fires but that didn’t last as long or be as thick. We had plenty of crap in the air until the early 70’s from the now extinct steel mills but this was new to us.
@@john-or9cf My point is that the history of the weather is very long. If you look at old newspaper articles from the 1800s, this used to happen all the time. Because it's rare now is because wild fires are much more rare than they were 130 years ago or even 90 years ago. People's memories are basically useless.
@@tycurtin7565 I understand your point - and you’re right - I merely remarked in the last 80 years, this is the first time I remember this kind of smoke in north east Ohio. Undoubtedly it’s happened before, just not in my 80 years.
I don't think Ricky understands how vast Canada is, and that there are no roads there for the millions of fire firefighters / brush clearing crews required.
I live in Alberta. West of Edmonton by 40 min. I've never heard of some of these theories here but I can tell you what many people I have talked to have experienced. Some of the fires were about 15 min drive for me and I know plenty who have been evacuated and some who stayed and saved their houses. Some of these fires are not arson, for example one fire was started in the middle of winter burning bush which smoldered till spring, someone actually called the fire department about this but the fire fighters looked at the wrong bush pile and missed it. But its also become well know many of these fires were intentionally started. Someone i know was stopped at a rockblock near niton junction and at that roadstop there were two trucks that had the bed full of diesel fuel gerry cans, the police themselves said they had arrested those individuals for arson. Multiple accounts of people pulling up to trucks in the ditch with piles of wood and diesel starting fires, someone like this was scared off on my range road, so the story goes. I agree that we have had a unique spring weather pattern, it was intensely hot and dry which isn't typical creating a tinder box. I tell you what though, nature isn't waiting anytime renewing. I drove through some burned areas last week and the grass is already so lushly greeni was amazed.
First time I find a detailed video on Canada's fires, Thank you
Thanks for the video, good info. While in Colorado Rocky Mtns a few years ago "10+" noticed very large areas "hundreds to thousands of acres" of dead pine trees. Asked Park Rangers about it, they indicated with the increased warmer winters it was not killing off pine beetles which has increased their population significantly creating large dead areas in both Northern states & Canada. This could be another factor with increased dead trees increases fuel available for wildfires not to mention Pine trees are very high in resin. Add that with a warmer/dryer climate, lightning strikes and or human carelessness/ulterior motives we will see more wildfires even in areas not prone to them.
Add in the increased UV from losing the ozone...
Yes , and the pine beatles leave a flammable residue as well .
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms In British Columbia Pine beetle logged trees have been one of the largest sources of structural lumber in Canada and with huge annual exports to the US for well over two decades. All the recoverable dead pine is now gone but the remaining standing dead is now being converted to wood chips for energy production. Most of which goes to England and Europe. Because there is the odd green cut in the process however, the shrieking Karens are all on about this now. So 'girls' leave it standing and create even more forest fires? You all good with that? Smoke in your big city living rooms...
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms i love the colors of beetle killed pine.
Good to see your titles are getting away from the clickbait direction, thanks Ricky. Yet another informative video!!
Seems he is still throwing in lots of adds
Interesting vid - well presented. I'll add some critical info here - I'm a meteorologist specializing in tornadoes/field research 35 yrs. & applied mechanical/aeronautical engineering - there's a lot more to this environmental disaster than was covered in this video. To keep it brief - the fires are a product of several large scale unprecedented variables all playing out at the same time - there is a global effort collectively known as 'geo-engineering' (stratospheric aerosol injection SAI) that uses high altitude aerosol spraying of various metals (aluminum, strontium, barium to name a few), nano particles (graphene, glass) to reduced & reflect the sun's energy back into space or dim the radiation coming through to help curb global warming - retrofitted jetliners have been spraying globally for decades - in theory it's a large-scale experiment on climate, but in reality it's a short-sighted ill-conceived fiasco that's jeopardizing the earth's biosphere. The various aerosols don't stay in the stratosphere and eventually precipitate down to the surface - with serious unwanted repercussions. The ph of soils/natural chemical compositions are being altered that's interfering with soil biomes & how they function under normal conditions - leading to basically depleted or dying soils - prolonged exposures weakens trees/forests, which leads to accelerated accumulations of diseased/dead trees. In normal conditions, dead wood is quickly broken down by healthy soil biome & converted back into fertile soil to regenerate a new generation of healthy forest - that cycle is being interfered with now so that soil degradation is increasingly unable to breakdown & covert dead wood - leading to an over accumulation of dead wood. In addition, metal aerosols can act like an accelerant - on the surface of a tree, soil, a structure, it can make fires burn hotter & longer. In addition to this, aerosols can also interfere with the formation of rain - spreading out water vapor in the atmosphere with smaller hydroscopic nuclei that fails to get large enough to fall as rain & contributing to regional aridity. Entire regions can get much drier than normal, and when rain does eventually fall, compromised soils fail to hold the precipitation resulting in flash floods - instead of a moist, living, healthy forest that stores rainfall & recirculates it into the hydrologic cycles. So whether or not a fire is the result of lightning, camping, arson, the current environment is now set to amplify a natural yearly fire cycle into something not seen before - a very serious situation is developing right before our eyes. So to look at solutions like clearing swaths of forest to mitigate fires spreading would be contributing to the problem - the earth needs more trees, not less - this is basic physical geography, geology, ecology, climate science. Approaching this problem through an engineering lens is using the wrong metric - nothing needs to be 'engineered' to solve this problem - we just need to stop interfering with natural processes that already work. The stratospheric spraying needs to be stopped now, or this will get worse. In nature, there are no countries, borders, oceans, rivers, hemispheres - it's all one system that's symbiotic - with or without humans - what's happening to Canada, Siberia, Australia, & California affects everywhere else - and these disasters can get much worse - we're tampering with systems that aren't well understood - with a backlash that could be cataclysmic in scale. A resource to check out is Dane Wigington on YT - he does a thorough job of reporting these existential threats. Corporations need to be upgraded to run more efficiently & cleanly - allowing industries to remain inefficient is irresponsible - dirty, out-dated, obsolete technology needs to be left in the past - not protecting it for profit's sake & then spraying the atmosphere in a desperate attempt to block something natural - we're all in this together people... ignorance is dangerous - we need to do better as a species.
yes Dave, hard science, true, but also hard to grasp for many of us ...Stay strong y''all!
@@hendrico8 I understand the info presented is a lot to take - but this is our new reality - and it's hard to 'stay strong' when entire countries may be on the verge of burning up - Canada could turn into a burnt ash wasteland - with the U.S. next in line - 'Stay aware, informed, & educated' will be a very important mindset in the future -
I'm a truck driver and in particular, I do specialized, which includes tying down complete Jenga puzzles of loads, tarping, climbing up and down. All around, very heavy exertion in all sorts of conditions.
A couple weeks ago, I was outside with the air quality at 269 (very unhealthy, sub category dangerous) 31 points away from hazardous.
I was untarping and putting equipment away for about 1½ hours.
When I was done working, I was feeling the effects in my throat and others could hear the effect in my voice.
The effects wore off after almost a week of lighter exertion and being further south in cleaner air.
A couple of times, it was making me tired when I normally am at my peak energy during the day because I wasn't getting the oxygen I need, especially with some sort of breathing issue and having Reynauds Syndrome (blood flow disorder) reducing the amount of properly oxygenated blood to my extremities at random.
These fires have had their toll taken on me and I blame Trudeau personally for not having the proper measures taken to minimize them.
The US has some of the best forest fire fighters and equipment in the world.
He could've asked for help from here at the beginning to drastically decrease them but didn't. He didn't ask until later on in them (not sure on exact date off the top of my head).
All that said, just be safe out there, especially in the affected areas.
I knew someone who always claimed that forest fires are a natural process and that working to control them with fire gaps and controlled burns would come back to bite us. This was twenty years ago, he said that the dead brush has to be cleared, and the longer we prevent that clearing by wild fires, the worse the fires will be when they do get out of control. I think we need to decide if we are going to let nature take its course or if we want to embrace the notion of engineering the world. This seems to be one of the situations where half measures make things worse.
I think we'd be better off clear cutting an area then controlled burns within it.
This would allow us to put use to the resources, vs them burning away, clear up the forest floor of flammable material, and function somewhat analogous to natural processes.
I get your point and it's true to some degree. But the thing is there are people living in some of those places, so you can't expect to just "let the fires burn" unmanaged. Natural disasters are "natural," but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do what we can to prevent them.
@@Israel_Two_BitYes, nature will do its thing. It's unfortunate and there really isn't much that can be done about it. Build smart and hope that you are fortunate that you can live your whole life without a disaster. If you can't, pick up the pieces and move forward. It is what it is.
Australia learned this decades ago. Aborigines would perform planned burns long before Europeans arrived. They recognized that there's a buildup of dead, dry foliage, and the more time between bushfires, the more severe a fire will be because of the excess fuel. The Europeans put a stop to the planned burns, and it eventually resulted in larger, more intense, and more uncontrollable fires. Same is true in the U.S. and Europe, but we tend to forget/overlook our histories the longer it's been.
There are some regions where the Aborigines have continued to do fire management for thousands of years, and with bad bushfires in recent years, people are considering having asking Aborigines to use their long developed knowledge to manage other areas as well.
Natives use to set fires in the spring when the snow was not all melted. This made fields and fresh grazing for wildlife and hunting. Historically we had more fires than we do now. I use to fight fires and it became obvious that the fires were used as employment in the back country, when one was coming to an end amazingly another one would spring up close by.
I’m a Firefighter in Australia. Grass and bushfires start all the time. Weather affects how easily we can put them out or how large they grow when we can’t. Climate change affects weather, the end.
It's like people especially in America forgot a huge part of Australia was on fire before the beginning of 2020. But too many choose to not accept accountability for inaction or grasp at Whatever the lobbyist fund media outlets say it's a mixed bag of warmer climate and poor land management and bad actors, because we can't blame oil and coal that's just unamerican. 🙄 I live in a region where as a kid we had snow piled in parking lots into early spring before they were melted away now they barely are around a week or two in winter. But people my age and well over 50 say it's just a cycle and volcanoes. Speaking of which how did you manage the flooding after Hunga Tunga disrupted the entire hemisphere weather patterns the past year+?
I completely agree. When you see what the media are showing to both camps of the issue, you realize how hard it is to get an unbiased view of the situation. As someone once said, all conspiracy theories have some degree of truth baken into them. The rest seems to be just a very strong confirmation bias at play. We all have a predetermined idea of why things happen and when we see someone explaining it in a way that aligns with that preconceived idea, our brain tends to overlook the clear red flags and misjudgments that were made in the process. It's veeeeeery hard to avoid falling into this trap since it involves a level of self-criticism most of us aren't comfortable with.
And most of those fires were set by people, the end!
@@KoRntech yes we can't blame oil and coal or animal agriculture that is definitely unpatriotic. Lots of money and thought goes into climate denial,: lobbying, paying journalists to give too much weight to minority views, people arguing in the media instead of peer review, as well as starting conspiracy theories I think!
Climate is and has been changing forever. Stop allowing people to manipulate you. The greenie people planting match box forests.
A friend who spent 20 years as a Ventura County fireman set me straight on controlling the fuel load.
Letting fuel load build up eventually causes unnaturally hot fires that are uncontrollable, damaging the indigenous plants and animals.
But frequent fires, matching the pattern of nature, every few years, clears out the fuel load. The fire is less intense, quickly running through areas without harming roots or burning through bark of indigenous trees. These kinds of fires can also release seeds of some plants, like the Jack Pine of my Northern Michigan home.
In some cases, goats (yes, goats) have been used to clean areas of their fuel load, especially where the land is rough and challenging to climbing.
Having a "Zero Tolerance" of fire isn't an option. Dead wood and other debris will accumulate. If we don't clean it up (either by collecting or using it, or allow burns), then it will eventually it will burn at a rate the we have no choice, we won't be able to put it out.
Yah goats do a great job.. it could be a way to produce a massive amount of cheap meat as well. If the government gave money to farmers that were willing to move their goats around in the forests they could drive down costs. Could even have the government give college students jobs working with the goats over the summer. Basically ensure their education for the next year is paid for by working June - August. The military pays for school. This could be a similar type program. Grocery stores could negotiate a good price to hopefully get the price of meat down. Not the answer a vegetarian would like to hear though.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms I think they would eat a bit of it. They would be walking all over stuff too which would maybe help break down the materials quicker.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms so it looks like Llamas will eat the brush. They are great for protecting other animals as well. Just get like 4 Llamas in with like 40 goats and let them deal with it.
I heard experts on talk radio say, If the PINE BARK BEETLE gets into the Canadian forests it will be a catastrophe for the planet. But the beetle will not be able to cross the Rockies and leave British Columbia." At that time, I was RV camping in N. California and the trees around me were mostly dead from Pine Bark Beetles!
Before we blame any fires on weather activity let us not forget that the weather is now being manipulated by our governments with modern technology.
One of the major issues is that we clear cut. A healthy forest has a lot of moisture just below ground level. With clear cutting, all that is left is dry ground and the off cut brush which is perfect to make situation far worse. Usually the "normal" fires might take out treetops and then burn out but with much of the best trees removed, it can move very fast and overcome the natural ability of a healthy forest to dampen it. Our weather patterns are changing due to climate change so expect this issue to get worse. We will not be able to solve it with firefighting. It is too big for that. BTW, Nova Scotia, in a drive to get off coal, allowed massive clear cutting. I believe this is one big issue in that particular fire.
I would add that NS experiences hurricanes nearly each year for the past 2 decades compared to just 3 total hurricanes in 3 decades prior. The hurricanes left NS forest vulnerable with fallen debris and uprooted trees.
The damaged forest hasn't been managed to mitigate the risk of fire.
I agree that deforestation is responsible for the forest vulnerability.
A satellite image of the province is a sight for sore eyes. So much of the province has been leveled due to deforestation.
Healthy western forest also carries forty to fifty stems per acre, in the NF''s we have four to five HUNDRED. so much for subsurface moisture...
Logging in strips would make much more sense than clear cutting. We would get both lumber and fire breaks.
they deserve it then for going after coal
@@stevenverrall4527that is the worst thing they can do been in forestry for 26 years and that ruins deer wintering areas and it waped out our deer heard.
I love that you kept it honest and wide spread. Gave the science guys AND the conspiracy theorists their due! Much appreciated, love the honest journalism!
"Science guys"
People also seem to not realize that that part of Canada n the northern United States on the East Coast was all in a severe drought. From the beginning of May until almost the end of June we had zero rain here in PA. The grass was yellow we were in severe severe drought. Along with the rest of the northern states along with some of them going down south towards South Carolina. And most of that section of Canada. And when I would make a fire that would would light up instantly I had no trouble making fires in my fire pit. So I'm sure that had something to do with these fires getting started.
Exactly. That's why this is linked to the ongoing El Niño event. This is just the start of a very rough couple of years ahead.
I got a front row view of the fires in Kelowna, BC. Till you see it with your own eyes, you will have no idea how fast these fires can spread. Evacuate if your told too!
What a lot of people seem to miss in this big picture is that with zero human input these fires will burn virtually the entirety of those forested areas within about 100 years. That is, even without humans starting fires or "changing climate" those forests would have burned. Those forests have only existed for 12,000 years, 15,000 years ago a large portion of Canada was covered with glaciers up to 2 miles thick. As those glaciers retreated forests moved in and those forests are burn dependent, burning is a part of the life cycle of the forest. For the last 100 years or so, fires have been suppressed and prevented to such a degree that the forests have grown to the point where fires are catastrophic. Look at Yellowstone 30 years ago and what is happening in California today. Fires have been treated as a catastrophe no matter how small they are and the net result is fires that are uncontrollable.
It is interesting you mention "a new way of imagining forest management" but fail to realize it is actually the old way of forest management. A mile block of trees being cut down is a clear cut which the eco idiots have attacked mercilessly to the point where it isn't allowed to happen in many areas. Areas that haven't burned in a century are labeled "old growth" and protected as if they can be preserved. They can't be preserved, eventually and without fail, they will burn. What they can be is conserved, which means utilized by man so that when fires happen they won't be catastrophic because there won't be a huge fuel load just laying there waiting to burn.
It isn't rocket science, we understand it well, but we allow emotional people to call the shots and they make short term decisions which ignore the long term reality. And huge uncontrollable fires which kill people and burn their stuff is the long term reality they force upon us.
As a Canadian, I feel compelled to do what Canada does best... Apologize. Sorry about the smokey air Eh. Fer sure, if it was some Hoser that started the fire they are going to get an enormous yelling at, yoo becha.
Seriously though, I want to give my most sincerest thanks to everyone from around the world to help us through this.
One interesting fact I learned from the TH-cam channel Mistersunchinebaby is that as of the last week of June, for Vancouver Island alone, there's normally 2 wildfires but this year there'd been 48. Normally those wildfires are 50% human caused and 50% natural caused. This year, all 48 of those wildfires were determined to be human caused. I find this an interesting fact, and while human cased does include arson, it also includes simple negligence, and accidents too, so that does not mean some big conspiracy or anything, but it does mean it's not just the weather or lightning doing it, since not one of those fires to that point had been caused by nature.
Another interesting thing is that stat about the reduction in the number of fires means all that dead brush, deadfall and other dry dead material that normally would burn in smaller fires, now is left to reach critical mass, triggering these raging, out of control crown fires where entire tress burn to ashes. This actually sterilizes the land and makes it very hard for the forests to regrow. Whereas the smaller fires help in the rapid decomposition of that dry, dead plant material, returning it to the soil to feed new growth, and fertilize the soil to keep the rest of the forest healthy. Many species of trees also rely on those small wild fires to germinate their seeds so new trees can grow.
I guess you could say this year's fires are combination of some arson, some bad weather that's making out of control fires more likely, and mostly decades of very bad forest management creating this increasingly dangerous situation where fires can burn out of control so easily. Perhaps we should get back to letting natural fires run their course so the natural processes can happen, and focus on dealing with the out of control fires and those that threaten people?
@@counselthyself2591 Did the 2 solid weeks of rainy weather that hit the Lower Mainland area somehow bypass the island it needs to pass over to reach Vancouver?
@@Seriously_Unserious In Québec all the fires we have started on June 1st after we had some massive thunderstorms which occured after the warmest and driest month of May on record
@@counselthyself2591 Wow. Got significantly more then that where I am in Port Coquitlam. Then I am near the coastal mountains in a rain belt, so I guess I would get more rain then many others.
Wow! Unbiased reporting. Mentioning all sides of the debate without judgement. 10/10 video. Thank you
Not something easy to pull off, for sure!
Amazing isn’t it. Have to go to independent reporters because the msm media is all controlled. Ever seen the video that showed hundreds of reporters saying the same thing… word for word? If not look it up
“All sides” shouldn’t include ‘space lasers government control plot’. A well research piece shouldn’t throw up it’s hands and say ‘no evidence’, it should call these theories out for being ridiculous misinformation that if accepted can lead people to even more harmful beliefs.
I live in Kelowna BC Canada.
We are currently under evacuation alert. The fire is on our norther outskirts. It was started Thursday night when high winds blew embers across Okanogan Lake to the west of us. A distance of over 2 miles. That fire is currently threatening the city of Weat Kelowna on the west side of Okanogan Lake. They have lost their drinking water plant to that fire. Approximately 10,000 people have been evacuated. Currently the high winds have abated slowing the fires down and giving the fire fighters a break. Smoke is very heavy visibility is less than a quarter mile.
Pray for Rain.
I live in a topographical recession, a large crater in front of a lake formed when glaciers scraped across the land, fully surrounded by trees - in Ontario.
From time to time I see so much smoke drifting across the farm fields along the roads to town etc.
But my actual home and living space there is 0 smoke, the air is fully shielded by the topography and it is fresh, beautiful, clean air.
I was not considering fires when I purchased the property, but now it is really a relief.
But country life is more arduous than city life. Air, food, drinking water, sewage/septic, connectivity/telecom - all those responsibilities are mine, no city assistance.
In the USA, decades of fire suppression have caused large amounts of brush and dead trees to accumulate. Also the failure to thin the forests (due to restrictions on logging) have produced extremely dense forests. As a result, the forests are filled with sick, dying, and dead trees -- in Yosemite National Park (California) alone, there are 2.4 million dead trees -- all of which are fuel for future forest fires.
You're right of course. In the US or Canada as soon as the word "logging' enters the discussion the shrill, shrieking urban karens of whatever gender suddenly appear on the urban new channels. I was a commercial thinning contractor in British Columbia for years, but the urban socialist parties just prevent anything now that involves killing trees. Funny how in countries like Germany or Sweden you never hear of large fires. Why? Because they thin their forests, is a main reason.
So exactly who "thinned the forest" before 1492 ? Sorry, i have never bought into this theory. Our new climate, arriving every day, has changed the forest to an entity much more flammable than in the past
Thank you, I've trying to cool down the conspiracy about the fire in Québec for weeks, we had weeks without rain, followed by some violent thunderstorm and followed by some strong wind. Not so hard to understand.
The perfect storm! The only good news is that if these fires burn through lots of the overgrown fuel, perhaps next year, which is forecast to be the hottest in record, won't see even worse wildfires.
thanks for this deep dive into (dis)information, so we don't fall need to be in those bubbles and keep our feed scientifically 🙂
I’m always suspicious of “the truth is somewhere in the middle”. If one side says 2+2=4 and the other side says 2+2=6, the truth is NOT 2+2=5. The impulse to average out the voices leads to punishing science and quality journalism, and rewarding propaganda and misinformation.
I live in South Africa and work on European development aid projects. Listening to the conspiracy theories I now understand why Europeans consider America as a second world country. We who live in Africa experience climate change daily
Thank 🐦 you very much for the details you went into. It would take an hour or so to respond as I spent many years in BC fighting wildfires. The system is almost totally incompetent and obviously ineffective in preventing wildfires in Canada. It's unfortunately also corrupt. We have massive fossil fuel subsidies though...
The Australian fires and Canadian fires have two things in common. Sappy trees ,with sappy leaves. Once the heat is into these fires it can cause the sap in the leaves ahead of the fire to super heat and vaporize. This vapor rises up to where it spontaneously combust a 100 feet or more. This causes the fire to roll ,you dont need a spark ahead of a forest fire , the infared heat directed at the foliage ahead is enough to dry it, vaporise and auto ignite the forest. It becomes a runaway ,self feeding breathing monster.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms You probably could have cut the (unfounded) conspiracy theories. Not sure what they add to the story.
Bc in 2003 experienced this type of firestorm. The fire moved extremely quickly, burning a lot of homes in its path, occasionally jumping homes with what seemed like no rhyme or reason. A town in its path was saved by a cedar mill… the mill employees were ordered to evacuate, but stayed and ran the water system they had to reduce the flammability of the wood on site, otherwise the whole town would have gone up.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms Yes. A handful of arsons alone would not set the whole countryside on fire.
[We] just experienced the warmest week in recorded history. This is a sign of things to come.
I remember here in Glendale California when the fire inspector was lighting hillsides on fire in multiple places off the 2 freeway. I was there on the freeway when they started and thought - shit! These are arson!! Turns out years later the guy was caught.
All firefighters are not heroes; some are dastardly villains.
Its New Zealand ! Can't even imagine what's going to happen in Aust this summer. Fires via ember attack can travel 5 to 10 km once a firestorm or fire weather comes into play. The embers get under houses or evas and start fires in advance of the fire front.
So nice to watch a rational discussion on the cause of wildfires in Canada. Wildfire season is thing in Canada, for real! Weather factors, including the winter’s snowpack and the length/duration of spring snowmelt always plays a major part in when the fire season starts. Also the amount, or lack thereof, of rain before/during snowmelt. I worked for many years (34) in a job that had me observing all these factors at play real-time because my job was measure streamflow year-round (so yeah, I needed to pay attention to these factors!), how it affected wildfires in Western Canada was just a learning experience, as a side benefit.
P.S.: The conspiracy/climate change nonsense was a real annoyance, including the distraction it caused from people being able to learn the, seemingly limitless, number of the causes for wildfires.
They arnt wildfires they are manmade fires
@@everythingponynope, didn't you pay attention to this video?
Love this episode of your show and your show gets better every month. Keep up the good work 👍
Hats off to TwoBitDaVinci for an incredible job putting this information together.
I just wanted to remind everyone to approach statistics with caution. The chart shows significant variance between individual fire seasons and the 20-year average. This suggests that the 'average' might not best represent wildfire trends due to the data's high variance. This year's fire season started earlier, but doesn't necessarily present a higher number of fires compared to others.
ANY FOREST CAN BE 100% CONTROL. A FOREST AFTER A FIRE IS NOT DESTOYED AND WILL RETURN.
'It's even going as far as the States.'
Wow... that is very far away from Canada. * Walks outside, looks South about 200 meters, seeing the Canada/US border line. * It's incredible it travels so far away. How could things in Canada impact the States?
Anyway, I thank all the fire fighters out there fighting against these raging fires.
Canada had lightning storms. Their winter was mild and spring was hot/windy. Canada's snow melted 2 months early, and now they're experiencing droughts. Sap inside of the trees holds heat (Even year to year). Lightning in dry areas causes internal heat within the trees. After a storm, with wind, trees will begin to burn from the inside out, it can take a few days for them to start to smoke and flare up, they are called holdover fires. From year to year, these fires are increasing due to.... dun dun dun.. climate change.
thanks for telling us baloney you picked up from climate change lovers of the msm, beat it, you dont live anywhere near these fires, here in Alberta the earliest fires, like a 100 in a week, there was no lightning, no trains sparks, they were lit, by wingnuts, its too easy, drive to the middle of nowhere , where its dry, light a match, drop it, drive away, its too easy
I’m not buying it. You’re theory is based more in dogma than facts.
@iamamyb climate change did not start the fires, not did it cause them to get out of control. That strong cold North wind had a lot to do with the fire and smoke spreading. We had it all down the East Coast on America and here in NC. Horrible air quality after one of the coolest Mays in history.
@@JesseDavis7373 It's literally fact. Lmao. Canada tracks potential holdover-fires on a weekly basis. USA does as well. Even further, how the "fires hop roads and water-bodies" is through their roots capturing heat. With an increase of wind, this can spread the fires from tree to tree, across lakes and roads, and they continue to burn from the inside out. How is this "based in dogma"? How do you not know that wind+fire+heat+drough+lightning+sap= promotion and the literal cause of wildfires?
If a tree can literally capture heat, and even has its own temperature, how can it not set on fire?
@@JesseDavis7373 Basing North Carolina's climate on forest fires ~1000 miles away is your problem. You're seeing smoke because of the climate change experiences in Canada, not NC.
Excellent as usual Ricky.
In addition to what you said in the video, the north Atlantic is the hottest it's been since records began. We've had a lot of heatwaves across the northern hemisphere this year. A perfectly unlucky set of conditions this year that has brought about ill fortune for Canada, that's my reading of the situation.
Here in Norway we have vast forests, many of which surround small and isolated towns and a very rugged landscape that hinders fire-fighting equipment that isn't airborne. I dread this happening to us.
Sending my love to you Canada.
the smoke seen in NY was orange .. fires do not burn to orange smoke. Fertilizer does.
It was arson. Eco terrorists
What an excellent presentation. Thank you.
Maybe look into the numerous videos that have come across my feed with Canadian Volunteer Firefighters being told to go home. They are not needed during this time when most of the country is burning. Makes no sense to me to turn away free help, unless something bigger is happening.
As a wildland firefighter in the DNR. I have worked very closely with the BIA. They implement the techniques of their ancestors. Their lands are almost always in great shape and extremely healthy. Their secret? Prescribed burns and overgrowth removal. Canada's Forests are extremely overgrown. Minimal care is taken to keep their forests clean. An overgrown forest is not healthy. Trees need space. Native Americans knew this 1000 years ago, and weve only just started to adapt the process over the last 20 years
While at least for now the air quality and smoke has calmed down here in Northern Indiana, there was a few weeks just recently where the air quality was constantly in the dangerous or very bad levels and there was a few days where when it was sunset it really looked like the end of the world lol.. being from Northern Indiana it was actually very shocking and eye opening to experience the effects of wildfire haze and the effects it had on the weather and the sun looking so weird and the haze. And that's here in Indiana. I can only imagine the horrors some of those on the front lines in Canada are experiencing. But even here there was a few days where the air even faintly smelt weird and I've been experiencing all these allergy like symptoms when I've never had allergies in my life, and some people I know who do have them were taking twice their medicine lol. But, the good news at least for us here in Indiana, is that these past few days have looked great and finally have had some sunny days after that perma-haze. Just a week ago I was in Indianapolis and the haze was so bad that it looked like a thick fog everywhere. And it's weird when you look at the weather and it dosen't say "sunny" or "cloudy, partly cloudy" but just "Haze" lol. These wildfires have been pretty devestating though and I don't see as much national media coverage on it as I think their should be. But I'm glad you made a video about this because when this stuff first happened it was freaking me out, now I'm more at ease with this week showing significant improvement, but they do say it's suppose to continue for the rest of the Summer.
Excellent data and reporting as usual. Thank you.
I suspect this is simply natural variation. Different things run in cycles with different periods. When you superimpose multiple sine waves of different periods (say rain cycles, underbrush cycles, etc.) every so often you get a “perfect storm” where a few cycles hit their peak at the same time. I suspect something like this is what is happening in Canada this year. I suspect after a year or two of this, we will have a stretch with fewer than average fires and acres burned. That is just how the world works.
@Dusty-twobit-Bottoms Possible, but not probable. It is rare to have droughts for many years running. And a year or two of extensive fires leaves less fuel for future years. Nature seems quite good at having such useful feedback control loops … until humans interfere.
@@LTVoyager Never before has nature had 8 Billion people to mess with its control loops. Humans are very good at making things worse.
I'm curious to the relation of campsites, holidays, and the beginning of fires.
I had a conversation with a BC forestry ministry field worker in April.
He said the ground was already as dry as it normally is in June.
Environmental terrorists aren't widespread enough to make conditions like that.
"Never ascribe to malice what you can ascribe to incompetence"
The same week that Lytton BC burned, RCMP found people from Vancouver who had started a campfire in Joffre Lakes Provincial Park, because covid restrictions had been lifted and they wanted to go camping.
That was the same week that we hit +50°C. A BCWFS rep said "don't even fart in the forest" because it was so dry.
Humans are morons.
The deal is Canada is the second largest country on the planet. Most of the population live in the southern part near the American border. The rest of Canada is mostly covered in forests. When a fire starts in the middle of nowhere it's logistically impossible to get to and it just burns and burns. Usually firefighters go from each province but this year each province is on fire not a good situation :-( Peace
I feel bad for the wildlife 😔.
I was a fire tower lookout person and my whole job was to watch for lightening, try to pinpoint it on my area map, and wait for the smoke to come up. Waiting minutes, hours, days, even weeks for any smoldering strikes to take off. Of course not all lightening strikes ignite a fire. 🔥🔥
I was born in 1952 in Ontario and lived in the country. All the farmers had wood stoves and cut firewood. Fallen and dead trees were cut and used every year and the woods were easy to walk through, there were few fallen trees to walk over. If there wasn't a surplus of dead, dry trees, my father would ring a live tree to dry for a year and cut it the next year. Nowadays, fossil fuels are used for heat, and anyone who uses wood doesn't use dead wood as a rule. At least every woodpile I see is mostly cut, split, and dried. Go for a walk on any forest in my area, Cambridge, On. and there's a path cleared through fallen trees. They rot and produce CO2, or eventually burn and produce CO2. So we're burning the fossils, the living, and the dead, and now we're choking the rest. Our illustrious leader Doug Ford cut the forest service budget 67% in 2019 and gutted the clean energy and electric cars incentives and doesn't think climate change is an issue. Last year we were 23 fire crews short and this year 50 fire crews short, and Graydon Smith, the Minister of Natural resources tells us "Ontarians can have all the confidence in the world" our safety is paramount. He brags about our firefighters going all around the world helping fight fires and that the other nations reciprocate. Imagine if we had 67% more to reciprocate with.
My lungs were damaged in a house fire as a teenager and now my asthma is pretty bad at times. An N95 has been the only way I'd be able to go outside recently. One day I didn't wear one and it wasn't even bad that day, and by the end of the week I needed Prednisone from the pulmonologist due to an asthma exacerbation. I'm not sure why a mask would ever be controversial, you don't want to end up like me!
Canuck here. As the winters warm, the spruce beetle does not die off. As a result, thousands of acres of standing dead trees make for a predictable outcome.
In my 50yrs in NY and my parents on the NY border of Canada since the 30's this has NEVER happened???
I was beginning to question myself if my purchase of yellow tinted glasses for my gasmask was a needless expense, but clearly, I made the right call.
in my fire pit I missed one single peice of charcoal that was red hot and the fire pit turned itself back on by morning because of the wind.
In Australia the fossil fuel funded right wing govt cut funding for Fire Fighting & climate forecasting for a decade before 2020 fires.. ignoring all the desperate pleas for help. But then minimized the harm & gaslit the nation saying it was normal. We voted them out in a landslide.
The smoke near Chicago has been horrible for several weeks. Starting to wonder if they would let it keep burning until the northern hemisphere cools down several degrees. Enough smoke in the upper atmosphere and they will get their wish. The ultimate nuclear winter long term experiment.