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Aftermath

by slgwv
In the Feather River canyon, draining west from the Sierra Nevada. The damage results from the enormous Camp Fire that devastated hundreds of square miles of the Sierra Nevada foothills in November 2018. The fire was started by sparking power lines and obliterated the town of Paradise, as well as many isolated houses and businesses. It crossed the ridge here, coming from the north (right side of picture), driven by warm katabatic winds from out of the east. The fire in turn jumped CA State Route 70 (the highway here) and even crossed the Feather River locally. The left inset shows a view of burned country extending to the north west of here. The other two insets show salvage logging in the vicinity of a hydropower installation on the Feather. Evidently quite a number of trees were scorched severely enough to be killed, but the wood is still usable. Note the logger trimming the partly burned tree in the far right insert.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the utility that owned the lines, has pre-emptively filed bankruptcy due to the billions in lawsuits already filed.
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6 comments

William Sutherland said:

Excellent trio!

Admired in:
www.ipernity.com/group/tolerance
6 years ago ( translate )

Pam J said:

THE HORROR OF WILDFIRE
6 years ago

slgwv replied to Pam J:

It's definitely a reality check--
6 years ago

slgwv said:

Thanks, everyone!
6 years ago ( translate )

Gudrun said:

It looks frightening! I wonder how long it will take for the vegetation to recover.
In the NE of Germany we are having large forest fire the second year running which can only be tackled from the air. There's so much munition in the ground that it's too dangerous for firefighters (leftovers from WWII and the Russians), the munition tends to explode in the heat.
6 years ago

slgwv said:

Yikes! That makes worrying about unexploded shells from avalanche control seem pretty trivial!

The big conifers will take decades to recover, but at least the scrub will come back in a few years. The good news is that it's overall better forage for the wildlife (and cattle), so that's sort of a positive. I'd still prefer the forest even so!
6 years ago