OT: The fires in California are really bad
dracorn
Posts: 2,363
in The Commons
I'm spending time at my mother-in-law's about 75 miles south of the Carr fire in northern California. The sunrise is orange and the air quality is bad. The fire has burned 90,000 acres and is only 5% contained. Temperatures have been 105 to 115 degrees F and the winds keep shifting. Over 4,000 fire fighters on this blaze alone. 6 deaths including a grandmother and her 2 grandchildren. My brother-in-law just got home - the fire blew the transfer station, and the entire town of Willits is without power.
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Another reason I am glad I don't live in Cali. Stay safe!
That's funny, I have been thru 5 of them and it wasn't that bad. I am more worried about hail damage here in Dallas than tornados. We have limited covered parking in my complex and 2 years ago we got a really bad hail storm, (baseball and softball size) and it looked like a war zone after it stopped with parts from cars everywhere (I was lucky). I had a tornado touch down when I was driving and I pulled off into a deep gully area to where the car was lower than the roadway, Car got stuck, but the tornado went over us with no damage and a friend came and pulled us out.
I actually debated where I was going to live when I was 22 and out of college based on weather and natural disasters. West coast was ruled out because of fires, mudslides and heaven forbid an earthquake, not to mention the traffic, LOL. I went thru a hurricane once, won't ever do that again. That is why I will never live on the southern/eastern coast. I guess anywhere you live there is something to be worried about.
FSMCDesigns . guess anywhere you live there is something to be worried about. ..... Absolutely.
I live in California. It gets hot here, but I prefer over heating to COLD anytime. I can't stand cold weather, and snow looks great in photos but to actually be in it is another matter. I would die in places like England where it's bone chilling cold too much of the time.
Yeah, the Southern Western States of the USA are going through a very bad drought and a fire plague, but the weather is crazy everywhere in the USA.
Watch a great old British film titled, "The Day the Earth Caught Fire" and get a glimpse of where we are probaably headed one way or another.
I live in sedate boring Adelaide and live in fear of being bitten by an Australian brown snake since I lost a cat to one in my yard.
There is always something, we have bushfires too, Two Wells, not far from me has been badly burnt and two people died last year.
Stay safe
I went through two Category 3/ only a couple mph away from Category 4 hurricanes in 9 months, and I'd take those over tornadoes any day. As an Army officer, there were five at once (Ft Riley, Kansas) when we were in the field, and one was dropping red and white airplane chunks of metal from the airport it had just hit. I remember being briefed when we first arrived that summer that if the tornado isn't moving, it's coming straight at you. The airplane chunks one was moving, thank goodness.
With hurricanes, you know they are coming and can evacuate. Tornadoes, NO. You have no idea of where they will form, even if told the day may be chock full of them. Hurricanes may (MAY) do more widespread damage, but again, it's just THINGS and people can evacuate. You can't evacuate from a tornado. Even if you have storm shelters, tornadoes form quickly and you may not have time to get to one.
But these fires are just heartbreaking. The eastern states are hit with flooding and the fire departments are busy helping with that. But the southern states certainly could do more- we haven't had a hurricane yet this season and we're not having wildfires or floods. We really appreciated all the help the western states gave us last year when the peninsula of Florida got the whammy with a hurricane going straight up the state. Wish we could help you folks out more. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana should all be sending firefighters, if they haven't. The next two weeks are supposed to be slow for hurricane formation.
I was reading that the fires are moving so fast, the fighters are just getting people out of the way and not fighting the fire. I think they need to take care of themselves too with the wind changing so fast, and roaring through in minutes. This needs to be handled from the air after people are gotten to safety. So sorry to hear about everyone afflicted, and our thoughts are with you even if our firefighters aren't. Note- I looked for states sending assistance in Google, and didn't find anything. Anyone know who HAS sent help?
Currently: Carr Fire at 17 percent containment with more than 95,000 acres of land burned. Approximately 874 structures have been destroyed, including 657 residential homes. Another 145 homes have been damaged. And still 5,000+ structures are being threatened.
There's a lot of neglect for trees and bushes here in California. People seem to think that overgrown = natural, and there's no desire for arborists to trim the things that would naturally get taken care of by disease and fire. (There's no budget that anyone would put towards *gasp* chopping down nature!)
With heavy rains, we have heavy overgrowth, and now we have heavy fire. That's Circle of Life kind of stuff, you know? The American West has always been a fire waiting to happen.
...we already have 14 fires burning in Oregon, seven of which ore west of the Cascades.
Today where I was in Portland, it was 102° and will be in the mid 90s for the next couple days. We now have endured about 25 days of 90°+ temperatures and not even into August yet.
I'm just north of Berkeley, so we don't have quite as cold of summers as San Francisco does but it's still nice and cool while the rest of the southwest swelters.
As to earthquakes... I'm a block away from the hayward fault, and there's a major gas main under my kitchen window. So, yeah, I stay a bit worried by them, and have the earthquake insurance even though I'm a renter. (In California, if you get earthquake insurance it's typically separate from your renters / home-owners insurance.)
The County fire up near sacramento was a rude awakening, as the bad air and ash were making it all the way to us, and last year's napa fires caused some disruption, but other than that the fires haven't bothered the bay area too much.
Awesome a fellow South Australian, I live on the Fleurieu Penninsula in a little ol town called Goolwa.. :) And yeah Bushfires are never fun used to be in the Country Fire Service, and have seen my fair share of Bushfires up close and personal, it can get intense can tell you that much..
And yes stay safe to all in California..
We have fires every year now in california. They used to be rare and unusual. We have too many people, the areas are a lot dryer due to drought, and quite often fires are human-caused.
People also are building in rural areas where there is no forest management
I live in an area where the military performs controlled burns, i hate it since I have asthma and have to stay indoors. I would prefer the use of goats which is used in other areas but the military uses the burns because of unexploded ordinance left over at some of these woodland areas on base. It is understandable but a drag.
other local areas do use goats and they work well.. fire kills a lot of animals.... and I’m not a fan of burning unless absolutely no other choice.
Is it unusual for fires in upper Northern California? Isn't that Redwoods territory, with all the huge trees?
Those fires are Bad.! Stay SAFE!
North central is pretty dry. Some of the recent fires are arson caused. The recent ones have all been caused by people. Sparks from mountain bike riding caused one locally. Others are caused from power lines sparking, camp fires in undesignated areas. Illegal grows, cig butts, kids playing with firecrackers...Yes they also are caused by nature naturally but recent ones have had some human element. People don’t seem to understand protocol in living in areas which are so dry. We tend to get rain most in winter so summer months there is not a lot of rainfall.
From Feb 2008 to Feb 2009 the house I was living in at Fort Knox had
1) a tornado come through my yard (they really do sound like freight trains and I was freightened and hiding under couch cushions too!). It leveled 2 full grown trees in the yard but demolished the Big O's Tires before it go to my house.
2) a hurricane of all things managed to stay powerful enough to knock a full grown huge maple tree onto the roof of the kitchen. I'm like what is next?! I think it was September but I don't remember.
3) Then in Jan/Feb a ice storm came through with over a foot of ice and knocked out power for days. Even works at the fort was canceled. I'm glad I lived in a 1/2 basement apartment at the time as it was cold.
Flooding happens pretty regularly but I'm always keen to avoid traveling anywhere there is flooding and haven't lived at the bottom of a flood plain. I've been within a couple of football fields of lightning strikes which are scary too & loud & bright! I've never near a huge fire though. The biggest ones I've seen were field fires near the house these drunk men kept setting. They were still very scary & still required calling the fire department to put them out as they were a danger to our residence but we couldn't feel the heat from them.
Not unusual anymore. I just got home from my mother-in-law's in the Sierra foothills. They didn't bother moving the pine forest to build the town. It's beautiful. When a fire is burning, you look at all that gorgeous folliage and think - look at all the fuel that surrounds your house - especially since it's so dry that there's a lot of dead stuff mixed in with the trees.
A couple of years ago, half the town she lived in had to be evacuated. They stopped the fire about 500 feet from her house. When we went to see her a week later, we drove down the street - half a mile away the neighborhood was ash. It was aweful. In the middle of it was a house still standing, with scorch marks of a burned tree right next to it. And we wondered, what saved that house?
I believe researchers come in after a fire asking those same questions. They have come up with answers too, and have made recommendations. But these changes are expensive - like attick fans and special windows. So people rebuild and DON'T incorporate the changes.
I kinda wonder, nonesuch00 - why you stay. After that many disasters in such a short amount of time, I'd be shell-shot.
By the way, I live in the Central Valley some 220 miles south of Redding and the Carr fire - the haze is amazing, and I can smell the smoke.
Florida has its problems too. Rising oceans will soon make much of it a chain of islands that are currently mounds of waste disposal sites.
I had lots of good times in Florida for a few decades but in 2004 I went through 4 hurricanes (Charlie, Francis, Jeane and Ivan) and the 4th (Ivan) came back for a second go at me, so make that 5 hurricanes. Nope, I'm too old for that nonsense now, Right here in Western NY State east of Lake Erie the winters are snowy but the forests stay green, the land doesn't shake, the soil stays on the hills, the rivers stay in their banks, the hurricanes peter out before they reach us, the tornados are rare and only mildly damaging and the air is clean. You can keep your California.
...also becoming more common in Oregon and Washington State as well. Last summer we had something like 33 wildfires burning at the same time just here in Oregon alone. Skies over portland were hazy for weeks the worst when a fire broke out at the mouth of the Columbia Gorge (caused by teenagers playing with fireworks) which scorched thousands of acres, threatened hikers who were on a trail as it literally "exploded" due to the extreme dry conditions, and darkened the skies in Portland for days (see photos below).
This morning I woke up to an orange sky as smoke from a 25,000 acre wildfire in Southern Oregon along with that from both a 35,000 acre fire (now 58% contained) and remnants of a 78,000 acre blaze (now 90% contained) in the central Columbia Gorge had drifted over the Willamette valley and I could smell the scent of burning wood in the air. There are also two large fires a bit more to the east, one in Idaho (97,000 acres) and one in NW Utah NE Nevada (100,000 acres) both of which are less than 20% contained. Looks to we may be shaping up for another late summer like last year. Red flag warnings have been in force since mid June.
The one fortunate part in this is here in Portland, the heat wave is supposed to break after tomorrow with temperatures dropping to much more near normal (upper 70s - low 80s) for next week.
I've heard that (at least here in WA) the heat wave breaking is going to trigger more fires because of lightning strikes coming with the pressure change, on dried vegetation. Fingers crossed they can contain them.
...yeah, my concern here in Oregon as well. At least it won't be 95° - 100° which just makes it all that much worse (particularly for older folks like myself). Also maybe we might actually get a little water from the sky to dampen things down a bit. Our 10 day forecast actually indicates showers next week Monday and Tuesday.
Or just the sun itself, reflecting off an aluminum can or something shiny. I live in L.A. and it was so hot one day, I saw a squirrel passed out in the middle of the sidewalk, possibly dead, from dehydration or the heat. This heat is horrendous, but better today, a "cool" 88 degrees...
I was part of a research team studying lightning at the Kennedy Space Center. We had electric field meters and lightning detectors and computers and analog and digital data recorders and airplanes flying through clouds and renowned lightning scientists and it doesn't have to rain to have lightning. It doesn't even need to be cloudy to have lightning! The phrase "Bolt from the blue." is not an exaggeration.
All you need is dust and friction.