How to save your dozer in a forest fire

We only had a few minutes to do something. So I found a flat spot and cleared it as fast as possible. I wish I had time to cover the exposed hydraulic lines but it turned out fine anyway. This is as close as it gets!



P.S. My hat is off to Cal Fire. Those guys did a great job saving our old homestead. I'll be cleaning fire retardant off of everything for the next ten years but at least it's still standing. Not shown in the image but those guys trimmed bushes and cut fire brakes with hoes. Even moved my log splitter out in the open away from flammables.

Looks like a good low intensity but clean burn. Nerve wracking for sure because you can never tell what it is going to do until it's already happened.

Now take advantage of the land clearing and don't let the brush come back on your patch.

Where about is this? Looks close to here.

This is part of the CSU Lightning Complex Fire. In particular this pic is taken on the northern boarder of Henry Coe State Park.

Interesting comment from Cal Fire - they said the likely reason the crew tried to save our shack is because we already created a defensible space. If they see a place with eight inches of pine needles and leaves with brush all around they don’t even bother trying.

The fire behaved much different than the last one in 2007. This one burned in patches. Like you said, low and slow. The previous fire (with about the same fuel load) was hot and fast. It left a lunar landscape behind. Fire is unpredictable.

I can't imagine going through that. Where I live is basically a temperate rain forest with an average rainfall of 60" in a year.

Average rainfall in this part of California is 15"/year. This year we only got 7". Add to that 14,000 lightning strikes in one night and you got yourself a problem. This is just a cabin we are talking about so who cares. There were so many people that lost their homes and everything in them.

CM1995 said:

I can't imagine going through that. Where I live is basically a temperate rain forest with an average rainfall of 60" in a year.

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Where we live looks very similar to this and burns just like this but we get 60" of rain per year also. It just all comes December-March for the most part, and in the months of July-September it seldom rains a drop.

The brush and grass are manageable if you have a small enough lot but lots of them are so big you have to hire out land clearing and the rules and regulations encourage them to be big and unmanageable. So what used to get grazed by cows and such now just grows thick brush and houses, and burns from time to time.

That’s extremely expressive, hats off to you and the firefighters!!

CM1995 said:

I can't imagine going through that. Where I live is basically a temperate rain forest with an average rainfall of 60" in a year.

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Well not sure about the spec's for here, not sure if they count the inches of snow if melted as part of the inches of rain.

But looks like they are claiming 41 inch rain and 104 inches of snow. Anyhow we are a little dryer than CM1995 but no where as dry as Little-Grizzly! Tried to find the longest dry spell here and the best I could come up with is back in 2017 when we went 20 days with only a total of 0.10 inches

We haven't had rain since April, but that's kind of normal around here.