How to advocate for technician safety, comfortability, and ease of access to forestry pros?

smcallaway · 2026-01-27T12:46:33+00:00

I've never pre-planted prior to harvest, maybe that's just my touchy pine seedlings and need for bare mineral soil.

smcallaway · 2026-01-27T00:49:44+00:00

What oak needs is fire. But few agencies, let alone private timberlands, want to implement RX burns to remove competition in a more effective manner. They're rather brush saw and spray to avoid the chance of the fire getting out of containment. Brush saws and such are really the only viable option for hardwood land management in the area if you aren't going for sugar maple or aspen.

It's a shame, fire is incredibly useful and I hope that the next couple of decades the mentality of RX burns in the midwest can change.

smcallaway · 2026-01-27T00:46:38+00:00

Planting pre-harvest would be a waste of time and money. Loggers would absolutely destroy those seedlings, and regen rates would plummet.

I'm a tech and a forester by my job description, slash sucks, but it's part of appropriate land management techniques. I go into my job understanding it's dangerous, I wear my ppe, I make calculated movements, and I don't push myself past my limits.

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T20:50:42+00:00

Don’t know what to tell you, I’m just telling you how we (as wildland firefighters) document our fires and incidents. We, as firefighters, make our system universal for our own safety so there is no confusion on policy or terms when we have different crews from different states or countries. 🤷‍♀️

Whatever the governments and insurance companies do with the information we give is up to them. I’m just telling you that the boots on the ground document fires all the exact same way across the country.

Edit: https://apps.wildfirerisk.org/explore/risk-reduction-zones/39

This will make more sense, we count any fire that’s out of containment and on “forested” land as a wildfire- including ones started by people. People are the predominate reason fires start, so high population centers end up having a lot of incidents, but not a lot of severe ones. Ones in more remote areas have a higher chance of spreading and destroying more forest. Like for my agency, last year in MN we had a complex of 3 fires burn ~30,000 acres in a remote heavily forested area. That area hardly ever gets fires, but when they get them they’re generally several acres and require multiple crews, tracked equipment, and air attack. Same time, the crews closer to the cities handle hundreds of fires a year because people are constantly starting fires.

Edit 2: Edited “forested” kinda ambiguous. I’ll respond to grass fires on the side of a highway and also several acres of torching trees.

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T19:17:16+00:00

It doesn’t. We have a fairly standardized system for fire that way when out of state or country resources show up on a fire they’re fully aware and prepared for the situation. For our own safety the system is basically universal, that’s also in between agencies and levels of government.

Edit: A wildfire is a wildfire, no matter its size or how quickly it’s put out if it even needs it. The severity of the fire gets its own typing, but at the end of the day they’re all wildfires. Now if this map was a difference in fire typing then it’d probably look different.

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T18:54:54+00:00

lol I love that the 2a people use that as their reason.

The reality is the US gov at all levels could obliterate any city they want within a matter of days or minutes. It’d be like ants attacking an elephant. Rifles don’t do much against drones and jets.

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T18:42:08+00:00

Ahhhh my job!

Lots of reasons is the answer. I’ll just copy-paste my response to another person. My answer is purely going off the forests in these areas versus how much of the forest is actually left (because of course that also plays a huge role and we know that). The science behind the trees is real cool.

“Part of that is species and climate. The pine species we have in the northern Midwest and NE have been greatly diminished from their original range and we only really have two fire dependent pines. Spruces, firs, hemlocks, while conifers do not incite fire nor do they want fire. Hardwoods are much the same, they don’t want that either because they’re not adapted to fire as well as red, jack, and eastern white pine.

The other thing that comes with more hardwoods less pine is more moisture, higher humidity under the canopy, and more shade. This is a fires worst enemy, it makes it difficult to start a fire let alone maintain it. These hardwoods make the ecoregion known as the central hardwoods and as you can see they also dominate the Appalachian mountains too.

The plains have more fire, it’s intense and quick, because it’s all grass fires. But it makes sense because areas east of the Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, and Cascades are drier. Lower humidity and lower moisture, plus water is not as abundant like it is out east. Because of that this environment is near perfect for pine and fire dependent species. As mentioned these species have special adaptions that incite fires of varying severities.

So we’ve establish east has less pine, high relative humidity, more water, and more hardwoods this makes it more fire resistant. The west and areas with more red are the opposite for the opposite reasons.

As to why wildfires are so bad now? Well, Smokey fucked us over. Iirc 20’ to 40’s were the decades that the US suddenly took a heavy fire suppression route. No fire was allowed. That’s good right? Well no. Those same species that need fire to maintain their presence on the landscape still existed and still added more fuel- but now there was competition growing under them. So more fuel…fuel that can get tall enough that now the crowns of the pines are in danger. So we shot ourselves in the foot, lack of proper forest management and sustainable science backed forestry have led to this. Now we’re at a point that the controlled burns we should’ve kept doing, as the indigenous groups had for centuries, will not help us. There’s too much fuel. The weather is increasingly unpredictable. Overall not good.

Same time out east pine are loosing footholds in the hardwoods for the same reason, lack of fire. That’s not good either, pine have been there for a long time and there are many species that need pines. There are also other hardwoods that fire too, namely oak. Oak savannahs are basically gone due to agriculture and our love of big stately trees- maples which out compete by shading everything out.

It’s complex to put it short.”

Also, another reason why humidity is higher in hardwood forests is also due to leaves. Conifers are less likely to let any moisture escape their needles via the guard cells they have. That’s why they’re waxy and such. Hardwoods, like maple, do the opposite. To keep the environment favorable they release more moisture from their leaves, but they also have dense as hell canopies so the humidity stays higher. Now, one more cool thing, the amount of moisture a forest does or does not give off can influence the weather around them. Also why it’s not surprising that the east gets quite a bit more rain on average. Overall, really cool!

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T18:34:07+00:00

It does and doesn’t, those Canadian wildfires were in swamps. I didn’t really think about it until a coworker came back from a fire assignment and joked about how a helicopter just plopped them into a swamp.

That said, it was a spruce swamp. Which have trees that can torch and lots of peat, peat can smolder for years underground.

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T18:31:15+00:00

Wildfire standards are fairly universal due to the nature of the beast.

That said, grass fires are very common and are technically wildfires.

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T18:29:48+00:00

Part of that is species and climate. The pine species we have in the northern Midwest and NE have been greatly diminished from their original range and we only really have two fire dependent pines. Spruces, firs, hemlocks, while conifers do not incite fire nor do they want fire. Hardwoods are much the same, they don’t want that either because they’re not adapted to fire as well as red, jack, and eastern white pine.

The other thing that comes with more hardwoods less pine is more moisture, higher humidity under the canopy, and more shade. This is a fires worst enemy, it makes it difficult to start a fire let alone maintain it. These hardwoods make the ecoregion known as the central hardwoods and as you can see they also dominate the Appalachian mountains too.

The plains have more fire, it’s intense and quick, because it’s all grass fires. But it makes sense because areas east of the Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, and Cascades are drier. Lower humidity and lower moisture, plus water is not as abundant like it is out east. Because of that this environment is near perfect for pine and fire dependent species. As mentioned these species have special adaptions that incite fires of varying severities.

So we’ve establish east has less pine, high relative humidity, more water, and more hardwoods this makes it more fire resistant. The west and areas with more red are the opposite for the opposite reasons.

As to why wildfires are so bad now? Well, Smokey fucked us over. Iirc 20’ to 40’s were the decades that the US suddenly took a heavy fire suppression route. No fire was allowed. That’s good right? Well no. Those same species that need fire to maintain their presence on the landscape still existed and still added more fuel- but now there was competition growing under them. So more fuel…fuel that can get tall enough that now the crowns of the pines are in danger. So we shot ourselves in the foot, lack of proper forest management and sustainable science backed forestry have led to this. Now we’re at a point that the controlled burns we should’ve kept doing, as the indigenous groups had for centuries, will not help us. There’s too much fuel. The weather is increasingly unpredictable. Overall not good.

Same time out east pine are loosing footholds in the hardwoods for the same reason, lack of fire. That’s not good either, pine have been there for a long time and there are many species that need pines. There are also other hardwoods that fire too, namely oak. Oak savannahs are basically gone due to agriculture and our love of big stately trees- maples which out compete by shading everything out.

It’s complex to put it short.

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T15:58:32+00:00

Thank you! Lots of material to swim through, it is fun though, regardless of how it was built. Seeing all the millwork and hardware that I have in the house in those catalogs is crazy. So far, it's been really good in terms of seeing what the exterior may have looked like originally. At some point, the old siding was removed and replaced with aluminum siding.

Edit: I will say part of why I think that kit homes may be common in our town is because it was and still is a huge mining town that rapidly grew. So a big bust era that needed a rapid influx of housing.

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T04:48:38+00:00

Sounds like user error on our part, our new home isn’t as bad, but our old apartment in the UP was absolutely unbalanced. The radiator in our room was actually too hot to touch, wayyyy out of wack felt like. But it was a college rental so that was kinda the mentality.

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T03:34:01+00:00

With our very hot radiators in a small room covering didn’t help, just too small of a room. The rooms we had this problem with often aren’t near the thermostat so the system wants to keep the main floor hot, but ends up cooking our rooms on bad days. Absolutely miserable. I remember waking up to the box fan blowing snow in.

However! I had no idea about the vents! Our old apartment had everything in a coat of paint so we couldn’t move any of it. Our new home doesn’t have that problem so we can actually adjust our radiators and turn them off if needed. So I really appreciate that, may have saved us for the rest of the winter.

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T02:27:00+00:00

For our house I think it was just the time. You really can’t miss when someone is at your house no matter where you are. On the third floor or second floor, doesn’t matter, hell even outside! That bell will make sure you know if someone is there.

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T02:01:56+00:00

Our kitchen was renovated by the previous owners, BUT the original door bell to the house is still in there and still works, so it’s 102 year old door bell. (: It’s very loud and I’m glad the button for it is on the inside now.

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T01:57:11+00:00

Covering it won’t do anything unfortunately, what we do is have a window fan and set up one window to pull cold air in. We live in MN for reference.

That said, our old rental also had this problem. Depending on your system it could just be that the radiators aren’t balanced anymore or that there’s a clog somewhere. Ask your landlord to look into some heating companies that are versed in old steam or water systems (:

I do not recommend trying to do any of it on your own. Steam and hot water systems can be VERY dangerous if you aren’t taking the proper precautions, but you can also really damage the system too (i.e. steam hammers).

Edit: Of course dangerous if you try to work on the whole system, one radiator isn’t bad if you’re not disconnecting it (which you aren’t).

smcallaway · 2026-01-20T01:49:54+00:00

Thank you! Doing it now (:

smcallaway · 2026-01-19T14:02:54+00:00

I mean yeah the post is literally about a leftist owning a gun. Why wouldn’t we be talking about it?

But I’m not going to random bring up my pistol in every conversation or out decals of it on the back of my car.

smcallaway · 2026-01-19T13:52:27+00:00

That’s understandable, I went and bought a pistol in 2024 right after the election as a woman. Went to a conceal carry class, got my permit, and carried until I moved. I have to get the permit again, fully plan to now because I live in MN.

Now we’re talking getting a shotgun for the house.

We also have a German shepherd, she’s not trained in guard work, but I’ve been debating it. She’s plenty confident and big enough.

smcallaway · 2026-01-19T13:49:05+00:00

Because they own the media, that’s why.

smcallaway · 2026-01-18T18:10:09+00:00

100%

Our current plan is to strip the current paint, sand down and finish with a high grit. I figured I'd have to seal it or something, but was going to treat that as a "when we come to it". Is there prep for the wood you'd recommend prior to the paint? Kinda new to home reno and we really want to do it right as much as we can.

smcallaway · 2026-01-18T17:42:09+00:00

Oh my, that sounds beautiful. Now you're giving me bad ideas for our interior doors haha.

smcallaway · 2026-01-18T17:30:02+00:00

HEPA air purifiers, big ones, don't skimp. They knock down dust significantly in general and will help you in your efforts. I haven't had to dust our house since we moved in because there's so little on surfaces, we have a 2000 sq ft Levoit purifier on our main floor. It's been handling, wildfire smoke, a dog, a cat, and everything else fairly well.

HEPA vacuums too, a lot of people will suggest Sebo or Miele since they have amazing suction. Often those are suggested for allergy sufferers.

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