Yosemite fire caused by weed growers

[Wolfstrike]

i don't if they said the whole fire, or just a smaller one, but they believe the fire was started by illegal marijuana farmers.
California has become the largest open-air marijuana producer in the world, with the government's fake "war on drugs" policy and their invitation for mafias and drug cartels to come here and use our land.

California provides limited enforcement, usually, the feds fly a helicopter over the sites allowing the farmers to escape.

 

[nitroz]

How the hell does plant growing cause a fire?
more deets?

 

[TemplarKormac]

 

[Vandalshandle]

Well, they should not have any troble finding voluteers to help contain it.

 

[TheOldSchool]

If only it was legal... then this fire would NEVER have happened.

 

[Londoner]

If only it was legal... then this fire would NEVER have happened.

The Reagan War on Drugs gave the State more "tools" to move blacks from welfare to prison.

 

[Clementine]

How the hell does plant growing cause a fire?
more deets?

They must have been sampling the crops.

 

[waltky]

Global warming leading to more wildfires...

Study: Warmer Planet Fuels More Wildfires
September 04, 2013 > A warmer planet is helping to fuel more wildfires in the United States, according to a new study.

Environmental scientists at Harvard University predict that by 2050, wildfire seasons will be three weeks longer, up to twice as smoky, and will burn a wider area in the western part of the country. Fires in the Western United States have gotten worse since the 1970s. Scientists at Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences looked at past weather conditions and wildfires to find out why. “In some regions, like the Rocky Mountains, really temperature is the driving force, but elsewhere variables like relative humidity can play a role," said Loretta Mickley, an atmospheric chemist and co-author of the study. "If one year is particularly moist, for example, in the Great Basin, Nevada, Utah area, then that will foster a lot of vegetation growth and then the following year all that vegetation can feed wildfires and their spread.”

The scientists then turned to a suite of 15 climate models based on the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international body for the assessment of global warming. On average, the models predicted increases between 2 and 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. “The finding for rainfall, which can diminish fire activity, and for relative humidity, we found only small changes, with some models predicting small increases and some models predicting small decreases in those variables," Mickley said. "So we found as in the past, temperature is really driving the changes that we predict for the future.”

U.S. Forest Service shows a member of the BLM Silver State Hotshot crew using a drip torch to set back fires on the southern flank of the Rim Fire in California.

The calculations suggest the probability of large wildfires would increase by factors of two or three, and that by 2050, the more than four-month fire season would be three weeks longer. “If we just look at one month in the future for example, the area burned in the very forested Rockies could quadruple," Mickley said. "If we look at the whole fire season, we see increases more on the order of say 20 or 30 percent to 100 percent.”

While air quality in the United States has greatly improved in recent decades in response to federal laws, Mickley says air pollution is an unexpected consequence of longer lasting, widespread wildfires. “These increases in wildfires could totally disrupt our efforts to clean the air," she said. "Last weekend, there was an area the size of some states in the eastern U.S. blanketed with unhealthy air over California and Nevada. And we call this increase in smoke an important climate penalty on air quality.” That penalty would be air that is twice as smoky as it is today. These findings, Mickley says, underscore the need for better forest management. But also she adds, they send a signal to policy makers and the public to reduce fossil fuel emissions that are warming the planet.

Study: Warmer Planet Fuels More Wildfires

 

[waltky]

Update: Hunter Caused Yosemite Fire...

USFS: Hunter Caused Huge Wildfire Near Yosemite
September 5, 2013 ~ A gigantic wildfire in and around Yosemite National Park was caused by an illegal fire set by a hunter, the U.S. Forest Service said Thursday.

The agency said there is no indication the hunter was involved with illegal marijuana cultivation, which a local fire chief had speculated as the possible cause of the blaze. No arrests have been made, and the hunter's name was being withheld pending further investigation, according to the Forest Service. The only legal hunting allowed at the time the fire started Aug. 17 was archery for bear and deer. A Forest Service statement gave no details on how the illegal fire in a remote canyon of the Stanislaus National Forest had escaped the hunter's control.

Because of high fire danger across the region, the Forest Service had banned fires outside of developed camping areas more than a week before the fire started. The Rim Fire has burned nearly 371 square miles — one of the largest wildfires in California history and has cost $81 million to fight. In some cases people who have started wildfires in California have been sued to pay for the costs and damages. Forest Service spokesman Ray Mooney said he was not immediately able to get more information from investigators. The Tuolumne County District Attorney's Office also assisted in the investigation, but declined to comment.

Officials said 111 structures, including 11 homes, have been destroyed. Thousands of firefighters were called in to battle the blaze, which at one point threatened more than 4,000 structures. The blaze is now 80 percent contained. Chief Todd McNeal of the Twain Harte Fire Department told a community group recently that there was no lightning in the area, so the fire must have been caused by humans. He said he suspected it might have caused by an illicit marijuana growing operation.

California's largest fire on record, a 2003 blaze in the Cleveland National Forest east of San Diego, was sparked by a novice deer hunter who became lost and set a signal fire in hope of being rescued. Sergio Martinez was sentenced to six months in a work-furlough program, 960 hours of community service and five years of probation in 2005. The so-called Cedar Fire burned nearly 430 square miles, caused 15 deaths and destroyed more than 2,200 homes.

USFS: Hunter Caused Huge Wildfire Near Yosemite - ABC News