Paradise Lost…

California is burning again, still… As a former volunteer in Florida, I feel for them. The longest one I was ever involved with was three continuous days, and I was totally whipped. These folks haven’t had a break all summer, and that takes a toll on the psyche.

And the death toll continues to climb in the Camp Fire, which is in Butte County, CA. The towns of Paradise and Magalia are basically gone, and the death toll is continuing to rise, HERE. When you get a fire that ‘blows up’ like that one, you just have to get out of the way, and try to make rescues where you can. If you get in front of it, you’re dead.

I was talking to PP last night, and this one hits close to home for a number of reasons. My ex-wife and her husband lost their house, burnt to the ground, and no insurance because it was paid for and in a ‘fire zone’… 27 of PP’s ambulance company employees out of 100 total have also lost houses. Some of them literally have the uniforms on their backs and that is it. But they are still providing ambulance services, and assisting in the searches for survivors. And most of the police/fire forces in the area are also homeless, losing their homes while they saved others.

PP got up there yesterday, and sent pictures, and we talked about the ‘oddities’ that happen in fires like this. A plastic deer in a yard with the house burned. All but one house in an entire subdivision gone.  One store standing alone. The ambulance company lost two stations in Paradise, one at the fire house, and a secondary in a strip mall, both burned to the ground, and one ambulance that got trapped, but the medics and patient were saved.

That fire is getting less coverage than the one down in Malibu, because it’s just regular people, nobody famous or rich… But they did bring in heavy airborne units yesterday, and as of last night it was 25% contained, which means they’ll be fighting that one for another month.

California has had ‘problems’ with forestry management for decades, a lot of it due to regulations and econazis. Now they are paying for it in lives, homes, and businesses lost. Two articles, HERE and HERE.

Edit- They have put up a GoFundMe, HERE, to help employees get necessities.

Comments

Paradise Lost… — 24 Comments

  1. Very soon, it will be Trumps fault for the fire and all the horrors that accompany it.
    Oh, Oh, someone already has blamed Trump for the fire.

  2. Wildfires are no joke, and fighting them isn’t any fun (as you noted). We always dreaded hearing those calls.

  3. Used to go out to So. Cal. regularly for conferences. Wasn’t impressed and never had a desire to live there. One of the reasons was the dryness. Add scrub and conifers, a spark, and wind and BOOM! These fires don’t surprise me. I’m just surprised anyone else is surprised by them.

  4. I’m sorry to hear about your ex’s home, it’s devastating. I have a friend in Thousand Oaks who was packing last week in the event that they had to evacuate, so far they’re okay.

  5. Our family lived in Woodland Hills (LA suburb) in the early ’60s. Fire was an ever present threat. Seasonally, winter and spring rains caused lots of scrub growth, dry summers, and Santa Ana winds turned the scrub to tinder. By fall, any spark, lightning, or an idiot tossing a lit cigarette out of his car could start a conflagration. The geography made the canyons funnels for flames, and difficult to get fire fighters into the area. Now over 50 years later, more and more people have moved into what should have been buffer areas, regulations prohibit clearing “native” brush, water restrictions prevent having large areas of grass as fire breaks. All these have created results that are as predictable as they are tragic.

  6. All- Thanks for the comments, I’ll pass them along. NRW- Dead on.

    Posted from my iPhone.

  7. NukeRW is right. California has had droughts that last hundreds of years and there are a lot of people living in or near the “urban-wildland interface” these days.

    The politics and management of brush/grassland fires and forest fires are slightly different in California. Both can move scary fast. By the way, there’s pretty good evidence that the California native tribes set fires to shape the wildlands, but then they probably didn’t set fires upwind of their homes – which were generally portable in case things didn’t go quite right.

    The feds own about 48% of California:

    https://nationalmap.gov/small_scale/printable/images/pdf/fedlands/CA.pdf

    Most of that is managed by the BLM and Forest Service; the Camp fire started on National Forest land.

    So far it looks as though the Camp fire was caused by PG&E deciding not to shut off the power to lines in dry forest and brushland that were at risk from high wind. Seems to be a lot of that going on this year and there will be a big fight to see if ratepayers or shareholders take the hit.

    Over the weekend, Mount Diablo (about 30 miles east of San Francisco) recorded 72 mph winds at the (3838 foot) summit.

    • And yet several municipalities, county and now even the State are considering legislation, rules and ordinances to restrict or even stop all vegetation trimming on or near powerlines, pipelines, and their associated distribution or pumping facilities. Why? Because ‘For TEH Envirumunt.’

      A tree in a powerline is bad. A tree in a transformer farm?

      And, in this case, the stupid really does burn.

  8. As much as I would love to roll in the shadenfreude fields over idjits like Alysa Milano losing her home, it is the normal people who are really suffering, and losing their life.

    All because politics and stupidity won’t allow proper fire mitigation policies.

    Once again, the true victims of socialism are the middle class.

    My hopes and prayers to all those affected, and to the wild fire firefighters who are valiantly doing their best in bad conditions.

  9. +1 on all the above comments.

    We lived in Chico from the early 80’s until moving to Texas in 2015. We raised our three kids there.

    Yes, this was a well document time bomb waiting to go off. Narrow evacuation corridors. No early warning system. The list goes on and on. It is all so doubly heart breaking because it was preventable.

    So far, everyone we knew got out safely. One example–The sister of one of my son’s old girlfriends had just delivered a baby. They were about to check out of the Feather River Hospital when they were told to leave. NOW. She didn’t even have time to put her clothes on. They scooped up their two day old baby, what they could carry, got in their car and got out. Their house is gone. Their parents house is gone.

    The death toll from this thing is going to be horrendous. The narrow roads became blocked with traffic and falling debris. People were bailing out of their cars and running on foot. Many did not make it.

    Paradise is also a retirement community. Many old and infirm. Many reports that the first indication people had that there was immediate danger was their backyard was on fire. Five minutes later, their house was an inferno.

    Here is a video that explains the fire conditions–

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b0j-V_bE_Q

    The search–

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/11/paradise-a-grim-search-and-desperate-prayers-for-miracles/

    Our daughter had Professor Bartelink for her forensics class when she was getting her Bachelors in Criminal Justice.

  10. I lived in NorCal for a long time- almost as long as I’ve lived anywhere. I’m sick at heart for all the lives and homes lost.

  11. All- Thanks. I purposely didn’t post any videos, but yes scary fast is it! PP’s company lost one ambulance that got trapped.

    Posted from my iPhone.

  12. _Range Magazine_ arrived last week, and the big article was about poor state and federal management of fuel loads and under-grazing. Why? Well-meaning and foolish environmentalists who don’t want to understand ecology. The pictures gave me the willies just looking at the enormous fuel loads.

    I have no desire to live in a “pyrophilic” ecosystem, thanks.

  13. TXRed- Exactly. And they are paying the price for NOT paying for the brush and ground cover to be cleared. Brown actually vetoed a bill that passed in 2016 to do that.

  14. fought the Oakland Hills fire in the ’90 – was in the Navy and they asked for volunteers. But the policies concerning removing underbrush and controlled burns are beyond stupid. And they build mansions IN the woods!

  15. Looking at all of this, I am truly shocked. If you live in a wildfire zone, why not design your buildings with fire-proofing in mind? Build as much as you can out of stone, including stone flag roofs with steel beams in them, and stone or concrete walls. Mount fireproof shutters over the windows, and surround all houses with a mandatory open space of non-combustible land.

    In Australia, one chap had the bright idea of using his house swimming pool as water storage for a fire suppression system which consisted of sprinklers along the roof and walls of his property, excess water draining back to a pond and thence to the pool; he also cut back native trees from around his property. The authorities in Australia are equally moronic and fined him for this heinous act, but when the area burned his was the sole house left standing for miles around.

    A final anti-fire trick is an unusual one: take the polymer mix used in babies’ nappies as a water absorbent and coat the entire house with a fully-hydrated mix of this plus water. What you’re essentially doing is slapping an inch or so of water gel onto the house. Most wildfires are very brief affairs, especially if you’ve the brains to minimise ground cover plants, so merely fireproofing a house like this prevents fire taking hold.

  16. Silly person. You’re probably from some foreign state not hip to California’s superior culture.

    A friend lived in a fairly nice California neighborhood… smack in the middle of a fire zone. Houses burned to the ground regularly due to it. Of course, a contributing factor was the local building code, which specified one, and only one, material for roofing: split cedar shakes.

    You may now perform appropriate facepalm…

  17. Jay- Good point!

    Dan- As TRX says, ‘building codes’… And most lots up there weren’t allowed to cut more trees than absolutely required for the house footprint. Sigh…

    TRX- Yep! 3 tours in the Navy in Cali, ever so glad to GTFO!

  18. For $750,000,000 California could have 50, thats fifty Bombardier 415 water bombers leased for 5 years.
    And that lease includes operation and maintenance.
    Now, that is a lot of money.

    But it is less than 10% of the California High-Speed Rail cost.

    • It would take a few years to build those planes.
      But I think that Bombardier would not mind too much to open another line to manufacture those planes.
      Maybe even subcontract the production to a LockMart plant in California.