Deliberately Starting Fires

[j2k4]

Originally posted by Livy@12 August 2003 - 08:41
about fires and cigaretes this also happened quite recently im sure, someone threw a cigarette out the window and set someones car on fire, i think cigaretes should be banned in the car if mobile phones are banned, just as dangerous

There you go-

Distracting cigarettes; combustible cell phones.....where will this lust for accessorizing the automotive experience end?

In disaster, surely?

[lynx]

Originally posted by Arm@12 August 2003 - 01:44
Forest fires are natural. If the excess "fuel" from the forest(dead trees, leaves) ar enot allowed to burn then instead of having smaller fires you got one huge uncontainable. They are supposed to happen.

Though a little off topic, I have to agree with this point.

We spend millions (billions?) preventing even the smallest of forest fires, although these fires are well known to be beneficial to the forest in some ways. As Arm says, they are natural, and in consequence some plants and animals have evolved to take advantage of them.

However, there will always come a time when the forest can no longer support the overburden, and our efforts to prevent small fires will be insufficient. The resulting fires are of tremendous proportions and the damage done far in excess of what would have been caused by smaller conflagrations. And because fires on this scale are not natural, evolution has not prepared the plant and animal life to respond favorably.

I believe it was the practice of native Australians to deliberately start smaller fires. This was possibly in order to prevent these massive burn-outs, though I have no direct evidence of this. This has been outlawed, and subsequently Australia has seen some of the worst bush fires ever. Perhaps not so far off topic after all.

Whilst I can not condone the actions of the arsonists, who almost certainly are not setting these fires with any valid reason, perhaps those who prevent the smaller fires should also be held responsible for the scale of the destruction.

[MagicNakor]

Which would work until a) one of those smaller fires destroys property, or b ) until one of those smaller fires destroys enough timber to cause enough economical damage. There are places in the world that depend on their lumber; a fire of any size can be, and often is, devastating.

[lynx]

You have missed the point.
Yes, small fires will do damage, but if the forest does not have an excess of overburden these fires are relatively easy to control, the damage will be minor.

Let's assume that in a given area there might be a dozen of these fires every year. Over a period of 20 years, that would be around 240 fires. The damage caused by these large fires is thousands of times that caused by a single small fire, so by preventing the small fires from removing the excess overburden the actual damage done is far in excess of what happens without intervention.

[j2k4]

Although those who set fires deliberately should be hung by the neck, as it has been said here, what are called "controlled burns" are beneficial; the sticking points on this method are obvious, though:

Any fire can get out of control.

Environmentalists would have a field day.

Citizens would protest.

Lightening is a fickle tool for starting fires.

Oddly enough, it has been calculated (by whoever calculates these things) that there are more and bigger trees now-due to good management strategies (i.e. reforestation) than there were in the 19th century, when such fires burned until they went out on their own.

[MagicNakor]

Fire isn't controllable. Around here, there have been managed burns that have gotten out of hand. It doesn't take much, just a shift in the wind. I've had my backyard burnt from a "controlled" burn. Sections of it are still black, and this is..oh..three, four years later.

No, I haven't missed the point. However, I likely have more experience with forest fires (wild and managed) than you do, and especially if the weather stays in this pattern, controlled burns will have little to no effect. When everything's tinderbox dry, and there's 25-40 mph winds, it doesn't really matter if you've got some dead branches and fallen logs. The whole mountainside'll go up anyway.