Mr. President,
You and your spineless minions have berated our northern neighbors for not stopping smoke from their fires at the border. It is obvious to me that you have absolutely no idea of fires, fire fighting, and the weather. So, let me educate you.
First, I was ,from the age of 10years old to my 33rd year, I was a volunteer fireman in the Black Hills of South Dakota and since that time I have supported those people who risk their lives to protect the land and it’s inhabitants. Our neighbors, the Canadians do many of the same things that we do for fire mitigation and for fighting fire. Obviously none of you know what they and our firefighters face when fighting fire. You have never been on a fire line, felt the wind increase from behind and pick up speed as the fire finds the right kind of fuel and builds up to the point where you have a fireball explode in front of you, nor have the fire climb into the tops of the trees and go right over the top of you. Now when these thing happen you are in rough terrain, you have a digging tool that you use literally scrape the fuel back away from the fire, you have no water except maybe one person on your crew has a hand sprayer which just a few gallons of water. There isn’t a way to get a firetruck up to where you are, not enough hose and usually no place those trucks can pull water from if they could move closer. Now these types Forest fires are hard enough, wait till you get out on the prairies. A lot easier to get trucks to the fire but you still have to get water to them. Just so you know I saw one prairie fire move at 50 miles per hour with the wind pushing it. If you were reading the news you would have heard about a prairie fire in central Nebraska this that burned over 750,000 acres in less than five days. Now you say well, you can use water bombers and helicopters but, already the fire fighters try to this whenever they can get them, sometimes during a series of large fires they simply aren’t available. Now to fly one those water bombers and do a successful drop the pilots are flying low I have seen them come in at tree top level. That means you are flying right into hell with flame, burning debris, and extremely low visibility and sometimes the aircraft is damaged and sometime they crash. That is what happened to the Canadian pilot and his water bomber crashed fighting a fire in Colorado this summer. And your minions made it sound like he was a US pilot flying a US plane, just to push the idea that the Canadians don’t care about us. Just so you know, since 2022 the Canadians have been providing mutual aid every fire season with both land and air crews. And we have reciprocated at least here in the west. By the way 2022 was first year in my memory of actually seeing a Canadian fire crew, they are just more worried about the fire than publicity. I am sure this mutual aid has been going on for far longer than that. That is the Fire Crew life, dangerous work, not enough rest and sleep and never all the resources you need.
Lets talk about fuels that these wild fires burn. First the size of the forests. Do you realize Canada is the second largest country by area? the US is number four. Just the Canadian boreal forest (The one where most of the fires are) is about 10 times the size of all the US National Forests combined. This forest stretches from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast, with southern border roughly 900 to 1000 miles north of the US – Canada border up to the Arctic Circle. If you want move heavy equipment into that forest you pretty much have to wait until the winter freezes the ground, in the summertime that ground might have a layer of solid ground on top but with the Arctic thawing a lot of it is now a much thinner mat that does not like to support heavy loads, like fire trucks and bull dozers. And it is hard to cover on foot.
Now the boreal forest has had a history of burning since it formed after the last Ice Age, because the summers were cooler and there were fewer lightning storms, the fires were relatively small. Now the summers and winters are warmer this means there is more dry fuel on the ground and with more lightning storms you get more fires. By the way, try to groom a forested bog down there by Mara A Lago – it DOESN’T WORK.
Understandably the first line of duty for the firefighters to protect the small towns and villages, then the access in and out for the inhabitants,after that maybe oil, gas, mineral producing projects and their access. In the meantime, the Fire Team Managers are picking places, juggling their available resources where they can hold and maintain a line to contain a fire.
Weather – ABSOLUELY NO ONE (Including you or your minions) controls the weather, not the Wind, not the Rain, Not the Snow. Get used to to having smokey summers just so you can keep some fossil fuel addicts happy or get off your collective asses and start supercharging the utilization of renewable clean energy to curtail the carbon emissions. The Western US hasn’t had a normal year for temperatures and precipitation since the 1980s, you all think its normal because we are mostly still within the moving average of those things, you are only looking at a small part of the data. Start looking at the long term data our weather problems are accelerating as the carbon-dioxide levels are rising. You can blame other people or things for the cause but you still aren’t doing anything to help mitigate the effects so the acceleration will keep increasing. Make no mistake sir, it will affect all of us including you. Just look at where most of your properties are and then look at the projected sea level rise over the next 5 years. You had better start building a dike and dome over Mar A Lago so you can stay there and not get flooded or blown away by a hurricane, but then the fire smoke won’t bother you. A word of warning though, don’t hire any of the contractors you have been using on your projects in Washington DC, they are extremely incompetent.
I believe you have a chance to do something good in this term and not be considered just an Orange Clown. Call up the Prime Minister of Canada apologize for you remarks and threats over the smoke and ask what can the US do to help. An offer like that might lead to closer coordination and mutual aid agreements. It would be nice to have this because if we in the west get another winter like this last one, Canadian smoke will be the least of your worries when the Eastern Rockies and the Great Plains start burning next summer or maybe even this winter since the fire seasons are getting longer.
Sincerely
Publius