The West is so dry even a rain forest is on fire

[n2doc]

In a normal year, Washington state’s Olympic National Park is arguably the wettest place in the continental U.S. An annual 150 inches of rain inundate the park’s western slopes, soaking the soil and slicking the branches of the lush temperate rain forest that grows there. Mosses, lichens and ferns festoon the trunks of centuries-old trees, whose thick canopy casts the forest floor into damp, dark shadow. The landscape has a primordial feel to it — cloaked in mist and swathed in green, it looks as though a dinosaur could come stomping out of the underbrush at any minute.

But this is not a normal year.

This year, ancient tree trunks smolder at their base as they burn from within. The downed wood and debris that carpet the forest floor have dried up into kindling. The abundant lichens that are characteristic of this type of rain forest are now facilitating the fire that’s burning it up: The flammable plant-like organisms pass the flames from tree to tree. As they burn, they drop from tree trunks to the ground, spreading the fire there as well.

Now in its third month, the Paradise Fire has consumed nearly 1,600 acres of forest, making it the largest since the park was founded. According to the National Wildfire Coordinating Group Web site, officials don’t expect to have the fire contained until Sept. 30.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/13/the-west-is-so-dry-even-a-rainforest-is-on-fire/?tid=sm_fb

[Cleita]

1. That's too bad. I remember it as one of the more beautiful places

in this country.

[randys1]

2. My friend Tom was a hotshot crew member for several years.

Had him over for dinner last night and I mentioned to him Arnie Schwarzenegger comment about CA no longer having fire seasons, that CA is now a year round fire season.

Tom said that these droughts are not new, but of course climate change contributes to the degree.

I have always been so proud of him, he never made much money. Got a modest pension out of it and little else.

Just did it because he loved the outdoors and this was the best way he could honor that.

[Journeyman]

3. I helped a fire crew battle a small blaze one summer afternoon. . .

Local mountains in South California, not too tall, not too hot, and late in the day. A kid had set the grass around his parents' home ablaze. We went at it with shovels and tree branches, anything we could find, trying to put it out. When the first firefighters roared up, we stayed to help unwind hoses and do what we could to help. Once the next crews rolled in, and it was increasingly obvious we might be hindering their efforts, we pulled back and got out of the way.

We managed to keep the fire from engulfing the little fellow's home, but accomplished little else. The fire roared up a hill and over the crest before the first firefighters arrived. The crew chief thanked us for our effort, but it took them another day to put it out.

I was there for less than an hour but it was unbelievably hard work, and quite scary too, what with the threat of wind whipping the fire behind us at any moment. I'd always had respect for the crews that battled those blazes, and this only reinforced my admiration.

Miserable work but admirable effort. I'm thankful there are those who will do it.

And yeah, we entered a period of permanent drought back in the '70s: there are too many people here making demands on too little water. Let's hope this winter we gain some respite from an extended period of fire threat. Unfortunately, there are months and months to go before we have hope of getting relief.

[randys1]

4. Yeah, I worked for the CCC's back in the day, and that kind of work is crazy hard.

But what I did was nothing like what Tom did.

[2naSalit]

5. That's not good...

Bad enough that the peat in Siberia and now Alaska are burning up. My neighbor, a retired smokejumper whose home I tend to in his absence, has been in Alaska for weeks now as an IC and a good number of our folks at the local smokerjumper base are in Alaska. Probably get reassigned to that location before the summer is over. Glad we're getting unusually regular rain here though in between the rain it gets dangerously dry.

[niyad]

6. that is terrible. and I heard today that denver firefighters are going to canada to

help with the 2,000 fires burning there.