headerphoto


God's country is burning in Arizona: The Wallow fire in Arizona still burning out of control

As I have watched from far up here on the far left coast, from the state of POORegon, one of the first states in the country ravaged and ruined in so many ways by the envronazi movement. All the lawsuits that this well funded bunch of thieves and common criminals have filed over the decades starting in the mid to late 1970s and coming out full force in the early 1980s. I know this all too well as I lived through it many a time and have managed to somehow survive and keep our family together and raised two awesome kids who have seen both sides and have seen what the environazi movement has done to this country. No, not just from me, their dad but also from the far left agenda and curriculum that is forced upon our kids through the NEA and the in this state, the OEA. Through our 'public schools' and schools of higher education.

Here is some of my story and and the reasons why I sit here mad, upset and feeling a bit ripped off.

God's country is burning in Arizona and I cannot do anything about it.

Back in 1972 I was in college up in Northern Arizona. This part of the state is at 5,000' feet or higher and starts at the upthrust known as the Mollgon Rim. I was in Flagstaff which is at almost 7,000' in elevation.  The rim is truly God's country and I know it well as I lived in Northern Arizona for over 13 years. I was fortunate enough to have made a lot of friends in college and hiked, fished and hunted all over the rim country. It is truly a special place. The White Mountains, The San Francisco Peaks, The Inner Basin(my favorite!) Strawberry, Mormon Lake, East and West Clear Creek, The upper Gila River, West Oak Creek in Oak Creek Canyon, Sycamore Canyon before it became a wilderness area, The Verde River,  Springerville, Eager, Greer, Alpine, Nutrioso, Payson, Show Low, Heber, Pine Top Inn. Some of these places are just before you climb up the rim but all beautiful places. The rim country is home to the largest stand(s) of Ponderosa Pine in the United States and some of the largest in the world. I started fighting fires that summer and that led to 10 seasons on an inter-regional hot shot crew, initial attack and critical situation. We got the call at the beginning and were often times one of the last crews rotated out. I eventually worked my way up to being a Squad Boss or leader of of a 24 man Fire Crew. We were better than good, we were considered one of the BEST hot shot crews in the country. I did whatever I had to do to make sure our squad had all the equipment we required and then some. I was not beyond forging signatures of my superiors on purchase and requisition orders to ensure we had what all that we would need for fire season. I had some of the first women on fire crews in the country, and that was a disaster a train wreck for the first couple of seasons but it got much better once the USFS got extremely picky about whom of the female gender they let on crews. That is a story for another post, maybe. A big fire back then was 25,000 acres. Part of my years were in Northern Arizona and then Western Oregon.

Fast forward to the early 1980's and I am in Western Oregon. I still was fighting some fires but as part of logging crews that I worked on in addition to the Hot Shot crew. The logging crews often were the FIRST ones in on many fires. We not only were loggers but did thinning of the way too numerous small trees and underbrush. As part of fire crew duties we often burned clear cuts units, burned slash and cat piles and cleared brush from along roads and trails. We did this in our 'slow' times of fire season. We also assisted Silvaculture and planted trees with the Hoedads before the tree planting was overrun and taken over by illegal aliens who would work for next to nothing. This was hot and abundant fuel for any fire that got started. I was forced out of fire fighting and logging in 1986 after four right shoulder surgeries and the USFS felt I could no longer do my job. I had hurt in a mill in 1978. It turns out that I was a victim of reverse discrimination through a program called 'Upward Mobility' that most government agencies were forced to use for hiring women and minorities. I never filed any lawsuits as you have to pick your battles and yes, it cost me a career with the USFS, more than likely. The woman they hired as my replacement was right out of college with a degree in Forestry from my alma mater, Northern Arizona University. No experience in fighting fires. On her first fire with my former squad, they were called in on, two fire fighters got killed due to her not knowing how to set more than one escape route and making sure the FMO and center knew what and where those routes were and she panicked. Two of my friends gone and she later got a promotion.. It is a bitter and old wound that comes back to haunt me every fire season. I am now considered too old ( I do not think so of course) but it more that. I have now had Eight shoulder surgeries and two spinal fusions and I need more surgery. Just a matter how long I can put them off. I know I am unable to fight fires any more and the times have changed, the rules have changed(many for the better) and that is why I feel ripped off. If there WAS ANYTHING I could be doing that I have done in my life it would still be fighting fires.You have to be a bit crazy and touched in the head and just plain love the work and I did, I am would  still do this if I could. The Mrs. is glad those days are gone and enough sniveling on my part.

The mid 1980's brought the first lawsuits to protect the stinking Spotted Owl. With that lawsuit when the timber industry throughout the Pacific Northwest. Not just the Old Growth, that was just the starting point for the environazis.  Soon it was ANY and all timber, thinning, clearing or salvage sales that were being tied up in litigation filed by the various environazi groups, sometimes for years. Then as vast areas of national Forests became off limits the rules started changing on how fires could be fought in wilderness and sensitive areas. How brush or small, worthless trees that were too crowded to grow properly could be thinned, fuels for future fires that we old loggers and fire fighters knew were coming. Future fires that we knew would be massive and some would be left to burn because of many of these new rules and laws, forced upon us by the likes of EarthFirst, The Sierra Club and other nefarious and self serving organizations. If you do not think these groups have helped make conditions right for the 'perfect fire' then drop me a line in the comments. The blame has often been cast on the methods that fires were suppressed and fought 40, 50, 60 plus years ago. Again, if you think so then bring me a counter post and I will think about posting it up. I worked with many old fire fighters and loggers who cut their teeth in the 1940', 1950's and 1960's. I watched too many families ruined. too many mills and towns that depended on the timber industry go into steep decline that they have never recovered from to this day. Mills that I worked, towns I have lived in or worked in and not much is left. There are two sides to every story and the environmentalists have theirs.

The best stewards of our forests, ranges, prairies, ranch lands, farms are the men and women who own and manage them. I have had the pleasure to meet and get to know many of them over the years.
Most of them did not have any higher education, just a lifetime of working the land next to Dad and Mom, learning it that way. Passed down from generation to generation. This still occurs today but it is not the same and I know times change and 'progress matches on'. But you all tell me this; is almost 4000,000 acres burning out of control progress? Maybe to the environazis it is. Maybe these mostly liberal, well schooled, many of them never having worked a real or tough job in their lives (just like the worthless potus we currently are stuck with) can travel to Eager and Springerville to tell the roughly 6,000 evacuees that have been forced to flee their homes and places of employment how lucky they are to be part of letting the land burn, cleanse itself and then heal while they possibly stand to loose everything. That I would like to see that one but we know these environmentalists, these environazis are too cowardly to do so because they know, just maybe they know, that they and all their science are very, very wrong. 

Almost 4000, 000 acres burning and I am almsot in tears.

I will have more posts later on tonight including a new Daily Catch Videos. Gotta catch some ZZZZ's
as I have to work for a few hours today. Survived the first round of budget curs but the initial results bear badly for our department and I am not sure about the program I administer, sigh....




************************************************************************************************************************************

Massive Arizona Wildfire Reignites Debate Over Environmental Lawsuits



SPRINGERVILLE, Arizona – A raging wildfire that could become the largest in Arizona history is rekindling the blame game surrounding ponderosa pine forests that have become dangerously overgrown after a century of fire suppression.

Some critics put the responsibility on environmentalists for lawsuits that have cut back on logging.

Others blame overzealous firefighters for altering the natural cycle of lightning-sparked fires that once cleared the forest floor.

Either way, forests across the West that once had 50 trees per acre (half-hectare) now have hundreds, sometimes thousands, and much of the landscape is choked with tinder-dry brush.

The density of the growth has fueled immense conflagrations in recent years like the 525-square-mile blaze now burning in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest northeast of Phoenix.

"I think what is happening proves the debate," said state Sen. Sylvia Allen, a Republican from rural Snowflake.

In the past, a 30-square-mile fire was considered huge. "And it used to be the loggers got right on it. Never in the past have you had these huge fires."

Today, it's not uncommon for fires to exceed 150 square miles.

On Thursday, the huge blaze known as the Wallow Fire was still burning completely out of control and had charred more than 386,000 acres with no containment in sight. After reportedly being sparked by a campfire, it has become the second-largest wildfire in state history and is still growing.



An extremely dry late winter and spring contributed to the fire conditions.

More than 525 square miles have been blackened, and thousands of people have been forced to flee from mountain resort communities and two large towns at the forest's edge.

Many in Arizona blame the legal battles that have erupted over old-growth logging that threatened endangered species such as the Mexican spotted owl. Since those disputes prevented regular logging that would have thinned the number of trees, the forests became overgrown, they say.



Environmentalists insist that theory is just a scare tactic.(No, it is not. It is the truth)

"That's just wrong, flat-out wrong," said Bryan Bird of Wildearth Guardians, which has been involved in some of the lawsuits. "These people are misinformed or they're intentionally trying to scare people in a time that they're already terrified. It's pure politics."(What a moron)

Experts such as professor Wally Covington of Northern Arizona University, who has studied Western forests for decades, say the problems have been building for decades, and blaming lawsuits ignores those facts. Nearly half a million square miles of ponderosa and conifer forests are at risk across the West, he said.

Historically, those forests were relatively thin, with grass and wildflowers growing beneath the canopy. Every two to 10 years, a fire would move through and burn out the undergrowth and small trees.

As the region was settled in the 1880s, cattle were brought in to feast on the grass, which limited fires and let small trees mature. Early foresters liked that, because they wanted the forest fully stocked with trees. And they began putting out fires early in the 1900s to help the trees grow, Covington said.

As the forest got thicker, fires got harder to fight, and the U.S. Forest Service hired thousands of men to battle the flames. Small fires that reached into the treetops were first seen in Arizona in the 1940s. Over the following decades, the typical treetop fire went from a few acres (hectares) to a few thousand to more than 10,000 by the 1990s. ( This is called Crowning and I have witnessed this many times. Trees can literally almost explode from the top down. )

Then early in the 2000s, huge conflagrations emerged that turned hundreds of thousands of acres (hectares) to ash.

Sen. Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican, says environmental lawsuits have put America's forests at risk. And in places where the Apache-Sitgreaves forest had been thinned, he said, crews were better able to control the fire.

"So it does work," said Kyl, who has a cabin in the resort town of Greer that is threatened by the flames. "And we haven't been able to do as much of it as we would like."

The Forest Service has acknowledged the problem, setting up nine restoration projects across the West designed to let private industry thin small trees.



The same debate over the ecology-industry balance is also happening in the halls of Washington.

"What we're really trying to accomplish with that project is a real balance in synergy between the ecological results we want and an industry that will help support that goal," he said.

2 Comments - Share Yours!:

HermitLion said...

But you all tell me this; is almost 4000,000 acres burning out of control progress? Maybe to the environazis it is.

I think you summed it up pretty well with these words, Patriot.

The whole thing is terribly saddening. I happen to know what a beautiful part of the world these pine forests are, and it's simply a damn shame to lose them in such a manner.
Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned here, though you can see that these sort of folks (like Bryan Bird, who was quoted in the article) never admit a mistake. Their immature reactions reveal that they'd prefer to see more forests burn, than be beaten in an argument.

Again, a damn, terrible shame.

PatriotUSA said...

Thnak you hermit lion. I will write your more tomorrow or today I guess, I am bvery depressed because of my back and shoulder stuff, I think I am going to have shoulder surgery before the end of summer. MY back is really gotten bad. I did get in to see Dr, Moore's PA next week and then I will see the dox on h;k