A couple of corrections:
California is not a low tax state, unless you want to compare it to a European country like France.
The fires are burning in land owned by the US government, so how come they don't take care of their problem? I can give at least one major reason - USFS policy for 40 years was to put out every fire. Turns out that fire is part of the forest life-cycle. Putting them out only defers what is going to happen anyway.
Kudos to these guys, no doubt, but the plain truth is we've got money for bureaucrats and giveaways, but not for necessary services. Time to change priorities.

Here in Santa Barbara we've had a big fire this summer, that nearly burned several hundred homes. What we need to do is trash the air quality regs that prevent controlled burns and get the natural cycle working in our favor, instead of waiting for the axe to fall.

RKV,

I agree, volunteerism is great but it is a little hard to swallow if it is for something that you are supposedly paying taxes for in the first place. I get the same feeling whenever I have to interact with my particular State (Wisconsin) and have to pay a fee every time I turn around. Apparently the taxes I pay is for baseline salaries and benefits, if I want something done, it costs me. At some point you just can't help but think that the whole thing is a shakedown.

At some point you just can't help but think that the whole thing is a shakedown.

It is a shakedown...everywhere.

If you have the impression that this spirit is confined to the west, then you are horribly misinformed about America.

Gah ... quoth the telegraph "404".

The link didn't work for me, this one will;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2435889/Volunteer-heroes-hold-the-line-in-California%27s-wildfire-battle.html

I also doubt the spirit of the volunteer is only in the American West.

Here in NSW, Australia we have the RFS, Rural Fire Service. Colloquially the 'Bush Fire Brigades', and 99% volunteer. Also the SES (State Emergency Service).

Of ineterst, Australia and NZ have sent assistance to California on a regular basis for their fire season.

Dose this mean you DON't have a tradition of volunteering in the UK?

The fires are burning in land owned by the US government, so how come they don't take care of their problem? I can give at least one major reason - USFS policy for 40 years was to put out every fire. Turns out that fire is part of the forest life-cycle. Putting them out only defers what is going to happen anyway.

More like about a century. We got slapped in the face with this 5-6 years ago: A fire started in the Pike NF southwest of Denver and ended up burning 150,000 acres and an assload of homes before it was over. At the time I was working north of Denver and my eyes would get irritated from the wood smoke from 40-50 miles away.

And all this because of the policy of fire suppression. It took a few really bad incidents before people figured out that, if you suppress wildfire, then the wood that would have burned just piles up and dries up. That's called an 'increased fuel load' and means what it sounds like.

To say nothing of the plant species which depend on fire for their reproductive cycles: it's common for pine cones to require the heat from a forest fire to open. No open=no baby trees. No baby trees=no animals that depend on those specific trees for parts of their life cycles either. Lodgepole Pine and some species of woodpecker whose name escapes me jump to mind here, even though I was a fish guy in school.

One of my favorite places on this world is the Arapahoe Basin ski area in Summit County. And it's going to have a very, very bad fire in the near future. The same century of "extinguish immediately" leading to increased fuel load, combined with a beetle infestation that causes the trees to die and dry out...

When it goes, it's gonna go big.

Sunfish, I heard this before, and it makes sense. But how do you know which fires to leave alone, and which not to?

Here in Israel we have a different problem, of fires set intentionally, from "nationalist" motives. Can you guess what it is that the PC code name is for?

Sunfish, I heard this before, and it makes sense. But how do you know which fires to leave alone, and which not to?

That's a good question and I'm a little weak in this area.

What we've found is, if a fire is allowed to go on with a large fuel load, it will actually burn too hot. By that, I mean that it will burn hot enough to kill the dormant seeds in the soil and destroy at least some of the soil nutrients, or in rare cases it will actually melt (yes, melt) the top layer of the soil. If that happens, then revegetation is a lot more difficult. And until the new vegetation grows (and more importantly establishes its roots) the remaining soil/sand/whatever will wash away in any real rainfall.

These areas may or may not come all the way back. It depends. And like I've said here and elsewhere, this is not a science that lends itself to controlled experimentation. What works to rehabilitate a Buffalo Creek may not work for a Storm King.

The decision of whether to fight a fire or not ends up usually being a question of what's threatened: nobody will seriously suggest putting firefighters at risk to defend unoccupied forest, and not really to defend unoccupied buildings either. They have a saying: "Risk a lot to save a lot (meaning lives), risk a little to save a little (meaning property), risk nothing to save nothing (if the property is already lost, for instance."

Here in Israel we have a different problem, of fires set intentionally, from "nationalist" motives. Can you guess what it is that the PC code name is for?

Yeah, and I could have told you that letting in hard-line Icelandic Buddhists was a terrible idea.

There's been off-and-on speculation that al-Qaeda would try to light wildfires here. If they've really been reduced from crashing airliners into buildings to doing no more than any idiot with a bad muffler on his ATV, then I don't think we're giving GWB enough credit for breaking their backs.