Western Fires

[UNI88]

There Are Two Oregons, and They’re Both on Fire

Oregon is burning. Or, more accurately, both Oregons are, and how you feel about the president’s nonreaction to the wildfires currently engulfing the three West Coast states he won’t win reveals which one you’re in. There’s the Oregon that outsiders have seen on Portlandia, and the far more conservative one they’ve probably never heard of, whose members are scattered widely across the state’s 98,000 square miles. The only thing progressive urban Oregonians have in common with the tiny farming, fishing, and logging towns that dot the rest of the state is that they reside equally far out on their ideological branches—and they’re now all scrambling to breathe as those branches burn to the ground.

Why hasn't Lil Donnie said much about the fires? Eastern and southern Oregon (away from Portland and the Willamette Valley) is filled with his supporters.

[UNI88]

And on the subject of dipshits spreading rumors that antifa supporters were starting fires ...

Clackamas County deputy placed on leave after sharing antifa wildfire rumors in online video

The patrol deputy’s statements in the video are in direct conflict with efforts by law enforcement to dispel false rumors that antifa is responsible for wildfires burning in Clackamas County.

The deputy, whose face and name badge are not fully shown in the video, is recorded saying: “Antifa motherfuckers are out causing hell, and there’s a lot of lives at stake. And there’s a lot of people’s property at stake because these guys got some vendetta.”

[Skjellyfetti]

There Are Two Oregons, and They’re Both on Fire

Oregon is burning. Or, more accurately, both Oregons are, and how you feel about the president’s nonreaction to the wildfires currently engulfing the three West Coast states he won’t win reveals which one you’re in. There’s the Oregon that outsiders have seen on Portlandia, and the far more conservative one they’ve probably never heard of, whose members are scattered widely across the state’s 98,000 square miles. The only thing progressive urban Oregonians have in common with the tiny farming, fishing, and logging towns that dot the rest of the state is that they reside equally far out on their ideological branches—and they’re now all scrambling to breathe as those branches burn to the ground.

Why hasn't Lil Donnie said much about the fires? Eastern and southern Oregon (away from Portland and the Willamette Valley) is filled with his supporters.

Last time he commented on wildfires, he accidentally made a meme in Finland.

[Winterborn]

My guess one living in these areas should probably expect more fires in the coming years. Unless policies change......

"What you'll often find," Wood says, "is that there are projects which have been extremely well-vetted, which have been years in the work, there will be a 5,000-page document, which no one could conceivably ever read because it's so long and complicated, but then the project will still get put on hold for an indefinite period of time, because some special interest group filed a lawsuit." So much time is spent considering the ramifications of an action; little is spent considering the impact of doing nothing.

From 1999 to 2017, an average of 13,000 acres of California were subjected to controlled burns each year. In February 2020, Nature Sustainability published a report arguing that California needs to burn 20 million acres of forest in order to restore forest health.

The Clean Air Act of 1990 creates another obstacle. The law treat the smoke from a controlled, prescribed burn as a pollutant that must be analyzed and permitted before the burn can be done. The smoke from a wildfire is not similarly scrutinized. But needless to say, the environmental impact of a multi-state wildfire is much larger than that of a smaller controlled burn.

https://reason.com/2020/09/14/western-w ... are-eased/