Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Forest fire ?

160user;
Top of the morning to you sir, I hope it's cooled off a tad in your part of northern Minnesota or at least is tolerable weather and that you're well.

Full disclosure here, 673 and I have chatted about this topic a fair bit both here and on the phone, so we're on the same page of the same book.

In 673's case he's tied into the logging community up there a wee bit more than I am down here, but I've got ties in the ranching community and will throw out these examples of government interference which resulted in not much positive.

One of the old ranching families here go way back to the first ranch run by Judge Haynes and like most ranching businesses in southern BC, they've got a couple side hustles to keep them ranching. One is that they build roads, so have track hoes, cats and trucks.

They happened to have some machinery up on their property on the highlands between the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys when a fire started - can't recall now if it was lighting or idiots. Anyways the fire it very small so they call the Ministry and offer to bulldoze a fire guard around it quick as they're right there.

The Ministry people said not only "Heck No!" but "If you do we'll fine you" because of environmental damage.

So it's a regular Okanagan summer day which means about 101°F in the shade with a howling wind and away goes the fire towards the town of Oliver.

We had to evacuate my late Mother and many other people in town had to be evacuated, they lost a few houses and thousands of acres burned.

Oh - when "crap got real" the Ministry did call the ranch/road builder family and ask if they'd be interested in contracting some bulldozer work. This was a week into the fire of course.

Making sandwiches you say?

When the Vaseux Fire hit us in 2003, there was already a huge destructive fire north of us on the east side of Okanagan lake which ended up burning 238 homes in Kelowna, so the fire departments and Ministry crews were stretched beyond thin.

We had 20 minutes to get our horses and ourselves out when it sparked up about a mile south of where I'm typing. Again it was close to 100°F with a stiff south wind the blew the fire up onto the mountain south of our house in less than an hour. When we left we felt that if the wind shifted our place would be gone in about half an hour.

We're close to an unincorporated little village - Okanagan Falls - which has a volunteer fire department as does a similar village Kaleden north of us and the town of Oliver south. All three of those fire departments plus the paid guys out of Penticton got scrambled immediately.

Many of the ladies from the Senior's Club, Legion and local churches got the word out and had a real spread of food made up and waiting for the crews at the OK Falls fire hall for when they'd come down off the mountain. Somebody from the government appeared out of thin air and said that since they didn't have "Food Safe Training" that they couldn't offer food to the fire fighters and it would all have to go in the garbage...

Neat, no?

Then the province pronounced it an "Emergency Situation" which is was, but that meant that fire crews from all over BC could send crews and equipment here and the province would foot the bill.

Here's a little added bonus for them though in that many departments sent trucks which needed repairs or equipment replaced and that was all done on the province's tab, not the fire department involved.

I could go on for quite awhile and with apologies to 673, I have with him previously!

The government here could screw up a 2 car funeral procession when it comes to how they react to fires sometimes and so help me it seems most times.

Anyways sorry if this came off as a rant, but it used to be better, now it's not so much and it's frustrating for those of us who live in the sticks and might get burned out because of their ineptitude.

All the best and thanks for reading my thoughts.

Dwayne

"Food Safe Training"
Yup
Government

A point was made on one of the news programs that managing forests would reduce carbon emissions by reducing the scope of wildfires. Why hasn't Canada worked this angle to reduce their carbon footprint?

rickt300;
Good afternoon to you sir, I trust that you're well and at least managing the Texas summer weather.

The question you've posed isn't a bad one in my view, but before I give my admittedly jaundiced opinion let's just run through some numbers for fun.

Despite being second only to Russia in landmass, there's only the population of the state of California on this side of the medicine line.

Also, despite being comparatively hot in summer and cold in winter as well as really spread out, thus resulting in fairly high per capita carbon emissions, we Canucks produce less than 2% of those aforementioned carbon emissions.

Thus and this is key to everything from here forward in my view, a giant spaceship could come and suck up the entire population of Canada and besides some folks missing our hockey players, there'd be no discernable difference in the carbon levels emitted by anyone left.

Now depending upon who is counting and how, we're something like the 7th largest agricultural food and seafood producer in the world, so there'd be some folks getting put on an instant diet program for sure. As well likely some people would miss our exports of lumber and minerals such as potash, so more dieting and more expensive houses too, but still nobody has noticed we're gone as far as carbon emissions goes.

Currently, the favorite flavor of the governing bodies up here is to inflict carbon taxes upon us in various forms, but in fossil fuel for sure, so everything we touch - remember there's 5 of us and we're spread out so everything has to be trucked forever to get anywhere - but everything we touch is taxed and then the tax is taxed with carbon taxes.

They, that is to say the current folks in power, keep on assuring us that there's all sorts of wonderful planet saving programs being put in place with that carbon tax money.

When pressed by the Auditor General however, Prince Shiny Pony's crew can't come up with receipts for more than half the spending they've done. That's on record in front of cameras and everyone too - no idea where the money has gone, but trust us, it's gone to a good place.

Anyways sir, I did warn you I'm jaundiced and apparently jaded too, but at this juncture I'd be shocked down to my Merino wool socks if they'd let this cash cow go to the auction barn.

If I was really jaded and cynical, I might even opine that they don't really care about the planet and that it's all a cash and power grab.

The last time a half dozen of them flew out here on a jet to tell me what a good job they were doing, I sorta felt like that might be the case, but as always, I might be wrong.

It really was a decent question and deserves a less cynical person to answer it.

All the best regardless.

Dwayne

No doubt Dwayne. Why don't they just be honest and raise the GST to 20% or 25%. Well, people would revolt and there would be riots. So instead of doing that they baffle the public with BS, fear mongering and guilt triping about climate change, global warming and so on. Spending untold billions on this basic false advertising scheme. People swallow this nonsense and various other ingenious reasons they use to justify new taxes, then put tax on taxes. The wanton spending, burgeoning deficits, increasing taxes unlike we've ever seen before creates inflation, prices go up, way up, thus the same percentage of taxes on increased prices caused by carbon taxes and deficits becomes another tax windfall. Where does this money go, into general revenue to be wasted on a lot of nonsense doing nothing about climate. Carbon tax is nothing but a cowardly slimy scam.

Making sammiches and packing fuel is actually something that may happen, but really when shyte hits the fan you spend your time helping people move animals, livestock etc...and doing whatever it takes.

About 6 weeks ago 1 mile from my house, there was a fire at about 12:00am, it was just off the side of my friends property and quickly was on my buddys place, my buddy was near Edmonton at the time, wife calls him...he races back home which is normally an 8hr drive, he made it home in the morning before the forestry fire guys showed up.

Luckily, the locals contained the fire and redirected it away from his house, but it was about 50 yds from his house....he lost a barn and some timber, but he was grateful....I wasn't aware of it and didn't know about it until the morning, I had my ph off, big mistake. I have a water tank and pump on one of my pickups that gets used every couple years.

Last night it rained hard and we were quite thankful. The thing is, we live in the suburbs .

You and Dwayne are spot on Government CONTROL AND COMPLYANCE is now paramount in everything we do and they put into law, Unfortunately we will be stuck with this forever unless there is a 180 degree switch in direction, and that would need a war to change it.

Norm

Is there a peaceful way out of this lunacy government? If Canada could do it maybe we could. It seems the US government has become totally corrupt in the Executive and Justice department. Half of congress is either RINO or Democrat. Not seeing a peaceful way out for us. Between the media creating idiots, the born stupid, the people who believe White supremacists are everywhere we are screwed.

rickt300;
Good morning to you sir, I trust that your part of Texas has weather you can live with today and that you're well.

While I'm cognizant you didn't address the question to me and for sure and certain I don't speak for anyone other than myself so this is one redneck, lived his entire life in western Canada, semi-old guy's thoughts only - here goes.

A peaceful way out has to be the goal in my view. Our grandparents' and parents' blood, sweat, tears and in some cases very lives were sacrificed to give us the life we've been given here. I'll say "we" as I believe Canada and the US share that common history of the last 120 odd years. There's so many Canadians who came up from the US during that time and likely Canadians that went south as well so that's one of the reasons I'll take that position.

That gift, that heritage and opportunity which they passed to us, to me goes with an implied responsibility to pass a similar well functioning and peaceful society/community down to our children or the next shift regardless of whether we've had kids.

In both cases it might well mean that the boundaries will be redrawn and new countries formed, but we can see from the recent past in Europe that it is possible to do that without violence.

We can also see from the recent past and present in Europe that the possibility of not being able to accomplish it peacefully is always there. We'd ignore that fact at our peril and I believe we should face this issue with as much honesty as we can possibly muster.

The legacy media in both of our countries seems to be paid propaganda to the highest bidder for the most part. It's been going that way for decades, but certainly in the past decade I would opine that those who have ears to hear and eyes to see have been able to discern we're being lied to regularly.

Some things like the rise of independent media gives me hope in this area for sure, but of course as the big players see the inevitable end of their monopoly, we can expect them to not go gently into the proverbial "good night" that awaits them.

Personally I believe that whomever controls the message and the medium with which it's delivered will carry the day. To your point of too many being less than sharp these days and seeing white supremist boogey folk behind every tree - whomever they listen to will direct them into further phobia or point them toward the truth.

There are a lot of folks up here who seem to be addicted to free stuff in all forms and again I'll say seem to lack the ability to understand that there is no such thing as "free stuff".

Perhaps that's where we can start? By attempting to educate others that everything has a cost to it and some one at some time is going to have to pay for it.

We can also both become more involved in local and regional politics and encourage others to do the same. Change absolutely can start locally and if life goes sideways, historically it's the strong communities who have the best mathematical chance of success.

Of course only someone who doesn't read history at all would suggest that there is always a peaceful solution to situations eerily similar to where we find ourselves. That goes without saying - but I see I said it anyways didn't I?

Thanks for reading my thoughts, all the best to you down there regardless of the interesting times we find ourselves in.

Dwayne

Maybe we are all just tilting against windmills. We are living through the greatest and most rapid change in human history. Consider this, our family was the first to have a TV on our block and look where we are now.