Forest fires are actually a natural part of a forest’s life cycle, any forest biologist can tell you that. I say let it burn in a controlled fashion and let nature run its course.

Its all about protecting houses, everything else is as previous poster said natural.

The problem in Russia is that they arent even trying to contain it, allowing it to spread to new areas. The reason why after months of burning its still going strong.
It should be fairly easy to cut down the trees around the forrest-fire so it cant spread, and maybe keep the line wet. You dont lose that much additional forrest in that, and anyway, even if you COULD stop the fire just now, the wood would be wrecked anyway.

The animals can easily flee from burning forrest. It’s in their instics, and there will be lots of non-burned forrest around, particulary if the fire can be contained.

Burned down woods increase, particulary on non-paper company owned or leased property biodiversity. The forrest will be back soon enough, and it will be koivus and other light-green stuff instead of gloomy kuusis.

Areas that have experienced forrest-fires the land is much more rich in nutritions than in those where the trees have simply been cut down. If you have travelled in places where there have been forrest firest on recent years, you will find the places to be very idyllic and paradise-lke, while the places where the trees have been cut and new is now being grown, it looks just another place where man has won nature.

THe only minus in forrest-fires is the short-term air quality. Also, lost money if the forrest was being grown to be cut down, but you can probaply get some money either from insurance or goverment for this.

This is an interesting article, but you are missing the fact that they ARE doing something here, unlike in Russia, which is a big difference. In Russia the fires are threatening human population as well. Here you are very lucky to see forrestfire or area where the forrest has burn during the past two years (the time it looks nasty before getting all green and joyful).

funny how you can connect forest fire to welfare state.. or anything in general. what’s your ignored solution? oppressive-american model?

Theres some plants which seeds *require* a forest fire before they germinate.

Actually in Finland they do in some places small-scale controlled slash/burn for forest diversity.

The link in this post to the budget for fire brigades and the welfare state is tenuous to say the least. It’s almost not worth commenting on in fact.

The simple fact is that this year has been very bad for fires (I suppose due to the extremely good summer that you mention in your cycling post). Exactly the same weather related type of problem occured in Stockholm this past winter; it snowed so much that towards the end of the winter, the authorities had more or less exausted their budget for winter road clearance. But saying this is because of Sweden having an extensive social welfare system would be equaly bizarre. It was just an exceptionally harsh winter, just as this summer has been an exceptionally harsh forest fire season.

The only way to prevent forest fires is by logging, otherwise nature must take it’s course.

Read: Veikko Huovinen – Puukansan Tarina.
A story about what happens after forest fire.

Haven’t you heard who is responsible for those fires?
It’s them damn welfare statist finnish tourists with their sloppy manners with fire…

Yeah, like #4 I have to wonder if there is any issue where Phil couldn’t slip words “welfare state” in. In negative tone of course.
Is the concept of welfare state defined somewhere, or could it mean different things for us? Welfare doesn’t sound bad for me.

Beautiful, but scary photo!

Unlike in many other western countries, most of the forests in Finland are owned by private citizens. Government has to protect the property of individuals whether it is buildings, forests or something else. So, yes they have to put the fires off or at least try to.

Beautiful, but scary photo!

BTW – that’s just something I grabbed off Yahoo! Images. I think it’s of Montana.

Wow, talk about global warming. Just what are you guys trying to do? Have an endless summer?

majava:
Beautiful, but scary photo!

Indeed. I’d totally have it as my next wallpaper if it were bigger – imagine that in 1024×768!

“Yeah, like #4 I have to wonder if there is any issue where Phil couldn’t slip words “welfare state” in. In negative tone of course.
Is the concept of welfare state defined somewhere, or could it mean different things for us? Welfare doesn’t sound bad for me.”

I don’t think he needs to write anything in his blog anymore. He just has to put the text “CASH STRAPPED WELFARE STATE IS BAD, MMMKAY?” on the front page and it’ll be perfect.

In Montana? Where is the National guard?

In a Libertarian society there would always be enough money to put fires out. Why? Because the person who put them on fire in the first place would know that he would have to compensate unless he or she reacted quickly in order to put the fire out. Who in his or her right mind would like to pay enormous sums of money to each and everyone who suffered from the smoke? Namely, if he or she didn’t put the fire out for some reason, we could all send him a bill and get a compensation. (I calculated my share and it was 652 euros for instant personal damage plus 1,82 euros for future damage caused by the green house effect. I’ll send the bill to the parties involved just to make a statement.)

The welfare state, on the other hand, is more likely to start fires than put them out. This was proven by Mises already in the 1920s in his letter to his wife: “The money a “welfare” state steals from the people, my dear, will never be enough to put out all forest fires under all circumstances. So why not start fires instead of putting them out. Any state is after all pretty evil.”

“In a Libertarian society there would always be enough money to put fires out. Why? Because the person who put them on fire in the first place would know that he would have to compensate unless he or she reacted quickly in order to put the fire out.”

Who is going to supervise those compensation payments? What if I decided just to say “fuck off, you little twit. I am not going to pay one cent”. Want are you going to do? Especially, if I happened to own a couple of Uzis. I could just kill you. It just plain darwinism, stronger species etc etc. Nothing wrong with that, according to your own liberarian principles.

After all, there is no government, no police in the your nation called Libertarium to enforce the rule of law. Pretty soon you would be having town meetings to solve these issues, someboby would volunteer to be the town sheriff and eventually your little Liberarium would have a government with all kinds of necessary institutions, just like any modern nation nowadays.

Another example, do any of the big cities work without a lot of traffic lights, signs and all kinds of restrictions? Just go with the flow, like in the case of New York blackouts? Those lights are “evil” government tools to control people, aren’t they?

After all, there is no government, no police in the your nation called Libertarium to enforce the rule of law.

A minarchy would have a state-controlled police force. Most Enlightenment period classical liberals (libertarians) were minarchists.

The other libertarian system is anarchocapitalism where privately owned security agencies would take care of chasing the bad guys and upholding the law (whatever that happens to be).

Ahh, those stinky Russians again. One day we’ll get them back. Wait for the wind to shift just right–and then we’ll all fart!

Well, at least it is just a forest fire. In the 60′s it would have been some bloody 50 megaton atmospheric nuclear test with all the radioactive scheisse raining on us.

The test range was supposed to be on Novaya Zemlya, but there are some old Sami people telling stories about mornings, when the sun rose twice…

Finally I managed to find the person who is responsible.

“Vladimir, Vladimir, put out the camp fire”, his frinds told him repeatedly. But did he? No!

Please send your amends to:
Vladimir Ilyich
Dvortsovaia Naberezhnaia, 32-38
St Petersburg

I did already.

@16,
you are assuming the person who tosses a cigarette in a tinder-dry forest will be caught, and that he will be able to pay compensation for the damages. Two big, unfounded assumptions. I think starting a fire makes you liable under our evil statist system, too, but wouldn’t rely on that to keep morons from starting fires.

prince of dorkness and tim, it was a joke, for heaven’s sake.

Yeah sure, “just find the culprit” and “then send him a bill”.

You have to work on your sarcasm receptors!

50 megaton nuke test? The crowd pleaser size? Head to Iran to see one soon.

Wait as leaders of the free world are you going to do anything?

“Indeed. I’d totally have it as my next wallpaper if it were bigger”

It’s one of the most widely spread shots on the internet and you can get it in high resolution and it’s even legal to download it. It was taken by a fire behaviour analyst and as he was on duty at the time, he is not allowed to sell it and therefore it is available for download here:

http://www.nifc.gov/gallery/images/Elkbath.tif

The interesting thing is, that this image seems to have also ispired artists to paint the same picture:

http://www.alfeldstein.com/img/forestfire.jpg

Phil obviously left the copyright issues and other formalities aside but there is a story behind this picture. You can read it for example here:
http://forums.firehouse.com/showthread.php?t=24777

Great – thanks!

I wrote about this subject from a bit another point of view in my blog, you may want to take look at it; http://nyctalus.blogspot.com/2006/08/russia-stinks-literally.html

Echa A Rodar Tu Corto. . .
Your short feature to travel all over the world…

cinevivo

http://www.cinevivo.com.ar

I played in that creek as a child. It’s right outside of Victor, Montana. It’s a small world!