[Polpolion]

Well, so over the weekend I went up to my cottage in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It's a 40 acre plot just about at rexton. If you can't find rexton on any maps, the cottage is north of Epoufette. If you can't find that, it's about 40 minutes southeast of Newberry. Right next to Strouble Lake. Well it just so happens that there was a forest north of Newberry. It was pretty crazy, knowing that there was a forest fire and all, and since my cottage is just in the edge of the forest. But anyway the fire so far didnt't get all that much worse and I'm pretty sure it's contained. It was also pretty creepy with the smoke on friday and this morning. There were no injuries or house burnings, but IIRC six houses were evacuated. Last I knew the fire was 13,000 acres big, I think.



Here's a picture looking out at the fire from across strouble lake.



Here's a picture of some of the smoke coming through the entrance to our little field.


EDIT: sorry about the GIFs. The files used to be 4mb JPEGs, and I couldn't convert them to a better size or format.

[redsniper]

Your cottage?

[Davros]

"It's a 40 acre plot just about at rexton. If you can't find rexton on any maps, the cottage is north of Epoufette. If you can't find that, it's about 40 minutes southeast of Newberry. Right next to Strouble Lake"

Your giving us directions !
so we're invited then ?

[Scuddie]

Sweet!  Party at thesizzler's house!  I'll bring the ownage juice and n00bcakes!  Woooo!

[Polpolion]

Yes. That's what this thread is all about. A party at my family's cottage (happy, redsniper? ). Yeah, all that stuff about forest fires has nothing to do with anything. You know, just to throw the admins and mods off. The thread title is actually a code meaning "come to my party". Yup. You're sorely mistaken if you thought it had anything to do with forest fires.



[/sarcasm] (just incase any of you need it )

[karajorma]

Sweet!  Party at thesizzler's house!  I'll bring the ownage juice and n00bcakes!  Woooo!

Bring marshmallows and hot dogs. Sounds like you'll have an open fire to heat them on.

[S-99]

Forest fires are a serious thing. The right thing to do when the fire is getting really close to your house that you may feel it would come up close to your house. Get out all the hose and sprinklers you got and set them up to spray all sides of your cottage with also making sure that the sprinklers get pretty good distance out to your yard also (so your yard can get wet also while your house is getting really wet, make sure all of your house gets a good spraying). So, get your own rain forest going. After that, make sure your cottage is like not in the forest. Such as at my house, it's got like 50feet in all directions of clear grassy yard before there's any forest. Make sure you got something like that going on also, because so many people in alaska and all over the lower 48 get their cabins and houses burned because they're structure is like surrounded by or in the forest where the structure would pretty much be right up close and personal with burning forest which then equals a structure that's going to burn down unless you make you're own rain forest. I hope you got good clearance on your cottage with it not being in the forest or close right by it. If not then still set up that sprinkler system anyway and make your own rain forest as good as you can and you should still be able to avoid your cottage burning down. And also like clean up any brush you got laying around in your yard, near your yard forest boundary, on your cottage, and get rid of it.

And yes i was a wildland firefighter, and this is what we did to keep structures from burning down when they were close to the fire boundaries. One thing forestry will not do, is put out your structure if it gets blazing, forestry does not have the equipment for that. Also, never underestimate flying sparks in the wind, in many cases it only takes a good spark to light a house on fire. Forest fires do travel fast, and they follow whichever direction the wind is going in.

[Mobius]

Well, there are two-three fires in a 700 meters range from my residence every day.

[S-99]

Well be prepared then. 700m is getting pretty too close for comfort man. Off here in alaska when it gets really dry and hot around 90F in the summer a small acreage fire can blow up into 262,000 acre fire in little time depending on humidity and wind conditions (the last time i was working on the 262k acre fire, idk how long it took to get that big, but forest fires get huge fast either way). Then again, that's the same type of forest fire behavior in the lower 48 as well.

In my opinion houses and cabins do look a lot more awesome when near or in the forest, but so many people have burned down structures that way in wildfire areas because they don't have sufficient distance all around their structure to be away from the forest if a fire is going to go by that structure. If you live near a forest fire, then yeah you'd be pretty stupid to not have good distance between your house and the forest.

[achtung]

When we get forest fires, leaves burn.


That's it.

[S-99]

Yeah the minimum distance you want your house to be away from the forest in all directions is 30feet. Yeah some places don't really get impressive wildfires. In places like the western coast, forest fires are fought differently than say in kentucky. In kentucky you'll get some people using leaf blowers to blow dead leaves away from fires and **** When i was working for forestry i absolutely hated putting fires out with water because.
A. you're in the middle of the forest out in nowhere and very often you're not going to be by a river, lake, or pond.
B. setting up an inflatable water tank/holder sucks.
C. navigating a 100ft long hose and longer through packed forest going back and forth so it doesn't snag or break and goes where you want it to go is such a *****!

So, when i was in forestry i'd take my pulaski, and choose an area of burning forest, and start chopping away at the ground mixing the burning moss in with a ton of dirt and stir it around (in alaska all the forests have a moss cover on the ground, so yes up here we're having to keep fires from travelling at foot level). And man i loved doing that, because i could keep the fire from travelling in a huge area that i had to watch myself for 16 hours (that's 13.50$ an hour as a wildfire fighter). I could chop down all the trees i wanted. And i loved slaving away at the ground for 16 hours straight having a hard time because, **** if i want to go through dense forest walking back and forth with 100feet of hose that keeps getting tangled and kinked by trees and bushes and felled trees for 16 hours! Man, hoses in forests suck! Least to say if there's any fire i have to put out in my normal life, i'm going to do it my favorite way, no water, just make the fire not be able to have any access to oxygen. Usually just mix the fire up with some mineral soil, so that the mixture is a lot more mineral soil than burning crap with hot ashes. Snuffs out fires the easiest.

[jr2]

EDIT: sorry about the GIFs. The files used to be 4mb JPEGs, and I couldn't convert them to a better size or format.

Get IrfanView, under advanced options, drop the quality to 15 or 20.  Problem solved.  And/or resize to 1024x768, which you can also do in IrfanView. 

[Mobius]

Well be prepared then. 700m is getting pretty too close for comfort man.

Canadairs work just fine here. They're always on patrol now, given the high number of fires. The problem is that all those fires(about 200 every day in various regions of Italy, mostly in the South) are caused by...humans. They're all planned.

[KappaWing]

I never knew the UP had forest fires, And Ive lived in Michigan all my life. weird.