Trees don’t explode in the way described by the Republican President. Excellent piece and I think that your usage of the John McCain comments provides some excellent political counterbalance. Now, before you run out and chop down the tree in your backyard, let me inject a bit of sanity to reduce the paranoia. Just like literally everyone else is doing with every single word spoken by our president, this is just taking one word, pulling it out of context, and getting overly fiddly about the semantics. Yeah, opinions are like belly buttons … everybody has one. “Explode” can communicate the behavior of a hand grenade, but it can also be used more figuratively, as the President clearly did when you consider the context in which he used the word. There may be different concepts of what it means for a tree to explode. The controversy here is with those of us trying to give the President a little slack in his vast ignorance of our work, versus those who just want to keep trashing to poor guy for his clumsy approach to things he knows little about. It is a terrifying series of explosions when the heat drives the fuel out of the crowns of the trees surrounding the fire and when the oxygen level is combustible it explodes and repeats over and over. The danger is so critical that for years, UC Berkeley has been working to remove many of these trees from the campus. There are unconfirmed reports that eucalyptus trees in Australia can explode in a fire but I’m not convinced this is true. In Black Friday, one of Australia’s deadly bush fire, the heat generated by exploding trees equals to 1500 nuclear bombs dropped in Japan. Fireproofing, equipping and teaching home owners how to protect themselves and their property would be a lot better than recruiting and training national guard..thats something our fearless leader should be talking about. w. Haha! Maybe he is referring to Autoignition. If they are left there, they WILL explode. Ok, so you don’t want discussions on Wildfire Today about the President’s wildland fire policies. Thanks for that, I hadn’t seen that. So, I’m proposing a big idea. “… when trees fall down… about 18 months later…they become very dry…they just explode.”. Check your weather stations, if there is enough years of data, it could tell you what percentile the weather factors were compared to past years. If it’s a neighbor, politely suggest the abatement steps listed above, if they don’t already practice them. “There has to be good, strong, forest management,” he said, “which I’ve been talking about for three years with the state so hopefully they’ll start doing that.”, (The federal government owns nearly 58 percent of California’s 33 million acres of forestlands, while the state owns 3 percent.). Within months, the tree stumps sprouted. Typos, let us know HERE. Have a wonderful day my brothers and stay safe. The fact is that the scientific method works – Newton’s and Einstein’s theories of matter, energy and gravity seemed unassailable for years, but the discovery of quantum mechanics revealed failures in those theories and made the invention of countless staples of modern society, such as computers, GPS and LEDS, possible. Do trees EXPLODE? The dismissive and arrogant bravado he projects has gotten really….really old. Heck even arguing about it might get us thinking about how to do it and lead to some innovation. Not media. Eucalyptus oil gives off flammable fumes in a similar manner (although to a lesser extent!) I surveyed them too. I even had to deploy a shelter once in the 80’s. And surprisingly, it is still the main tool being used today. Those who have lost everything deserve better…..and that starts at the top. Imho, having sat and watched tree after tree “explode” into flames during the Rodeo-Chediski with my own eyes, I don’t think it’s far off the mark to refer to the striking visual of a tree-crowning fire as an explosion. These terms should not be taken literally by civilians or for that matter the media as they need to leave the firefighting to the people who actually do it. I first wrote about the myth of trees exploding in 2016 when a senator talked about “trees literally exploding”. Really, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s true public to this day does not understand forest firefighting. It’s not surprising he thinks trees explode when his answer to the problem is to turn the forest into golf courses with clean 50 yard wide strips interspersed througout them. I got a free skin peel from the little gobs of pitch it tossed out the top of the convection column. Fire often even seems to have a rejuvenating effect on the trees. If all the energy spent disproving everything Trump, Obama, or the Clintons said could be gathered in one place and put to a constructive purpose, we could build a bridge, or at least a very nice chicken house with it. Is this true that they’re more flammable than lots of other types of trees — and can even explode? And yes boomerangs back to us for lack of outreach. This is from the CalWood Fire, allegedly an exploding tree captured mid-air: Even a cursory review of the definitions (for those who need it) makes it easy to identify at least one that fits the context President Trump was using it in. Do trees explode? None of what you pasted there says anything about a tree exploding 18 months after the tree falls down, or anytime: But with regard to the forest, when trees fall down after a short period of time, about 18 months, they become very dry, they become really like a match stick and they get up you know there’s no more water pouring through and they become very, very they just explode. It’s clear a number of “reputable firefighters” remember trees exploding in their experience. A “50 yard clear cut”…..what might that do? A bad roof. Maybe some of the fabulous amounts of money the Fire District receives should be spent preemptively putting out fires instead of building monuments. And none of us is as smart as we’d like to think we are. As explained by Merriam-Webster, it’s an idiom. 'Trees can explode': Trump again blames California for causing wildfires with poor forest management. We referred to it as exploding even though it was not like a bomb. Somewhat like the gas tank on a car, I’ve seen lots of them rupture in giant fireballs, but never seen one actually boom and flip the car over. And maple trees can explode in below freezing temperatures when the sap freezes. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); 12 collections of beautiful hand-drawn vintage fashions! Mr Trump’s comments in Sacramento are not helpful, let alone inaccurate. Cross train the NG more extensively for air support and logistics. The Bridger Foothills Fire near Bozeman, Montana, isn't large in comparison to some of the blazes exploding across the West, but it has been costly. Wow that is some kind of satellite when the moon is 238,000 miles from Earth. https://wildfiretoday.com/tag/exploding-targets/. It wasn’t until much later that it was discovered that the California Blue Gums were not harvested for timber even in their native Australia. “Tending the wild: cultural burning.” I think this is the point Mr. Trump was trying to make. Required fields are marked *. Alright, I give up. In 2016 after the late Senator John McCain talked about the Chedeski and Wallow fires in Arizona and “trees literally exploding as the fuels that have accumulated around the bases of the trees burns up,” I reached out to the firefighter community asking if anyone had ever seen a tree explode. Dead trees ought not be left to rot in the forest. In all the wild land fires I participate in Orange County and LA County, Eucalyptus and California Oak would catch fire at the base at the low hanging branches and cascade upward. YouTube has plenty of educational videos on how they did it. I wouldn’t be surprised if you know many people who agree that the video and photos you mention prove that trees explode, but that’s not how science works. In the situation under discussion the fire would be spreading extremely fast and the fire front would have moved on before the heat could have time to boil the water in the cambium layer and cause a steam explosion at the fire front. When they “exploded”, they also “screamed “. It is inevitable. He seems to have a penchant for hyperbole. But this nitpicking over every jot and tiddle of this president to be extremely tiring. 4. Video footage shows the branch breaking off a eucalyptus tree and sparking the fire in the 1900 block of North Sepulveda Boulevard, Garcetti said. There are very few eucalyptus in California forests, because they are not indigenous to America. If you’re talking about the rush of flame running up through a tree as an explosion, humm…ok, but the tree didn’t explode. 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