Power companies lean on local governments to misidentify the causes when it’s them too, as they are actively doing with the LA CA fires. It’s often power lines causing the fires, but they might scour social media and the internets with their ai program to find some kid that was in the area around that time that had any comment they could use to blame him. They blamed a kid that was in the area like a week before, that had prompted ai for a fake wildfire picture. Claimed the fire must have started, then went underground for a week or whatever.
Pretty incredible assumption given the power lines were seen sparking, in that wind. As always in this country, you can’t trust authorities, it could be they are right, or it could be the powerful utility used their influence to blame it on some poor kid that made an ill timed prompt. Given there was no fire reported the week when the kid was there, as I understand it, no evidence of him doing anything with fire, does not speak well to their credibility if you ask me.
Considering what we know about PGE, the power company, the very same the movie Erin Brokavich was about, that knowlingly poisoned populations just to keep using a particular cleaner in their operations, not even a good reason. Or that started numerous other wild fires in the area prior.
More people in the forest. Most of Canada lives near the border so you get lots of forest and more of fires far away from humans. The US is more dispersed.
I worked for a wildfire agency for a while. There are more people in the North than you imagine. The population figures for us are permanent residents. But the rotational workforce in the North is substantial.
They are there for forestry, but also heavy industry like mining and oil extraction. Outfitting for hunting and fishing as well. The most common human cause in my jurisdiction is the “shore lunch” where guys fishing will pull ashore for lunch and mess up the cooking fire somehow. Number 2 reason is messed up spark arresters on vehicles.
Your explanation makes some sense to me, but not a 400% difference. I’ll take a fire investigator to lunch this week and ask.
50% of forest fires are caused by lightning and they account for 80% of area burned…at least in Canada.
I suspect your fun fact is just low grade humor adding to people’s general ignorance.I take it back. The figures are that different between the countries. Only 20% of wildfire in the US is started by lightning. Now I want to know why.
Power companies lean on local governments to misidentify the causes when it’s them too, as they are actively doing with the LA CA fires. It’s often power lines causing the fires, but they might scour social media and the internets with their ai program to find some kid that was in the area around that time that had any comment they could use to blame him. They blamed a kid that was in the area like a week before, that had prompted ai for a fake wildfire picture. Claimed the fire must have started, then went underground for a week or whatever.
Pretty incredible assumption given the power lines were seen sparking, in that wind. As always in this country, you can’t trust authorities, it could be they are right, or it could be the powerful utility used their influence to blame it on some poor kid that made an ill timed prompt. Given there was no fire reported the week when the kid was there, as I understand it, no evidence of him doing anything with fire, does not speak well to their credibility if you ask me.
Considering what we know about PGE, the power company, the very same the movie Erin Brokavich was about, that knowlingly poisoned populations just to keep using a particular cleaner in their operations, not even a good reason. Or that started numerous other wild fires in the area prior.
More people in the forest. Most of Canada lives near the border so you get lots of forest and more of fires far away from humans. The US is more dispersed.
I worked for a wildfire agency for a while. There are more people in the North than you imagine. The population figures for us are permanent residents. But the rotational workforce in the North is substantial.
They are there for forestry, but also heavy industry like mining and oil extraction. Outfitting for hunting and fishing as well. The most common human cause in my jurisdiction is the “shore lunch” where guys fishing will pull ashore for lunch and mess up the cooking fire somehow. Number 2 reason is messed up spark arresters on vehicles.
Your explanation makes some sense to me, but not a 400% difference. I’ll take a fire investigator to lunch this week and ask.
I’ve seen video of exhaust from a vehicle starting a brush fire on the edge of a parking lot.