GTG
Was lost but now am found
Joined: 30 Dec 2002
Posts: 2387
Location: Peoria, Arizona, originally from Rocket City, USA
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 Posted: 10/16/2003, 5:37 pm Post subject: A burning, unresolved issue on our hands |
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Maybe someone important enough to do something about the problem will read this and go back to watching the game on television.
GTG
From today's AZ Republic -
http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special38/articles/1016paxon-editorial16-ON.html
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Thin forests, or Mother Nature will make us pay
Jim Paxon
Jim Paxon
Special for azcentral.com
Oct. 16, 2003 11:30 AM
The Aspens and oaks are now showing their fall colors in splendid fashion, before the advent of winter puts the Arizona mountains to bed. There is still a fire or two, like the "Poplar" fire on Grand Canyon's North Rim and the occasional prescribed burn putting light smoke into the air.
It's a fairly quiet end to the fire season, though the quiet doesn't bring a lot of comfort to those who lost homes in Mount Lemmon's "Aspen" fire or those who were evacuated when Pinetop-Lakeside was threatened with the "Knishba" fire. Fire season 2003 was just two-thirds as busy as 2002.
We shouldn't rest easy, though. If we have another mild, open winter and another spring of record high temperatures, winds and low humidity, there will be fires early in the season. If we have a wet, cold winter, then we will look at a more traditional fire season with possible extreme fires later, in June and July.
If the University of Arizona's Tom Swetnam is right, then we are entering the sixth year of a possible 20-year drought. Just because you can't see the smoke, doesn't mean we don't have a burning unresolved issue with wildfires.
There will always be fires in the woodlands and forests of Arizona. Mother Nature is still sending a message that she cannot live with what we humans have done. There are too many trees in the forests and she is working relentlessly, diligently at reducing the number with insects, plant life, and, yes, fire. She has no regard for jurisdiction, ownership, communities or houses.
There are only two choices in this matter, either we get very busy helping Mother Nature by doing some aggressive thinning, cleaning and prescribed burning, or we leave the matter of where, when and how much up to her. Doing nothing is the decision of greatest scale we Arizonans can make and one with the greatest chance of disaster that might eclipse the destruction wrought by the "Rodeo-Chediski" or "Aspen" fires.
Isn't it time for the whole state to get together and go to work for the good of the land? I hope so. Time will tell.
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