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Tag: fire

  • Fire at Biomass Power Facility in Thailand

    - April 8, 2015, Bangkok Post A bio­mass pow­er plant with large piles of palm ker­nel shells used for fuel caught fire in Khao Phanom dis­trict of Kra­bi ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing, and dam­age was esti­mat­ed at 100 mil­lion baht.  The fire at Saraff Ener­gies Co start­ed about 1.30am. The plant was tem­porar­i­ly closed for maintenance.  It first emerged…

  • USDA Splurges Millions on Biomass Power Incinerators

    [More tax­pay­er mon­ey fund­ing pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions to log Nation­al Forests under the unsci­en­tif­ic guise of “wild­fire pre­ven­tion.” ‑Ed.] -  US Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture, July 23, 2014, Office of Communications Agri­cul­ture Sec­re­tary Tom Vil­sack today announced that the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA) has select­ed 36 ener­gy facil­i­ties in 14 states to accept bio­mass deliv­er­ies sup­port­ed by…

  • Forest Thinning Will Increase Wildfire Risk

    - by Charles Thomas, The Ore­gon­ian As fires again rage across the West, sen­a­tors from John McCain, R‑Ariz., to Ron Wyden, D‑Ore., echo the refrain “thin the forests” to pre­vent wild­fires. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most of the advo­cat­ed thin­ning will actu­al­ly stoke the wild­fires of the future rather than lessen their occur­rence and impacts. Thin­ning pre­scrip­tions pro­posed in…

  • Farm Bill Based on Flawed Assumptions about Forest Health and Wildfire

    - by George Wuerthner There are wide­ly held assump­tions that log­ging will reduce or pre­clude large wild­fires and bee­tle out­breaks. The recent Farm Bill pro­vi­sion that would allow cat­e­gor­i­cal exclu­sion to log up to 3000 acres with­out NEPA review is based on flawed assump­tions about for­est health and wildfire.  1. LARGE WILDFIRE CLIMATE DRIVEN Large…

  • Biofuels Plant Won’t Protect Us from Wildfire

    - by Vir­ginia Moran, May 16, 2014, Source: The Union Regard­ing the pro­posed “bio­fu­els” plant (i.e. accel­er­a­tion of cli­mate change) project, here is what I find “scary”: that res­i­dents of west­ern Neva­da Coun­ty are nev­er allowed to live our lives in peace. If we are twitchy and irri­ta­ble it is because we are con­stant­ly on guard…

  • Fire at Brand New Biomass Incinerator in Rothschild, Wisconsin

    -April 11, 2014. Source: Wasau Dai­ly Herald ROTHSCHILD — Fire­fight­ers extin­guished a blaze that ignit­ed in a dust col­lec­tor at the Dom­tar bio­mass pow­er plant ear­ly Fri­day morning. Roth­schild Fire Depart­ment crews respond­ed to the plant just before 4:30 a.m., said Chief Marc Hill. When crews got to the plant, a fire was burn­ing inside the dust col­lec­tor and…

  • Yet Another Fire at Wood Pellet Facility

    Fire Dam­ages Ernst Bio­mass Pel­let Plant Novem­ber 11, 2013, Source: Bioen­er­gy Insight Ernst Bio­mass’ pel­let plant in New Jer­sey, US has been dam­aged after a fire broke out on 9 November. The inci­dent is report­ed to have caused $50,000 (€37,330) worth of dam­age to equip­ment such as the facil­i­ty’s con­vey­or sys­tem. Nobody was injured but pro­duc­tion at the…

  • Biomass Industry Fans Flames of Wildfire Hysteria

    Bio­mass Indus­try Fans Flames of Wild­fire Hysteria  California’s Rim fire, expect­ed to be ful­ly “con­tained” by Octo­ber after ignit­ing in Yosemite Nation­al Park on August 17, will ulti­mate­ly ben­e­fit the forests it has passed through. While media accounts sen­sa­tion­al­ize such large wild­fires as “cat­a­stroph­ic” and “dis­as­trous,” sci­ence demon­strates that, to the con­trary, fire is a vital com­po­nent of…

  • Wildland-Urban Fire—A Different Approach

    Wild­land-Urban Fire–A Dif­fer­ent Approach - by Jack D. Cohen, Rocky Moun­tain Research Sta­tion, U.S. For­est Service Wild­land-urban fire occurs when a fire burn­ing in wild­land veg­e­ta­tion fuels gets close enough with its flames and/or fire­brands (loft­ed burn­ing embers) to poten­tial­ly cre­ate igni­tions of the res­i­den­tial fuels (But­ler 1974). Res­i­den­tial fire destruc­tion is the prin­ci­pal prob­lem dur­ing wild­land-urban fires,…

  • Wind Drives All Large Blazes

    Wind Dri­ves All Large Blazes  - by George Wuerthner As large fires have spread across the West in recent decades, we hear increas­ing demands to reduce fuels—typically through log­ging. But log­ging won’t reduce the large fires we are expe­ri­enc­ing because fuels do not dri­ve large fires. You can have tons of fuel per acre as occurs…