So crystal clear to anyone who has worked much in clearcuts, -they're all massive incinerators in waiting. The residual post-logging slash fuel loading is enormous. Logging slash takes decades to rot to the point where it lies flat on the ground, prior to which it's like a fluffy, aerated layer spread over the ground, at times as much as 6 ft deep, especilly on the coast, where the slash layer can be monumental. Everything in the clearcut dries out rapidly towards summer and the wind flows and the sun beats down. The "edge forest" surrounding the clearcut also dessicates from wind and sun egress and the loss of adjacent canopy shade. Additionally, fringe blowndown trees at the cutblock edge lean into the surrounding forest, oftentimes uprooted and hung up and partially standing against he surrounding trees, where they die. Once a fire starts in a clearcut it expands quickly and begins to create an in-sucking wind vortex. Back in the 1980's when industrial "foresters" used to practice "broadcast burning," -to remove slash to facilitate "restocking," they were well aware of this fire in-sucking vortex phenomenon, and burns were conducted according to carefully calculated weather and humidity conditions. When the fires were set along a cut block perimeter by kerosene/gasoline "drip torching," either by hand or by helicopters laden with ping pong balls full of th fuel mix, if everything went right the fire would burn everything and get sucked towards the centre of the cutblock, -and then go out. Of course, many a time things didn't go right, and the fire would escape ito the surrounding forest. Once a clearcut initiatd fire, either deliberately or naturally set, escapes the cutblock into the surrounding dessicated edge forest, it quickly ladders up the branches and gets into the canopy, with all the green, oils-laden needles, and from there, it gallops voraciously across the landscape..
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The forest-industrial complex's Molotov clearcuts
in Focus Magazine March-April 2020
Posted
So crystal clear to anyone who has worked much in clearcuts, -they're all massive incinerators in waiting. The residual post-logging slash fuel loading is enormous. Logging slash takes decades to rot to the point where it lies flat on the ground, prior to which it's like a fluffy, aerated layer spread over the ground, at times as much as 6 ft deep, especilly on the coast, where the slash layer can be monumental. Everything in the clearcut dries out rapidly towards summer and the wind flows and the sun beats down. The "edge forest" surrounding the clearcut also dessicates from wind and sun egress and the loss of adjacent canopy shade. Additionally, fringe blowndown trees at the cutblock edge lean into the surrounding forest, oftentimes uprooted and hung up and partially standing against he surrounding trees, where they die. Once a fire starts in a clearcut it expands quickly and begins to create an in-sucking wind vortex. Back in the 1980's when industrial "foresters" used to practice "broadcast burning," -to remove slash to facilitate "restocking," they were well aware of this fire in-sucking vortex phenomenon, and burns were conducted according to carefully calculated weather and humidity conditions. When the fires were set along a cut block perimeter by kerosene/gasoline "drip torching," either by hand or by helicopters laden with ping pong balls full of th fuel mix, if everything went right the fire would burn everything and get sucked towards the centre of the cutblock, -and then go out. Of course, many a time things didn't go right, and the fire would escape ito the surrounding forest. Once a clearcut initiatd fire, either deliberately or naturally set, escapes the cutblock into the surrounding dessicated edge forest, it quickly ladders up the branches and gets into the canopy, with all the green, oils-laden needles, and from there, it gallops voraciously across the landscape..