Burns Bog fire raises issues

An open letter to Chief Gord Freeborn, Delta Fire Department
The board of directors and members of the Burns Bog Conservation Society wish to thank you and your staff for the efficient manner in which you conquered the fire in Burns Bog recently.
I am forwarding recommendations for the management of future fires in Burns Bog. These recommendations are based on information from our chair, Prof.David Bellamy, one of the world’s foremost experts on peat lands. He has more than 40 years experience with areas like Burns Bog.
Our future recommendations include, if possible:
· The use of fresh water for fire quenching rather than salt water. The use of salt water reduces acidity in the bog and encourages the growth of non-bog vegetation.
· The use of fire retardant without fertilizer. Again, the use of fertilizer encourages the regrowth of non-bog plant species and trees. This defeats the benefit of a fire in the bog, which is the removal of trees and non-bog species.
We want to keep trees in our forests and out of our bog. As you pointed out in one of your news conferences, fighting a fire in Burns Bog is different than fighting a fire in a forest. Reducing the tree canopy will encourage bog plants to grow and “… slow evapotranspiration and improve the water table balance. Annual removal around the burned areas would have the best results but is painstaking work.” (email, September 13, 2005)
The encouragement of non-bog plants through the use of fertilizer results in the loss of bog plants, such as sphagnum mosses, carnivorous sundews, and cloudberries. The non-bog plants either overshadow the bog plants or crowd them out. As we are trying to conserve the native plants, I would encourage you to use fresh water and fire retardant without fertilizer. Dr. Bellamy re-emphasized the need to keep up the water table in the bog to encourage bog plants and reduce the risk of future fires.
Thank you again, and thanks to all the firefighters who worked so hard to put the fire out.
Eliza Olson, president, Burns Bog Conservation Society

Arbutus RAV would save $1 billion

For two or more years, I am certain that I have not once heard what could be described as a logical reason to build the RAV on Cambie Street, instead of along the Arbutus corridor.
The Cambie RAV route will cost us at least $1 billion more than the Arbutus line, which in itself, makes the Cambie RAV line an unacceptable proposition.
One myth is that the rich people in the Arbutus area won’t allow the Arbutus corridor to be used for the RAV. This is pure nonsense. People with money are people who don’t waste their money and wasting a billion dollars or more for no good reason definitely isn’t credible. It doesn’t matter how well-off one may be, or how much of a NIMBY, $1 billion is just too much to waste.
Another myth is that the federal government won’t help fund the RAV if it is built on Arbutus. Yet if we build the RAV on Arbutus, we won’t need one cent of federal government funding. The above ground RAV on Arbutus will cost less than half of what it will require to build a subway halfway along Cambie, and both the municipal and provincial governments could fund it.
But let’s not let the feds off too easy. Let’s make a deal. Build the RAV on Arbutus and use the $1 billion saved for 10 different areas that desperately need more cash at a cool $100 million each. A hundred million could go to our hospitals to reduce waiting lists. A hundred million could go to our teachers and schools. Another $100 million to buy much needed buses and to reduce bus fares, or at least make it unnecessary to increase bus fares. Another hundred million to improve the housing situation in our city and another $100 million should go to all the people who lost everything, or almost everything, investing their life savings in new homes that were of substandard construction, through no fault of their own – the leaky condos. And we still have another $500 million to spend. Perhaps reduce the property tax of everyone living next to the RAV line on Arbutus and don’t increase the property and business taxes of every home and business in the Lower Mainland.
The new RAV line should be built on the Arbutus corridor or not at all. For this reason (to save ourselves $1 to $2 billion), I propose that we begin the preliminary planning for an Arbutus RAV line to Richmond and the airport. At the same time, let’s organize public information booths, meetings, forums, and, in general, establish a movement to build the RAV on the most logical and cost effective route – the existing Arbutus corridor.
We should ask all the mayoral candidates and councillors exactly what their position is on the Cambie RAV. This is the question: Are you willing to waste $1 to $2 billion of taxpayers money on the Cambie Street RAV, or will you cancel the Cambie Street RAV and build it on the Arbutus corridor and save us a billion dollars?
Scott Adams, The Arbutus RAV Voice Mailbox, 604-682-3269, extension 7058. Adams invites the public to an RAV forum at the SPEC office, 2150 Maple Street in Vancouver, November 5, 8 pm.

US caught with car bomb in Iraq

It’s happened again – coalition troops being caught with bombs. This time, it is the Americans captured in the act of
setting off a car bomb in Baghdad, October 14. Last time, as FMNN reported only weeks ago, two British soldiers, apparently working for British intelligence, were caught near Baghdad similarly equipped.
According to the Mirror-World, “A number of Iraqis apprehended two Americans disguised in Arab dress as they tried to blow up a booby-trapped car in the middle of a residential area in western Baghdad on Tuesday… Residents of western Baghdad’s al-Ghazaliyah district [said] the people had apprehended the Americans as they left their Caprice car near a residential neighborhood in al-Ghazaliyah on Tuesday afternoon. Local people found they looked suspicious, so they detained the men before they could get away. That was when they discovered that they were Americans and called the … police.” Just as in the British incident, the Iraqi police arrived at approximately the same time as coalition forces and the two men were removed from Iraqi custody and whisked away before any questioning could take place.
The incidents are said to be fuelling both puzzlement and animosity among Iraqis. Yet the motivation behind such activities remains formally unknown since in both cases the soldiers involved have been removed with an efficiency that has quashed any attempts at an interrogation.

Staff reports – Free-Market News Network, Friday, October 14, 2005
www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1326