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this is aweful

Today, fort ord, a military base 2 miles from where I am right now, is doing a controlled burn on a 500 acer mine feild to help clear it up. Instead of just lighting it, they dropped a na-palm bomb on it! the entire place was in flames in seconds. There was no time for wildlife to get out, they didn't even contact the aspca in advance so they could get the animals out! the place is still burning, and what looks like clouds, very black ones, is in fact smoke. and right now it is snowing! ashes though
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I sure hope the wildlife got out, if they did I'm happy
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I guess the military doesn't really care about a few squirrels and the like.  Napalm though?  Are you sure?  I would seriously doubt that the military uses that stuff to clear out a few trees.
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SF
 
The napalm is used to explode the mines. And no the military does not care about a few squirrels/ rabbits/ birds/ people... whatever.. lol

Steve
 
<span style='color:green'>Ohhh! I missed the part about the mine field. I thought it was just a field of grass and trees, etc.

Still... <span id='ME'><center>SnowyFalcon scratches head</center></span>

SF (Check out what you can do with the new code, it's pretty cool!
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Lol, @ vftginjs, i dont truly think they care about animals, and if its a mine field, a deer or 2 is going to lose a leg anyways.
 
It's kind of a good thing and bad thing they did that in my oppinion. The good is that all the mines blew up and future animals and such don't have to lose limbs and suffer due to the mines, the bad is that the animals died in the fire.
 
As bad as I feel about the animals, but better 10 squirells than 1 little girl playing hide and seek with her brother in 10 years. I see stories all the time about 5-10 year old mine fields that some poor kid wanders through.


Casper
 
Anything the military usually does is dumb ( & awful!) - but then that's just my li'l ol' opinion.
 
fire is good for nature

it is true
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  • #10
A natural fire is natures way of cleaning house.  A fire started with napalm bombs is a different story though.  With natural fires, animals get some warning that it's coming.  They see or smell the smoke and hear the flames burning through the brush.  With luck they have enough warning that they can get out of the way.  The fire itself doesn't usually sterilize the soil with intense heat unless there is a lot of accumulated brush to burn.  Napalm on the other hand gives no warning and produces intense heat over a large area.  I suspect there are also traces of napalm left behind.  Between the napalm residue and the intense heat the soil isn't in very good condition to grow much of anything for a while.
 
  • #11
I think the important fact that keeps getting missed here is that it is a MINE FIELD so that means it is probably in an ordanance range. My guess would be that there isn't anything too much larger than a rat there as the bombs and mines and grenades and other things that go BOOM would have scared everything else off. ANd that they are clearing the mine field is a good thing, I'd rather that then them leave mines around to later rip some poor child in half
 
  • #12
ok, tried to let this go, but... why would the dumb military have a mine field in California? Did some enemies sneak in the night & plant it? And the news said the fire went out of control & burned more than twice what they had planned.
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  • #13
yea, 400 acers was planned to get burned, but 1400 acers were burned...
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The whole area is blocked off, no one ever went there, the mines were practice ones for training marines, thought they still were live.
No, there were animals larger than rats there. it was actually kinda a wildlife sanctuary... there were deer, san fransisco garder snakes (endangered) scorpions, rabbits, everything, a bear had been seen there even, it was pretty much a thick forest. my dad gave clearance for the helicopter to drop the napalm, he warned the aspca and asked them if they were going to do anything about it. the aspca had no idea they were gonna use na palm... that was the day before they dropped it. anyways, my dad saw it go off, the entire 400 acers went off at ONE time. nothing had a chance to get out. also, even worse, the ideots thought the smoke would go out to sea... well, the wind on the ground went out to sea, but the rising smoke caught the upper winds... and went inland, all over monterey bay. then, at night, it sunk to the ground like fog... cough cough, everyone in town was coughing and had masks etc. i barely slept
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Only thing the people are mad about here is the smoke... no one even thought of the wildlife... makes me
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  • #14
well, certainly sounds like it sucked... but I think an important thing to remember is that the only people who should have ever have gone in there are trained marine ordinance officers... sending in wildlife preservation teams would have been asking for a person to lose a vital limb or even their life.

Napalm is pretty nasty stuff, I am not sure what modern versions are made of, but older versions are essentially gasoline and a soapy mixture to make it stick. I have not read anything on this incident, but I can tell you that one helicopter does not carry enough napalm to burn 400 acres of land, but it will make a good start. Anything under the napalm is most definately toast (though, I expect some Vietnemese would tell you surviving a napalm drop in a cave or crack in the ground is highly possible) but I expect that a good fair amount of wild life was able to make it out.

When your choices are to A) do a controlled burn which could have poeple get hurt or killed because of the mines, or B) do a intense burn, can cook off the mines at the sacrifice of a little bit of nature, I say the military probably did the most cost effective and intelligent approach. Nature will relcaim that land in time, and this time, maybe people will be able to enjoy it.
 
  • #15
wow spec , this is intertesting , i hope that somethings survived at least , this would make me pissed off especially having to breath in the smoke . i have heard surive bombs in vietnam but they were severyl injured and also i don't know what naplam is really so i don't know much .
 
  • #16
That does sound really awful but i have to agree with Rampuppy that there were only two options. One, risk human life or two, risk animal life/nature. I think the military made the right choice considering their options.

-buckeye
 
  • #17
thats the thing ram. it was a controlled burn. only, controlled with helicopters bropping that red powder stuff. kinda silly to me. the fire went out of control, and instead of 380 acers getting burned, 1200 was burned, by now 1400, the fire keeps starting up again and again and again, each time burning more land, I saw the fire spark up 5 times today from where i am now...
The silly thing about hits 'controlled' burn is that they started it with a large amount of na-palm, how could that be a controlled burn?
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And, they didn't plan for all the mines to go off from the na palm, they made the fire to clear the land to make it easyer and safer to set off the mines.
The 400 acers were going to the city to build 'affordable' housing on, but the thing that bugs me is that they never followed through the 2 times they have done it in the past, they have just made mansions and priced them at... ONLY 2500-3000 dollars a month to rent, OR like a million dollars to buy! That does not seem like affordable housing to me.
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What really matters to me is that they just blew the place up, not giving the wildlife a chance to get out... they could have started it in a way as to give wildlife a chance to get out...I can't really explain it... I am sickened, as today I saw hundreds of buzzards and vultures around that area...
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I also love birds, and many birds are ill and dieing from inhaling smoke... they have found a dead peregrine falcon, an endangered species i think...
 
  • #18
Not a good idea to burn during Santa Ana's.
 
  • #19
I'm with you, Spec.  I'm sure somone could have come up with a better way to clear the land IF someone intelligent was in charge of it.  But I don't believe better was what they were looking for.  It sickens me, too.  And I'm sorry for you having to be right there to see it every day.
Now maybe I'm just too much of a wimp (not!), but what kind of intelligence trains people using live mines? You would have to be able to think like a mother in order to understand my feelings on this, I think.
 
  • #20
If the armies mine removal experts can clear whole mine fields in foreign countries, without vaporizing the land then why can they not send them in here at home? If they plan to build residential housing on this land they are still going to have to go through the field with mine detectors after the fire to insure every last mine was destroyed.

Perhaps they used this method of burning off all of the wildlife so that conservation groups will have nothing left to protest about if they go ahead with a housing development.
 
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