I had deleted my post because i felt it was sidelining the thread too much. Getting it set up for an argument by some damn hippies that might be hiding in our midst.
From the outside looking in I believe you hit the nail on the head. Its just common sense and there seems to be lack there of nowadays.
Actually, the hippies have taken a bum rap for the most part. The people that have done the most damage are the high-ranking members of the most extreme groups - Sierra Club, Cascadia Wild, Umpqua Watersheds to name three.
These people are doctors, lawyers, business owners, civic leaders - they have money and most of them have a distorted view of what the landscape should be that was actually borne out of misinformation campaigns that started
in the 40's, 50's and 60's. "KEEP OREGON GREEN" was one of these, and that actually started in WW2 to help keep the Japanese from lighting western forests on fire. It became an everyday anthem that taught baby boomers
that all fire and deforestation is bad.
What they don't realize is that before the Europeans settled this continent, there were vast plains and meadows in the west, created by Native Americans, to keep game animals around for easy prey. Those meadows and plains
have now been encroached upon by fast-growing regenerative forest cover in the absence of fire.
I was shaking my head watching comments on the news.
I'm trying to avoid talking politics, but it was like they were saying the last 4 years has created global warming and if someone else were in power they could stop it. That grown people who vote actually believe this scares me!
Excellent posts above, and I'm sure more housing in vulnerable areas is also a factor. It is similar to the hurricane comparisons, when there are far more structures in the way, there will be far more damage from similar storms.
That's a big part of it too - people work long careers in urban areas where they make good money, and then they want to retire and take it easy out in the country. So they buy a chunk of land in the woods and set up shop.
The big problem is, no one has told them that they can't let trees and brush grow close to their homes and outbuildings. When I was doing structure protection on the big fires, calculating access was the first thing we did,
and then calculating the vegetative component around the structure was the second thing we did. If it was more than what five guys could handle in 15 minutes, we moved on to the next house.