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The Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke is visiting the fire zones Wednesday and Thursday. A controversial topic that might come up is forest management. Some people are blaming poor forest management for the fires, but there's more to the story.
In 2008, there was a huge dry lightning event all over the state. There were 100's of fires and many took off and would burn for weeks. One near Paradise was called the BTU or Butte Lightning Complex fire. It was a big fire, close to 60,000 acres and it took down structures. There was also another fire on the other side of Paradise that burned the same year called the Humboldt Fire.
Paradise was literally an island of unburned vegetation.
I remember this big fire event for California because I was working in San Luis Obispo and my concern was a lightning-caused fire in Big Sur.
The Camp Fire burned through the same exact area as the lightning-caused fire, so the growth is only about 10 years old. Not everything was taken 10 years ago, but you get the idea.
There is a patchwork of land ownership in that area. Some is Bureau of Land Management, some is Federal Forest, but most is private land.
Much of the future debate may lie in what was done in the years after the 2008 fires regarding management and planning.
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