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.
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Beautiful Wasteland
Capercaillie
Her western breeze is still,
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A burnt-over California Live Oak "Quorcus agrifolia" 
Here is a nighttime shot of the Harris Fire. |
