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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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I'm just smug about Florida apparently doing it right. I get endless texts alerting me of controlled grass burns in my region, and they let me be both safer and also dunk on states with more money and less sense.

Engaging charity for a moment, maybe controlled burns in forest are harder somehow? Uglier? More expensive?

Flat, road access (and roads to use as containment features), water supply/draft sites, and to an extent fuel type. And Socal chaparral isn't really adapted to low-intensity burns the way some coniferous forests and grasslands are--if it burns, it's gonna be at a high intensity and challenging to control.

Cheers, appreciate the facts you're spreading here, rather than the standard pure political smarm. I dug into some USDA docs on firebreak engineering, it's nifty reading.

It’s easier to do in Florida because the climate there isn’t conducive to explosive out of control fires, so there’s less risk.

I live in Arizona where we do a ton of prescribed fire, it’s taken very seriously. Still though, it’s risky out west. Half of the iconic mountain here is bare of trees because a prescribed fire got out of control a few years ago.

A lot of care is taken to only burn during certain conditions. Still, it can sometimes get away from the crews who are out there burning.

Nonetheless, kudos to Florida, it is a good thing.