Less chances of somebody setting the forest on fire unintentionally, and vice versa.
You also need prescribed forest clearings inside the forest around settlements to create multiple rings of fire stops.
Fire breaks are really effective for small fires in moderate weather conditions. The kind of fires we saw in Oz or Cali jump straight over them. Look at these maps from late last year from the guardian[0]. The fires were jumping 20kms or more at a stretch. If look down to the snowy mountains map, you can see where a strong change in wind sent ember attacks to every ridge line over successive days. Unless your fire break clears every ridge you can't stop these kind of fires.
Also, since all the misinformation last year in Australia in the msm about lack of back burning and arson being the major causes of fires. I can't speak to the experience in calu, but we have now found that back burning had actually increased 10 fold before the fires from the previous 10 year period, but suitable conditions for back burning had also decreased by more than a third. Lightning strikes were responsible for most bushfires, with only about 1-3% being deliberately lit. Hell, in the midst of the firestorms, the sudden updraft of smoke and ash into the atmosphere was creating it's own mini weather events including more lightning.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2019/nov/21/how-au...
I think having them than not having them is still better than nothing
I agree but this sort of jumps to heart of things. What do you do with the many, many houses already there? Not just houses but people, people with considerable political influence, along with the industries that build this sort of house and everything depending on that? I mean, this is so thorny a problem that I expect nothing with come of the sensible solution and we're just going to have "fires as far as the eye can see" here in California.
Either clear the forest, or demolish them.
Absolutely. I've got somewhere an edition of Tacitus' Germania with commentary that states as a matter of fact, no explanation needed that "the forest is not part of the human sphere". Why is this so controversial that it needs to be downvoted?
It is baffling that anyone would want to live on the wrong side of the urban-wilderness interface, especially if wilderness means wildfire risk.
My house in a Michigan forest has a very, very different risk profile from a home in a California forest. And California is a big state, I'm sure there are forests that have similarly low risk profiles.
Well, there used to be. For example the coastal quasi-rainforest in Big Basin near Santa Cruz.
But climate change appears to have pushed places like that into the burn zone. Nowadays even Olympic National Park, an area full of temperate rainforest, is experiencing wildfire.
it seems like pretty much any forest area of California is at wildfire risk these days.
People have been shown to be willing to rebuild repeatedly in fire zones, with massive economic and public safety impact. Makes sense to legislate to prevent this.
Some do, some don't. California isn't the whole world.
Edit:
> Wildfires are among the most common forms of natural disaster in some regions, including Siberia, California, and Australia.[17][18][19] Areas with Mediterranean climates or in the taiga biome are particularly susceptible.
California and Australia are outliers. Writing off forests in general just because particular sorts of forests are prone to burning doesn't make sense.
It's funny. In a recent discussion I was arguing against someone wanting to increase power costs on rural customers, because I think doing so carelessly would impact the food supply chain. But it doesn't take too much "living in forests is great" foolish selfishness in the middle of a discussion of wildfires to make me wonder if I was on the wrong side of that one.
I've lived in the forest for the last ten years. Nothing better. Sure there's risks; there's risks everywhere.