NBC Action Communities

It's getting that time of year where all the grass turns blond and you could spark a fire just by shuffeling your feet.  It looks like it just started way to early this year.

It's a good time to head to Yosemite if you're near Fresno! **** Yeah, it sure looks that way.  Brett

It's awful during fire season for people who live in fire-prone areas.  Unlike floods, which are known will hit low-lying areas, fires are capricious and may occur at random spatially and temporally under the conditions that spawn and maintain them.  So unlike a flood situation, where someone in a flood-prone area knows a flood is coming either due to excessive rain or a flood crest moving downstream, people in fire-prone areas have no way of knowing if or when a fire might start close to them due to random lightning strikes, sparks from passing rail cars, or the intentional or unintentional actions of people, and there is no safe haven such as higher ground.  Once a fire starts its movement is dictated by wind, so no one near a fire can feel safe because even if the fire is moving away from a location, a wind shift can put that location in jeopardy.  The only thing those people can do is build a fire break around the edges of their property, maintain their property in a less fire-prone state, and hope for the best.  With the Mediterranean climate of California, it's unlikely there will be any rain between now and October or November.  **** Great insight, thanks.  Brett

Having been born and having lived in Southern California all my live (I moved here in 05) brush fires are a way of life. You randomly hear fire trucks, if you hear more than one or two sirens, then you look out the window for smoke. The fires often start from someone throwing a cigerate out the window or a weed wacker hitting a rock and creating a spark. They are also often sparked by firebugs. They are often a inconvenent as roads get closed and the air smells. It does effect the air quality, but since you can't see more than a 1/4 of a mile without it being hazy from smog, you don't notice it too much (except when the sky is orange). You get used to the fires. They spent too many years putting them out as soon as they started, now too much brush has built up. Recent years they have been trying to let the fires burn as long as they don't threaten buildings as a way to get rid of the layers and layers of heavy brush. It is a more natural way to manage brush. In nature, fire happens, and quickly burns the brush since there is not too much brush. As a result you get a quickly moving fire that does not burn too hot. It can be benificial to many tree seeds as they need the heat to open up. A fire that happens when the brush has not been burned off is much hotter. Instead of quickly burning off the brush and leaving the trees alone, it burns the everything including the trees and damages the roots, thus killing the trees and brush that helps prevent the ground from washing away in the rains. Having lived in Southern California and having family members who are in the fire department, you learn a few things. Like I said, fires are a way of live in California as are earthquakes. You learn how to deal with them.
Audra