and we are on fire again

[pucho812]

:'(

and we have another large fire here in california.  Luckily I am safe but I can't say the same for others.

 

[boji]

 

[JohnRoberts]

Good luck.

JR

 

[john12ax7]

I'm on the westside,  was ok this morning.  But right now entire sky is filled with smoke.

 

[pucho812]

View from pch in Malibu yesterday. No bueno.

 

[scott2000]

Man be safe!!! My son is in the San Fran area and he said his weather app just said "smoke" yesterday.......

 

[pucho812]

Man be safe!!! My son is in the San Fran area and he said his weather app just said "smoke" yesterday.......

Well that's 6 hours north but they have their own fire in their area.  It took out a complete town yesterday.

 

[scott2000]

Yeah I think it's the Camp fire..... 

Scary stuff out there :-\

 

[Kingston]

Look like some third world country to keep a lack infrastructural stuff like this going on for years and years

 

[pucho812]

Todays update,

the fire is no where near contained.  It hit a fire break on one side called the pacific ocean which helped I supose. The winds died down  which helps but are expected to pick up again Monday.  for those in the area not close to fire, it smells of burning and it's super grey skies because of smoke.  hard to breath for folks with lung issues.  over all pretty bad but not nearly as bad as those who are much closer. I can watch at a safe distance but it's disheartening.

 

[DaveP]

Thinking of both you and CJ at the moment.

Would it make sense to cut back trees say 100yds back from vital roads and also around towns ?

As this seems like a recurring theme for California it might make sense to take these measures rather than keep suffering these incredible losses?

Correct me if this makes no sense. :-\

DaveP

 

[boji]

100yds back

Not a bad idea to reduce avenues of ingress, but my understanding is the wind carries those embers far and wide.

 

[DaveP]

but my understanding is the wind carries those embers far and wide.

I was thinking more about escape routes and not having trees so close to housing,  Embers might be doused, but 800C temperatures close to houses probably causes them to self-combust,  Temperature reduces as the inverse square of the distance.

DaveP

 

[JohnRoberts]

Thinking of both you and CJ at the moment.

Would it make sense to cut back trees say 100yds back from vital roads and also around towns ?

As this seems like a recurring theme for California it might make sense to take these measures rather than keep suffering these incredible losses?

Correct me if this makes no sense. :-\

DaveP

Avoid simple answers, when the santa anna winds are blowing (like now), the embers can easily jump roads and modest fire breaks due to 40 MPH winds.

POTUS has already blamed this on forest mismanagement (like not clearing flammable underbrush), but CA has suffered from a several year drought that doesn't help.

My brother (the smart one) lives in socal and so far has avoided tragedy (I think there were some evacuations near him earlier this year).

I expect the political spinners to blame this on climate change.  If it was simple even CA could resolve it, maybe they will pass a law against it?

JR

 

[boji]

I expect the political spinners to blame this on climate change.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/13/3931.long

 

[pucho812]

Avoid simple answers, when the santa anna winds are blowing (like now), the embers can easily jump roads and modest fire breaks due to 40 MPH winds.

POTUS has already blamed this on forest mismanagement (like not clearing flammable underbrush), but CA has suffered from a several year drought that doesn't help.

My brother (the smart one) lives in socal and so far has avoided tragedy (I think there were some evacuations near him earlier this year).

I expect the political spinners to blame this on climate change.  If it was simple even CA could resolve it, maybe they will pass a law against it?

JR

Well jr.  Trump was not to far off the mark there.

[https://canadafreepress.com/articl...artisan-wildfire-management-bill-in-2016/url]

 

[PRR]

Fire happens. For millions of years, much of North America burned every decade or century. This clears the detritus and limits the ecosystem.

I know South New Jersey better. Used to burn every couple decades. The "climax species" was a type of scrub-pine which came back very quickly in fire-cleared land. "Pinelands". 1930s they put in fire-towers and fought fires. Over time the forest changed over to oaks. It still burned, and now when fire did get started it was bigger. In the 1980s a huge blaze burned all the way to the Parkway. By this time wiser heads had switched from "saving the forest" to protecting property. Drove the parkway that year, huge black burn. The next year it was covered in baby pines. They must have matured by now and the oaks taking over.

This is for-sure a FIRST world problem. A society which builds on unsuitable land and over-spends to protect poor investments. You can't fool mother nature. The detritus builds up, storms (or bulldozer blades) happen, and what could be a limited blaze in unsettled land is now an uncontrollable blaze in over-built land.

And no, this is not new news. In the 1960s L.A. had a series of fires many in the then-new developments up into the hills above the plain. Much loss, because the hasty-built roads were too narrow to maneuver fire-trucks and the hasty-built water mains would not fill a street-full of garden hoses at once, much less proper fire-streams. There were changes ordered. But they increased the cost of already costly housing, "L.A. is full", and I am sure lessons have been forgotten.

And then there are the million-buck houses on hurricane coasts. If you don't get a good blow for some years the coast gets infested with high-value property. Get a few good storms and everybody is crying about something which has been going on for millions of years.

Here also. I'm sure this part of Maine burns every century. A series of huge fires happened in 1947, end of an era. But I look out at my over-crowded 70yo spruce and think "that could burn well". Probably has. (The current crop is more likely shaped by lumbering, though possible influenced by the losses of 1947.) 

 

[JohnRoberts]

As usual much wisdom from Paul... (don't get me started on taxpayer subsidized flood insurance.)

I don't pretend this is simple or cheap, but we always end up paying later. 

JR

 

[CJ]

i moved to Olympia WA a few years back,  biggest threat here is suicidal depression from too much  rain,  bad heroin  (4 OD's in one weekend) , or a mild earthquake now and then,

i moved up here from Paradise, what you have there is a town built on a sloping plateau (the town ranges from about 1800 to 2600 feet elevation) between two steep and deep river canyons, with a population that grew from 6,000 to 26,000 in a few decades. Add that to poor economic conditions (median income $31,000 no tax money for roads) and a changing climate and you have the potential for disaster due to lack of escape routes, it took my friend 3 hours to get down the hill during evacuation, a trip of about 12 miles,  but this happened before back in 2008 and nothing much was done to improve things save paving a back road that takes you to the middle of nowhere on the north side of town.

so we had a sad and unfortunate event that was the result of a spark from the high voltage lines during a 50 mph winds hitting vegetation that had gone the whole hot summer (avg about 98)  without rain  when you get that chain of events, no type of forest management or house construction can do much, you are better off investing in an early warning system for each house which could be done easily with today's technology as well as evacuation drills and traffic planning by local  law enforcement. 

Paradise is a retirement community with 18% of the population being 64 years or older and living alone. These people need to get hooked up with a support system for emergencies like this.  Not much you can do after the fact except hope and pray for a speedy recovery and give as much support as possible to the people affected.  This is a really tough situation as in a small town like this, many of the people who lost their homes also lost their place of employment at the same time as they lived and worked in the same place.

 

[DaveP]

Well it looks like you made a wise decision to move CJ, because it appears from the news that Paradise is completely gone.

You moved because you like canoeing I guess, and that needs water.

Glad to hear you are OK

DaveP