Strange statements made about the Hawaii fire
OK let's back this up a bit. I just got back from a road trip yesterday and people were sending me all kinds of links to the fire in Hawaii. So let's calmly and rationally have a look. Obviously the fire was real. High winds during a fire is very dangerous. Reuters is reporting that "Nearly 85% of U.S. wildfires are caused by humans, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Natural causes include lightning and volcanic activity. In Hawaii, less than 1% of fires are due to natural causes, according to Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization. The Hawaiian Islands have six active volcanoes, including one on Maui."
Obviously the fire was real as were the high winds that fanned the flames so to speak. In BC we are very familiar with the annual risk of forest fires. We have a lot of forests here filled with evergreen trees like cedar, fir, pine and hemlock. Anyone who has been camping knows. if you put once of those green branches on a campfire, it will instantly ignite and burst into flames.
That's why every summer we are under high risk for forest fires. This year hasn't been abnormally bad for us. We've had much worse yet this year Alberta and Nova Scotia have had some large forest fires. Whether it's arson or human negligence it's hard to tell. During the ANTIFA riots in the US we all saw video footage of arsonists in California.
Deliberately starting a forest fire is criminally insane. Pretty much every summer now we have campfire bans yet we still manage to have forest fires. Most campfire are pretty contained. Sadly, throwing a cigarette buy out of the window of a moving car can easily ignite dry grass and start a fire. Something so simple and so easily avoidable.
In Hawaii they have palm trees which are awesome. However, they're not all bunched in together don't have highly flammable branches reaching out next to each other. We don't know the cause of the fire in Hawaii yet but from the pictures we see a whole neighborhood burned to the ground.
It kind of looks similar to the Lytton fire. To my understanding that was caused by brakes on a train that ran right through the town. I filmed Lytton on my road trip to the Bowron Lakes.
In BC we have a lot of wood framed houses close together. If a fire breaks out and is not quickly contained it can easily spread to other houses. That's kind of what it looks like happened in Hawaii. It's going to take some time to sift through the data and process it. I'm still basking in the splendor of my road trip and will make two new posts. One discussing wind therapy, the about balancing the extremes as my mandate evolves.
