Summertime wildfire in California.

Summertime in California

California certainly has a diverse and rich climate and environment. However the Southern half of the state goes most summers for six months or more of absolutely no rainfall. For this reason the brushlands and forests of Southern California can become very tinder dry, and prone to huge raging fires. It should be understood that this is the common way of this land, and while the fires cause huge loss in property damage and environmental destruction, they also cause the opening of the brush-clogged hillsides allowing new fresh vegetation to grow providing increased food for herbivores. The fires when allowed to burn regularly in an area will lack intensity, and miss large patches of oak woodlands and grasslands. This will result in areas that will still provide cover and concealment for the wild animals. Thus due to wildfires they will have increased food sources near their areas of refuge. In the last century we have attempted to avoid fires, putting them out as soon as they rear their fiery heads. This will result in an excessive 'overburdon' of highly flammable fuel laden brush. This dry brush that has not burned for fifty years will be so flammable, and carry such a high amount of flammable dead vegetation that when it conflagates it will burn with an intensity not often seen in a fire burning in an area that has burned in recent decades. This high, heavy and hot fire will burn deeper into the soil killing more animals taking refuge in the soil than a naturally burning fire. It will burn faster across the land and will outrun the wild fleeing animals more often than a slower burning less intense fire. For these reasons and others it has in recent decades been recognized that the practice of using 'control burns' to reduce the overburdon of highly flammable dead brush is actually an environmentally friendly thing to do. It will reduce soil burning from the less frequent but hotter fires. It will allow the regeneration of native trees and brush that only reproduce when their seeds are exposed to flames. It will also reduce costs associated with fire fighting and property loss. In fact some studies have shown that the value of control burns is so great that it is actually cheaper to control burn areas on a regular basis than to have out-of-control brush fires raging across the area.

California has some nice spots to see, but often when visitors from wetter climates come here in the summer the seared hillsides, trees that go dormant in summer, and the dry river beds make a surreal landscape.
Dry, barren, a wasteland.
Visit with us as we show photos of the damage done from a fire that raged not far from us in September 2000. This fire was called the Harris Fire due to the fact that it started at a mountain pass called Harris Grade. This fire burned nearly ten thousand acres before being controlled. An unusual (for California) feature of this fire was the peat bog fire that resulted from it. The fire burned to the Barka Slough, a peat bog that is the remnants of an ancient lake. The peat is the remains of plants that have not totally decomposed due to the high water level of the area. In the summer though the ground dries enough that the fire was able to burn into the dry layers of peat. This was a slow smolder that went on for weeks causing a heavy and think smoke that mixed with the areas famous fog in the mornings. This caused on some mornings a zero visibility situation on the nearby road.

Fires are dangerous, scary, and beautiful all in one. Visit the California Summertime when you can.

Beautiful Wasteland
Capercaillie


It rarely makes the news today,
the place where I was born.
They call it a wasteland,
a winderness gone wrong.
With the twisted trees all fallen,
their branches stripped and bare.
In the silence of the nighttime,
innocence is here.


Beautiful wasteland,
is me.
Beautiful wasteland,
you'll see.
If only you see,
You'll believe.


I embraced my Father's warnings,
and studied in your schools.
To justify your theories,
and convoluted rules.


Travelled to the corners,
where everybody knows.
My country's been wearing,
the Emperors' clothes.


I'll take You there,
to the bracken slopes,
when the summer's rollin' in.


I'm lying by the ocean.

Her western breeze is still,
She's the heart of all seasons,
A mother to my soul,
When the century is over,
and the shipping days are done,
like a child for the first time,
I'll lie here again.

a burnt California Live Oak 'Quercus agrifolia

A burnt-over California Live Oak "Quorcus agrifolia"
that has been burnt over by the Harris fire

a nighttime shot of the Harris Fire

Here is a nighttime shot of the Harris Fire.
This fire burned nearly ten thousand acres
near Lompoc CA. in Sep. 2000

the burning peat bog fire in the Barka Slough

This is an image of the peat bog fire that smoldered for weeks in the barka slough after the Harris Fire burned into that area.

About Peat bog fires

Peat is the semi-decomposed remains of plant matter. Sometimes in cool low-oxygen boggy areas the plant remains will not fully decompose. Over centuries this can lead to layers of semi-decomposed plant matter called peat. On occasion a nearby wildfire can burn into the boogy and moist area. This will lead to a slow smoldering that can continue for months and years. These can be extremely hard to extinguish due to the difficulty of maneuvering trucks and equipment through the marshy environmentally unique areas. A solution was utilized at Vandenberg Air Force Base in late 2000 after the Harris Fire burned into a 365 acre peat bog called Barka Slough. This peat bog still had eighty acres of bog smoldering as of this writing (November 2000, two months after it started). This fire is particularly hard to put out due to the fact that the soils in the bog is composed of three feet of clay on top of the four to seven feet of clay and peat mixed that is smoldering. Putting a regular amount of water on such a fire is not productive. The water must soak through the three feet of clay to get to the clay/peat layer that is burning. So the water must be put on for a long long time. In this case the remedy to extinguish the fire is twenty oscillating sprinklers with over 2,000 yards of six inch irrigation pipe. The wells are on nearly constantly spaying water across scores of acres at a time. This system will deliver 3,000 gallons of water a minute, and they have pumped over 150 million gallons of water onto the subterranean fires.

A one mile view of the Bog Fog spreading across the wide arroyo called Barka Slough.
Here we have a view of the infamous 'Bog Fog' spreading its way across the wide arroyo called Barka Slough. This subterranean fire slowly simmered below the surface of its cap of clay. The fire slowly released water vapor from the wet peat. During the day the water vapors disappeared into the atmosphere, but at night, when the wind dies down and the air cools the moist air from the ground pools in this wide valley trapped there. The unfortunate effect this has on the primary road between Lompoc and Santa Maria is very bad for local traffic. In fact the road closed down several times due to zero visibilty in the mornings.

A view of the Bog Fog from close within.
Oh, the spooky creeping thick fog from the water vapors of the bog was fit for Transylvania. This would have been a great place for the burgeoning local film industry to have filmed a scary horror movie. This view shows a marker sign for the Air Force Base boundary. We can see from here how thick the fog is. Outside of this thick localized fog the air was fresh, clean and clear with blue skies.

A view of the Harris Fire, Vandenberg California

Here we see an image of the Harris Fire, seen from miles away, with huge columns of smoke wafting thousands of feet into the air.

HOME BACK TO "SEASONS"