[GK3]

I put myself through Stanford as a BLM fire fighter (Bureau of Land Management, not the new acronym) working summers.  I have seen eucalyptus go up like torches--thirty seconds from the deep piles of bark tinder at the base to the crown.  I have seen them explode like bombs as the oils inside vaporize and light.  I have seen forests of them alight, creating thermals with mushroom clouds spewing burning embers thousands of feet away. 

I have also been on conifer fires and rangeland fires, and nothing compares to a eucalyptus fire.

Portugal, like California, embraced eucalyptus but paid a severe price.

https://www.politico.eu/article/portugal...er-forest/

Australia has had horrendous eucalyptus fires during recent drought years after making the same mistakes that we have--too much fire suppression for too long, creating gargantuan tinder boxes.  Eucalyptus, like lodgepole pine, are adapted to fire to stay in balance.  Regular burning is natural.  Gargantuan trees are not.  Eucalyptus groves belong in areas where regular burning is possible.  They do not belong anywhere near residential homes or universities.

https://www.livescience.com/40583-austra...fires.html

Great info. I'm actually on a zoom call with client in Australia and complained about the eucalyptus trees they sent us. Apparently, the aborigines would burn the trees back regularly to keep them in check. That practice ended when the colonization started. . . . .

Interesting, I worked for the Forest Service Fire Crews during Summers at Stanford.  Never dealt with Eucalyptus fires, but saw plenty of wind driven crown fires exploding up steep slopes as the wind blew superheated air ahead of the fire and acres ignite all at once.  Not something you want to be in front of, to say nothing of So Cal brush fires burning through brush that hadn't burned for years.  That stuff was really ugly.  Suffice it to say sometimes the work was very hard and dangerous and the rest of the time it was a bunch of college guys cleaning up campgrounds and doing whatever the district thought of to pass the time until the next fire.

The BLM has an interagency fire center in Boise, and my crew was dispatched to fires all over the west from there.  The one I remember in California we called the Big Sur fire--later it was officially named the Marble Cone fire.  It was the largest fire in California history at the time (1977) --until fires of its size began to become commonplace.  Now it is barely in the top 20.  We fought on the northern end which came close to Carmel valley.  As our crews were trucked up Carmel Valley road people came out and cheered us as if we were liberating Paris.  It was just south of that region where saw a hillside of eucalyptus go up.  Today, there are some famous eucalyptus near Carmel that have been designated for protection, lining the road--all more than 100 years old.  The fire, fortunately, did not reach that far north.  The greatest danger we faced on the northern front was that some of my crew inhaled smoke from burning poison oak and had to be hospitalized.  We weren't used to poison oak, coming from Idaho.

Then as the fire shifted south, away from Carmel and toward Big Sur, we were shifted south with the fire.  We had a spectacular helicopter ride down the coastline to Big Sur, no more than a couple of hundred feet off the water.  We waved at people we could see on the highway and beaches.  On the southern zone my crew was guarding a ridge line at night, watching for embers flying overhead from the distant fire, when we saw the fire suddenly appear atop the ridge across the valley from us.  This was not eucalyptus but thick brush, in the Santa Lucia mountains.  The entire ridge ignited simultaneously to create one of the most frightening displays I ever saw.  Apparently the fire commanders did not expect it to spread so quickly at night and were worried it would cross the valley and similarly explode up our own ridge.  So they brought in the helicopters through the smoke for a dangerous night evacuation of us.  That ride was not as pleasant as the one down the Big Sur coastline, skimming above the capped waves. 

It was the best paying summer job I could find, and I managed to graduate from Stanford debt-free.

Burning poison oak is definitely something you want to avoid.  Those really allergic to it should stay very, very far away.

[GK3]

I put myself through Stanford as a BLM fire fighter (Bureau of Land Management, not the new acronym) working summers.  I have seen eucalyptus go up like torches--thirty seconds from the deep piles of bark tinder at the base to the crown.  I have seen them explode like bombs as the oils inside vaporize and light.  I have seen forests of them alight, creating thermals with mushroom clouds spewing burning embers thousands of feet away. 

I have also been on conifer fires and rangeland fires, and nothing compares to a eucalyptus fire.

Portugal, like California, embraced eucalyptus but paid a severe price.

https://www.politico.eu/article/portugal...er-forest/

Australia has had horrendous eucalyptus fires during recent drought years after making the same mistakes that we have--too much fire suppression for too long, creating gargantuan tinder boxes.  Eucalyptus, like lodgepole pine, are adapted to fire to stay in balance.  Regular burning is natural.  Gargantuan trees are not.  Eucalyptus groves belong in areas where regular burning is possible.  They do not belong anywhere near residential homes or universities.

https://www.livescience.com/40583-austra...fires.html

Great info. I'm actually on a zoom call with client in Australia and complained about the eucalyptus trees they sent us. Apparently, the aborigines would burn the trees back regularly to keep them in check. That practice ended when the colonization started. . . . .

Interesting, I worked for the Forest Service Fire Crews during Summers at Stanford.  Never dealt with Eucalyptus fires, but saw plenty of wind driven crown fires exploding up steep slopes as the wind blew superheated air ahead of the fire and acres ignite all at once.  Not something you want to be in front of, to say nothing of So Cal brush fires burning through brush that hadn't burned for years.  That stuff was really ugly.  Suffice it to say sometimes the work was very hard and dangerous and the rest of the time it was a bunch of college guys cleaning up campgrounds and doing whatever the district thought of to pass the time until the next fire.

The BLM has an interagency fire center in Boise, and my crew was dispatched to fires all over the west from there.  The one I remember in California we called the Big Sur fire--later it was officially named the Marble Cone fire.  It was the largest fire in California history at the time (1977) --until fires of its size began to become commonplace.  Now it is barely in the top 20.  We fought on the northern end which came close to Carmel valley.  As our crews were trucked up Carmel Valley road people came out and cheered us as if we were liberating Paris.  It was just south of that region where saw a hillside of eucalyptus go up.  Today, there are some famous eucalyptus near Carmel that have been designated for protection, lining the road--all more than 100 years old.  The fire, fortunately, did not reach that far north.  The greatest danger we faced on the northern front was that some of my crew inhaled smoke from burning poison oak and had to be hospitalized.  We weren't used to poison oak, coming from Idaho.

Then as the fire shifted south, away from Carmel and toward Big Sur, we were shifted south with the fire.  We had a spectacular helicopter ride down the coastline to Big Sur, no more than a couple of hundred feet off the water.  We waved at people we could see on the highway and beaches.  On the southern zone my crew was guarding a ridge line at night, watching for embers flying overhead from the distant fire, when we saw the fire suddenly appear atop the ridge across the valley from us.  This was not eucalyptus but thick brush, in the Santa Lucia mountains.  The entire ridge ignited simultaneously to create one of the most frightening displays I ever saw.  Apparently the fire commanders did not expect it to spread so quickly at night and were worried it would cross the valley and similarly explode up our own ridge.  So they brought in the helicopters through the smoke for a dangerous night evacuation of us.  That ride was not as pleasant as the one down the Big Sur coastline, skimming above the capped waves. 

It was the best paying summer job I could find, and I managed to graduate from Stanford debt-free.

Burning poison oak is definitely something you want to avoid.  Those really allergic to it should stay very, very far away.