Oh my gosh, some of you live in the most beautiful places! We are a lucky people to have such magnificent views from home! Chief, boast on! Your home is awesome!

mconnell wrote:

CClaude wrote:Unfortunately they say it could take up to 100yrs for the burned areas to recover

I guess that would depend on your definition of "recover". Plants and wildlife will return within a couple of years. It might not be the "same" for 100 years but so what? Things will always change. (BTW, I live a couple of miles from the site of the Hayman fire so I know how much things are changed by big fires, but changed does not mean destroyed. Only the man-made stuff is destroyed, not the land.)

BTW, the anger shouldn't be directed at the person with the campfire. Fires like that one, the Hayman fire, the Yellowstone fire, etc. are a result of people thinking that they can control nature.

There is the normal course of nature and then their are stupid yahoo's. I can deal with the dry lightning strikes, since that is the course of nature. The yahoo's with the toy hauler, the ATV, the 5 kegs of beer and the fireworks in a region that is bone dry with high winds is totally moronic. We (the town of Flagstaff) are totally grateful for the job the Hotshot crews did, since the terrain and the explosive nature of the fire on the first two days, they could have easily paid for their work with their lives. I'm friends with some Hotshots and that job is totally underappreciated, underpaid for a group of people totally overworked during some seasons.

The day the fire started, the winds on the flats were 25-35mph and where the fire started it was significantly higher (as reported by an intern who was working for me who actually saw the campfire that started the whole thing go from a campfire to a full fledged forest fire in seconds from 100yrds away). The area was tinder dry. Also the day before a major fire had blown up in minutes, and on the day of the fire, in the time from I went home in the afternoon from climbing to when I checked on some work at work, I watched 3 other fires start within miles of each other (all human caused).

When I say the damage will take 100-200yrs to recover, the initial burn zone was nearly completely sterilized since not only could you see the tree's explode from my house 5-7 miles away, but the updrafts went 20K-30K ft into the air. The term 100-200yr recover is based on terms used by a co-worker who used to be on the forest service fire crew, and not a typical touroid. We now have the monsoons coming in and the forest crew are now concerned of mudslides in the burn zone.

Now this is down range of the burn zone (in Doney Park which is not the neighborhood I live in)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqRypmRw ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1JM3Wa6Jo0


which is a no brainer, forest fire, and then rains.... usually not a good combination.... As I say, lightning stikes causing fire, I can deal with it,... but the humidity usually comes up and the fire usually isn't as explosive as when the humidity is 5% and the winds are 30-45mph.

Here's the view from my back deck. It's not the Sierra Nevada, only the beloved hills of West Virginia. It's all I have right now.

From directly behind my house:

Sierra Ledge Rat wrote:Here's the view from my back deck. It's not the Sierra Nevada, only the beloved hills of West Virginia. It's all I have right now.

Looks pretty damn mellow to me Rat. I'll take that view any day.

From my front garden:

Monday night July 5, 2010. Pinnacle Buttes & Continental Divide. Dunoir Valley, Fremont County, WY.