Last week the Woolsey fire started in Simi Valley, where I live. For days we watched the flames march through the hills that surround the valley from the relative safety of strong Santa Anna winds. For most of the week those winds blew at a pretty consistent 40 mph and while they protected the North side of the Valley, they drove the flames South thru Westlake, Thousand Oaks, and onward into Malibu.
It’s not like this doesn’t happen every now and then. Santa Anna winds happen every year. Some years are worse than others. Last year was a pretty tough one and you probably remember the fires that ripped through California driven, once again, by the strong winds. We don’t have much in the way of trees out here. Mostly it’s grass and shrubs. But when the wind is blowing from 40 to 60 mph it can create a fire storm where the actual wind becomes irrelevant and spiraling tendrils of fire are whipped up into the air. These tendrils contain burning embers which can be transported for miles before they once again drop down into the dry grass and ignite another area of burning.
So every few years, something like ten or so, a fire starts that has Malibu firmly in it’s sights. In as much as the mountains that raise sharply out of the sea are incredibly steep, nothing can get at the burning brush that clings to the walls of the canyons, so they burn. And the wind blows. And the houses burn too. Lot’s of them. I hope that this map works for you. It shows the amazing number of houses that burned in this fire.
It’s not that there aren’t always going to be fires. We all know that. Some SoCal plant species can only propagate through fire opening seed pods. It’s not that houses aren’t going to burn to the ground in those fires. We all know that too. It’s actually that people you know are in the line of fire and some of them are going to lose everything. But you can’t contact them. The cell towers have burned down. The telephone poles have burned down. There is no power, no phone, and nobody is allowed into the area because the poles and lines have to be replaced first so nobody gets electrocuted.
Only three people died in this fire. In the one up North ten times as many people died. You can replace the house. You can replace the things that you didn’t manage to pack into your car as you ran for your life. But you can’t replace your life. I have friends who lost their house. I have a friend on Point Dume who’s house appears to be ok, but I can’t reach him and he is my contact with all of my other friends who live near by.
It’s ten days later and still there is smoke raising from the small fires in the canyons around Malibu. Some people are finally being allowed into the burn area to see if they still have a house. Some do, some don’t. The Rock Store, one of my weekly haunts, didn’t burn. I know that for sure. But less than a quarter of a mile away is a trailer park that was completely destroyed. The better part of 1000 very expensive houses were destroyed. Close to 100,000 acres burned. But only three people died. Why only three people? Communications. Almost everyone in SoCal is plugged in. They get the warning on their phones. They get the warning on the TV. They get the warning and get out with what they can carry and they get out with their lives. Up North, fewer people bother with a phone. Fewer people watch TV. They don’t get the warning. They don’t get out because they don’t know what is coming.
So I guess the point of this post is; you really need your tribe. They are the ones who are going to come knocking on your door in the night yelling fire. They are the ones who will kick the door down to get you out. They are the ones who will work with you to either fight the fire or drag you sorry old ass out of your house and into something to take you to safety. If you don’t have your tribe you are still very much exposed to peril.
Who is your tribe?
Interesting article. Remember this comment you made on the Hurricane Michael thread in October?
“Oh the horror. It is going to rain. I guess this has never happened in Florida before. Those poor people. They could never have expected anything as awful as this. Would someone please do something. Think of the children.”
Isn’t it delicious that you didn’t give a flying fuck about millions of people in the path of a massive hurricane, but you are tugging at our heart strings about your tribe in LA. Interesting, don’t you think?
What comes around goes around.
Ram it! Cram it! Stick it up his ass!! LOL 🙂
Admin issues a brutal take-down a mere few moments after the opening bell …
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After I called him a douchebag, this was his response:
“You pussies start whining every time a hurricane comes ashore. That happens many times every year. It rains. The wind blows. Some crappy houses get blown over and some signs get tossed around. The storm surge tosses some boats up onto the dock and some weather faggot gets to pretend that he is standing out in the storm. Every year. Every year over and over again. If the people who live in the path of the hurricanes don’t realize that they will get blown and rained on then they are stupid. If they build their houses where the storm surge will wash them away then they are stupid. And if you church ladies want to clutch at your pearls, be my guest. Just don’t be shocked that another bunch of stupid people have to be evacuated from the path of something that comes roaring by just about every year.”
Just replace the word hurricane with fires and it fits perfectly. I remember every asshole comment made on TBP.
To be accurate a Californian is far more likely to enounter a wildfire than a Floridian the direct impact of a hurricane. The last hurricane to hit Tampa was in 1921.
A hurricanes damaging wind field is about the same size as a big wildfire. Maybe 50 miles across. Beyond that and you are in category 1 or tropical storm winds. Storm surge is another matter but it is even more geographically limited and if you rebuild you have to make allowance for it. For example, if you want to rebuild south of Interstate 10 in Mississippi now you must elevate your structure and build it able to withstand 200 mph wind gusts. How about we apply those sort of rule to California. Concrete fire resistant structures with no landscaping within 100 feet, mandatory sprinkler systems and a pool or other water reservoir for fire fighting helicopter to use.
Good ideas, Unit 472
Man, I hope Admin never rips me for any of the stupid shit I’ve said. My wife has total phonographic recall about conversations. I think it’s a curse on her, and it ain’t real fun for me, either. I legitimately purge from memory almost all conversations as soon as they’re over. I prefer to retain important data, like the population of Indonesia or the purchasing-power-parity per capital GDP of Argentina.
allow me to correct you ,iska–
she sounds like most wives–
she doesn’t have total recall about conversations,she has total recall of her version of the conversation,which of course is the correct one no matter how wrong she is–
Well Jim, I guess you put payed to the idea that this site is for people with IQs above 110. Try giving what I wrote a read. I am completely consistent. Nowhere do I whine about fires. They happen every year just like your pussy rain storms. We all fight the fires, clean up the mess, and start over again. A while back I had just such a fire one block from my house. The whole neighborhood was out with hoses watering down everything that a garden hose would reach. As the fire storm roared over the hills above our houses, the firemen showed up just in time but they didn’t even take out their hoses. That exact thing happened all over Malibu. People fought the fire and saved their houses. It happens every year.
This was a story about community. Your tribe. It is a story about people working together to confront adversity. It is an uplifting story. And all you saw was my fires are better than your storms. Pretty sad response I say. How about putting your big boy pants on for a while.
Why do you assholes build houses where fires regularly wipe out towns? Your story is no different than the asshole comment you made about hurricanes. You were looking for sympathy for your plight. Tough shit dude. Put your big boy panties on and move to where there won’t be fires. I guess your tribe won’t be accepting emergency relief funds from my tax dollars. Right asshole?
Wow. Your tribe fought fires and helped each other out. You don’t think the people in Florida and South Carolina did the same. You’re a fucking hypocrite. Your own words say so. Fuck off.
Jim, I can’t recall. Do you live in the path of the hurricanes? I don’t think so. You really don’t get the point do you. You think your 30 blocks is awful. By your reasoning you should pick up and move someplace where there are no 30 blocks. But you don’t so I guess that makes you a fucking hypocrite. I didn’t ask for sympathy. I wasn’t crying in my beer about muh wildfires. We handle the wildfires. Floridians handle the hurricanes. It’s only you who whines about 30 blocks who can’t handle a little adversity. How about telling us a little tale about how you made your 30 blocks better.
You’re so fucking dense, you actually think I live near the 30 Blocks. Your comprehension skills leave much to be desired. I live 30 miles north of the 30 Blocks in farm country. I didn’t build my house on the ocean, in a flood zone, or in the path of wildfires. Only idiots do so. The people who live on the 30 Blocks are responsible for their plight and doing something to make it better. Not me. The fucking city of Phila absconds with thousands of dollars of my paycheck to make things better on the 30 Blocks.
Now you say Floridians handle the hurricanes. In October you were scorning and ridiculing Floridians. I hung you out to dry with your own words and you are back peddling and flailing about like a pussy.
I noticed you didn’t address the point about my taxes being used to bail out your tribe because you were so fucking stupid you decided to live where you know wildfires will rage every fucking year.
You’re a fucking hypocrite.
No, not at all. I was pointing out that shit happens. Hurricanes happen. Fires happen. Pussies like you whine because you “choose” to drive through the 30 blocks when you could just as easily take say the blue route and 30 or even the 95 and bypass all of that crap. Or you could hop on 422, take it down to the schuylkill. But no you just have to whine. So whine away. I’m not whining about the fires. And I’m not whining about the hurricanes. I’m complaining about people like you who whine about the hurricanes and the 30 blocks, which you pussied out a ran from but are too cheap to avoid in your daily commute.
Still, enough bitch slapping. Your face is getting red. I just wanted to offer a bit of insight from the front lines.
Your knowledge of the Philly area is as top notch as your inability to see the beam in your own eye when assessing the plight of others. Your panties are in twist because I revealed your hypocrisy to everyone on the site. Now you are lashing out about the 30 Blocks with zero knowledge regarding the area. It’s actually pretty pathetic. Your shit throwing skills are putrid. I can go all day sweetheart.
I noticed you again avoided the question about my tax dollars bailing you idiots out for building your houses where you absolutely know wildfires will rage every year. I guess that makes you no better than the free shit army living on the 30 Blocks. Parasites exist everywhere.
Thanks for being on the front lines of stupidity. See above for your use of the word stupid in the hurricane thread.
“Still, enough bitch slapping. Your face is getting red.”
—– Hollywood to Admin
Ummmm, Robbie … you might want to check the vote counts.
Wow …. this shitstorm has turned NUCLEAR in no time at all.
Not taking sides here BUT how does Admin “whine” about the 30 blocks?? That’s pretty disingenuous, dontchya think? All he’s doing is writing about it. Plus, he doesn’t live there … he just drives through it.
“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
—- John 13:34
Carry on.
Yes,by all means love one another.
Check back & in a few I’ll post my favorite Toran passages.
Admin – You beat me too it. I was gonna mention, too, that it is the wrath of God coming down on those Sodomites and sinners of all kinds.
I was rooting for the fire to burn down Cher’s house, so I’d definitely agree that the LORD is smiting Malibu. The fire in Northern California is probably just bad luck.
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Rodney’s in your tribe. Dude I am impressed.
Something has to be done about California’s wildfires. It is simply not acceptable for one city after another to burn down every year now. Last year it was Santa Rosa that burned down. Now the city of Paradise, a 150 year old community has disappeared with, perhaps, hundreds dead. As noted Malibu burns regularly.
The problem is not , as Jerry Brown would have it, climate change. Other states have droughts and windy days too but they don’t lose entire communities to fire storms. Granted the topography of California is more challenging but helicopters and aerial tankers can and do deal with that. The problem is California does not have enough of them! Why not Jerry Brown? You’ve had four terms as Governor and your party has a total majority in the state legislature.
Mutual aid is all well and good but the reality is a fire will be out of control by the time fire engines from San Francisco or Oakland can reach Santa Rosa less than 100 miles away and for them to reach more distant areas like Paradise can take days.
Instead of spending billions on illegal aliens problems California must buy fleets of firefighting aircraft able to quickly attack wildfires. Governor elect Gavin Newsom has made a useful proposal to install remote cameras on power poles to monitor for the outbreak of fires but without a rapid response capability to actually fight the fire the cameras will only allow us to watch as the fire goes out of control.
As to alerting your neighbors may I suggest radios. For less than a hundred dollars you can buy a set of walkie talkies that bypass the phone system. During red flag days leave one on next to your bed and another in your pocket or purse and use them to communicate with your neighbors.
Or, CA can clear some tree via a firebreak. — “A firebreak is a gap in vegetation or other combustible material that acts as a barrier to slow or stop the progress of a bushfire or wildfire.” Looks like this;
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But, nooooooo …. not all, but too many Californians care more about a Spotted Owl or the Masturbating Salamander becoming homeless over, you know, peeeeeople!
That’s not a fire break. When the winds are blowing 40+mph for a week you find embers leaping over silly little things like that. Here is the fire jumping over eight lanes of freeway.
woops sorry, that 12 lanes of freeway.
True but clearing vegetation around neighborhoods is the only way to deal with this problem. I heard a fire official in California point out that even ‘ice plant’ a fire resistant shrub was burning. Even grass, if you can’t water it ( and you can’t during droughts) poses a hazard. Southern California has to give up its manicured landscaping look and too bad for the illegals and their weedeaters and leaf blowers who maintain it. They can go pick avacado back in Mexico.
We have xeriscaping where I like, lots of rock with a few drought tolerant plants poking out. I wonder if that could work.
It sure couldn’t hurt and most likely would help.
My first impulse is to call you a couple of dumbfucks; xeriscaping is an effort to save on water, it does little to abate the threat of wildfires. But to be nice, Admin is correct – why build in the mountains where there are only a few houses and lots of undeveloped land full of flammable brush? Because they are monied folks like Hollywood Knob who want to live away from the riff-raff.
Too many of the folks who lose a house or their life in a wildfire or mudslide or quake are rich folks who put themselves in the path of natural disasters. Malibu has burned down many times since the 50’s. I doesn’t stop rich folks from rebuilding.
Kanye may have saved his house and immediate neighbors’ homes using ‘private firefighters’ but they will still have the threat of mudslides when the rains come. Even areas that weren’t burned have succumbed to landslides when the soil becomes saturated. The people living on the side of the mountain in La Conchita learned that lesson.
Well, Trump says it’s YOUR fault!!!
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Stuck, he’s the typical busybody who has all the solutions after the house has burned down. Playing with nature has consequences. His solutions are unworkable but they serve to inflame the country against “leftist government”. The dick uses California’s misfortune to play politics.
As Beto O’Rourke said about Teddy, ‘true to form’. Trumpy avoids responding to natural disasters and goes on a campaign tour instead. He did that during the hurricane last time. Where is that fucking impeachment train?
Trump assured us tonight that he wants “great climate”.
Hey Stuck, I am calling you out! What have you got against a salamander jerking off?!
Everybody knows that Stucky has absolutely nothing against master at ion.
Stuck – wildfires can jump miles, literally, in high wid as embers carry a very long way. Ember attacks cannot be stopped by pitifilu little gaps like the one in the pic.
I thought fire breaks were the final answer too until I saw a fire in North Idaho jump 50 yards across a deep, fast, cold river. There’s a lot to be done to mitigate fire hazards, but in much of the west, when it’s your turn to burn, all you can do is just get out of the way.
That said, after having lived in Philly, northern CA, and ID, I’ll take fire risk over Philly demographic risk any day of the week!
Every bit of England and Scotland’s forests are meticulously managed by their Forestry Agency, clearing underbrush and other fire hazards. There’s no reason California can’t do the same thing. Even the floors of thick forests can be managed.
Every bit of England and Scotland are rained on constantly. You could drop a welding torch into any forest and it would run out of gas before it started a fire. And while England might have some actual forests, most of the land is cleared. Scotland has fewer trees still. The only ones that I saw were planted for wood in little patches along the hillsides. I will pick just one forest of the many that I walked in. Sherwood forest. It had more undergrowth than you will ever find in CA. I watch Time Team most nights and they are frequently in forests digging for stuff and they are always up to their heads in bracken and nettles. The forests look like they are managed, and they are in a sense, because they have been planted for wood. The space is to allow for logging access, not fire suppression.
Bad example Vic. When the fire started the humidity in Simi Valley had been at 5% for the better part of a week and it had not rained since April. That’s why they call it a desert.
What I was trying to say is the forests could be effectively managed and the underbrush cleared out.
This year England had fires after several years of drought, but was believed to be deliberately set. It was also in peat-embedded terrain and dry shrublands. The peat itself just kept burning. The rains that did come didn’t touch it.
The U.K. does get rain but it’s not always heavy rains. A lot of times they are simply short-lived showers.
Vic, I’ve traveled a lot through Great Britain. Where in the hell are the trees you speak of?
Though the U.K. is Europe’s second-least wooded country (only Ireland has less trees), it still has large forests. Here are the top 10.
Galloway Forest Park, 297 miles; Kielder Forest Park, 235 miles; New Forest, 104 miles; Dornoch Forest, 100 miles; Argyll Forest Park, 81 miles; Queen Elizabeth Forest Park, 77 miles; Thetford Forest Park, 73 miles; Affric Forest, 69 miles; Tay Forest Park, 65 miles; Gengarry Forest, 63 miles.
And 7 of the 10 are in Scotland.
Next in line would be a smaller forest in Wales, Clocaenog Forest, 40 miles. And this doesn’t include the many woodlands varying in size scattered throughout the U.K.
Aussies know a bit about wildfires. A fleet of aircraft are not going to stop a raging wildfire. You are dreaming.
One thing that California did that has not helped is that it planted huge numbers of Ausie gum trees. They are like giant kerosene torches – full of oil. Yup, that was some major league stupid right there.
I want my taxes to help them rebuild every bit as much as i want my taxes to help rebuild after hurricanes, or foreign migrants.
For those interested, Dane Wigington has done excellent research published on his website geoengineeringwatch.com regarding weather modification and its effect on wildfires.
Climate change apostles never mention geoengineering as a source of much of the change in the world’s weather systems. Yes, the changes are man made – by a bunch of mad scientists who are never allowed public scrutiny of any kind.
Of particular interest to me is Wigington’s assertion that the spraying associated with chemtrails leaves a coating of highly inflammable dust on everything. This is but one factor in the increased number, intensity, and speed of a modern California wildfire.
Rob, I was born and grew up in the area where Paradise is located and I have spent time there on several occasions. Believe me when I tell you the hill people from NorCal use tv and smartphones just as much as you do. That fire spread so fast there was precious little time for a warning, nor could anyone have imagined a catastrophe so great that Paradise was left looking like a nuke had been dropped.
“highly inflammable dust”
Gayle, do you mean flammable? If it was inflammable it seems it would keep fires from spreading.
I am still having trouble getting my husband to believe in those things, even when they are criss-crossing the sky and blotting out the sun.
Yes I sure do. Sorry about that and thanks for pointing it out!
Firestorm Apocalypse in California
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1-EIuat538
It’s a war zone and Americans were murdered
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0apSNjcoSwY
https://aim4truth.org/
Although the first video is over an hour long, it is very worthwhile. It will give you more reasons to lose sleep at night no matter where you live and what natural disasters you are subject to.
Yep, I made the mistake of listing to it in bed.
State of the Nation
http://stateofthenation2012.com/
I’m not a big fan of long videos, I can’t even wait for the toaster to finish before I manually pop it up…with butter and butter knife in hand.
But if you watch the entirety of the top You-Tube it is a mind changer and it will butter the toast of your worst suspicions….and prove what your most deadly enemy, who will be eventually coming for you, is capable of…but most of you here already know that.
My take away from this whole shit flinging session is WHY DO WE ALLOW GOVERNMENT TO MAKE PAYOUTS TO PEOPLE WHO LIVE WHERE THE WHOLE FRIGGIN’ PLACE BLOWS AWAY OR BURNS DOWN YEAR AFTER YEAR?
If you don’t want to stare at corn fields and live in paradise you need to shoulder the risks on your own dime.
Indeed, part of California’s indifference to forest management seems to be its lust for federal funds when the fires break out….Recall that the Kenyan refused disaster funds to Iowa and Tennessee when they had mass flooding, but Republicans are happy to bail out blue States.
So I live where there are earthquakes and wildfires. Stucky lives where there are hurricanes and chemical plants. If you live in Iowa you have tornadoes. Fracking is causing earthquakes in the midwest. In Florida you have hurricanes and alligators (oh and an inordinate number of very old people.) In New Hampshire you have snowstorms. There is no place, save perhaps where Jim lives, that is actually safe and if I recall correctly, Jim had to deal with Sandy a few years back. The point is that there is no place to move to. You picks yer poison and you takes yer chances. All of the remedies that you are all bringing up are already a part of the building code. Houses have to be fireproof. Brush has to be cleared by the end of june. There are fire breaks all over the mountains in literally every place that a road can be constructed. The smallest fires are attacked immediately with four helicopters and a spotter plane and I have personally seen that response twice this year. The big fires, like the Woolsey canyon one, are fought from the air with 757 dumpers and sky cranes. Much of Malibu is painted red with phos chek. It is all done as you might hope, and yet the fires burn. The houses burn. The hurricanes blow. The houses are torn down. The tornadoes come sweeping across the planes and whole towns are destroyed. Hell, a tornado touched down in Huntingdon Valley a few years ago and that’s not much more than 20 miles from Jim’s house in the country.
You can’t move away from natural disasters. You can only choose the ones that you are comfortable dealing with.
and we got bears… yep lots of them!
Hummmmm Bears Gaaaahhhhhh.
Women. Don’t forget women. Sooner or later they’ll get your house.
With the superstitious liberal treehugger environmentalist religion mindset that allows fuel to pile up and dry resulting in preventable disasters year after year, your fire disasters are the least forgivable. Put some of that effort into an intelligent forest management and logging program. Get the prisoners out clearing brush and dead trees. Trees are a crop. Not some mystical creature that must be worshipped and protected at all costs. Cut them down and plant new ones. Build stuff, create employment.
One other thing stupid environmental religionists ignore is FACT. Fact is, a cleared acre produces MORE food for all your endangered freaking creatures than an acre of forest.
I think the point, Rob, is that the government shouldn’t be bailing out the victims of any natural disaster. Let people buy insurance if they want bailing out. Insurance companies will raise premiums for areas prone to disasters. We can’t consider FEMA an equivalent “insurance program” because no one’s taxes go up when they build in a dangerous area.
Of course, if California engaged in normal forest management and fire prevention, the inevitable wildfires in an extremely dry area wouldn’t be 1/10 as severe…Leftist government kills…
Papyrus, maybe you want to come over and mow down the brush that sprouts on the mountains? You really take a leave of absence from your mind whenever Trumpy tweets misinformation. Have you not understood the man is a liar?
Blaming the victim is not an answer. Simpllistic bullshit like – Oh, leftist government… – is simple-minded fluff. Fuck off, come back when you can’t stay so long.
I have friends in Laguna Beach on the hills and they have a goat service where a herd of goats are rotated through the area on a regular basis and eat all that crap. The problem IS left wing enviro religion fruitcakes. If you are one, too darn bad.
Hmm, we need to import a few muzzies to bring their goatherds and have them clear 10,000 acres of hills. You are a fucking maroon. Stupid too.
You guys are listening to Trump and finding excuses to agree with his asinine views. The brush is nature’s way of keeping the dirt in place. If you clear the land the way Trumpy suggests, the rains will try to level the hills in a damn hurry.
The best answer is to not build in the hills but this is California where caravans of eastern whites keep forming every year to come here. The typical response is to build outward into the hills.
I’ve read that a big part of why Paradise was so vulnerable is because there are only two highways leading in and out of that area. So people were more easily trapped than in the Malibu area.
Kinda like shooting ducks with a DEW?
Unlike hurricanes and tornados a fire is something we can fight and stop. We just need the equipment to do it. Helicopters and aerial tankers can do it if they get their in time and in enough numbers to do it. Anyone who watched those pilots ‘paint’ the hilltops with fire retardant and the helicopters zoom in to put out the hot spots had to be impressed with their skill and effectiveness.
Problem is high winds and smoke can ground them so they need better airplanes not relics from the 1960’s. A B-52 , e.g. can carry sixty 750 lbs bombs a thousand miles. A balloon carrying 100 gallons of water would weigh about 750 lbs. High winds would not disperse them as happens when an aerial tanker release liquid water at 180mph a few hundred feet above a fire. The balloons would plummet directly down into the fire and burst in the tree tops or upon contact with the underbrush. 60 of them hitting simultaneously over a few acres is going to cool down even a roaring fire front. 3 B-52’s in formation would stop it in its tracks so helicopters could go in for the kill.
Equipped with infrared sensors smoke would not obscure the fire front and night missions at somewhat higher altitude could continue and still be effective.
Seems to me some surplus B-52 airframes are still available and could be re-engined and made available as fire fighting platforms. If not build some large aerial platforms with bomb bay doors so large water balloons could be dropped directly on the fire front. Its cheaper than rebuilding a burned out city.
Wouldnt prevention be cheaper and easier? Cut back under growth? Look at the pics of the fire zone. Houses and brush are gone. Trees still standing. My guess is the brush caught fire first.
Prevention can only do so much and once a fire gets going when you have high winds and low humidity embers can travel up to a mile. Since there is no way to clear mile wide firebreaks in terrain of California rapid fire suppression capability has to be available otherwise a real holocaust is going to happen.
Can you imagine what would happen if a major firestorm erupted during rush hour in the Bay Area or Los Angeles? Motorists trapped in their cars as in Paradise only in the tens of thousands. No way to evacuate and once the fire gets into major residential, commercial and industrial neighborhoods it turns into Tokyo or Dresden circa 1945. It won’t just be wood burning either it will be toxic fumes blanketing these cities choking people to death.
Consider what happened in Paradise a warning of things to come if California doesn’t wake up.
You can spend your money on all the 100k an hour tankers you want. I will stick to letting insurance companies gouge for living in high danger fire zones or flood zones et.al prevention and mitigation are the best route. I lived in fire country for 29 years and now in hurricane country. I know the risks and I beg nothing when it happens. Because it will happen.
If anyone thinks having the government assess and implement fixes is smart then you deserve what happens in consequence.
Consider what happened in Paradise a warning of things to come if California doesn’t wake up.
You think we are asleep over here? It’s the folks who build on mountains and forests and beaches. Those peeps want to live different.
Perhaps some of you missed the link to the google map layer that showed where houses burned. You can, if you like, turn on the sat view and see where the houses are, and what is around them. The plan is, and has been for some time, save the lives, then save the structures. Forget about the brush. The fire suppression is aimed at first saving life. If they can’t get to somebody they will call in a drop to protect the house. Once everyone is out of the way, they can focus on putting out the houses. They called in a direct drop on one house which had just caught fire. Everything was sticky pink goo but the fire was out. I am pretty sure that the owner would prefer to wash off the goo than rebuild the house.
Above, I told you about my experience where the fire trucks showed up minutes before the flames came over the ridge heading straight for my neighborhood. If anything had caught they would be there to put it out. Once that front was secured they moved on to the next wave of fire. You can see this strategy in the map of burned houses. Plenty burned, but many did not. The lines were tested, some failed, most succeeded.
We all have a tendency to see the world around us and assume that it is the same for everyone else. Like Stucky showing a picture of what might be a perfectly serviceable fire break for his world, in my world that would do literally nothing. Zoom in and look at the houses that didn’t burn. Many have very large defense zones. Those zones did not exist in Paradise. Many of the houses didn’t have trees around them. Trees catch fire. In Paradise the homes and the businesses were nestled in the trees. In Malibu, we don’t have no trees.
If you think back to Nickle Thrower’s description of the palm trees exploding from last years fire in Ventura, you need to realize that every tree that burns is going to send sparks in the wind and those sparks will start fires in everything until it reaches the ocean. It will usually stop there.
For sure, Paradise was way worse than Woolsey. More people died for one thing. But if you compare the success of the firefighters who stopped the fires before the entire community of Malibu was burned to the ground to the way that the flames raced through the trees of Paradise destroying everything in their path, you have to give it to the SoCal Fire folks. All in all a damned nice job.
And by the way, my house is just seven miles away from the epicenter of the Northridge earthquake. We had lots of damage and we didn’t get a penny of anybodies money to help us rebuild. Not even those assholes at Farmers who have the nerve to advertise that they cover that. Well no they don’t and I am going to go out on limb here and suggest that none of the folks who lost there houses in Malibu are going to get a dime of your precious money. If they are lucky they may get some help from the insurance mafia. Beyond that they are on their own…as it should be.
In Malibu, we don’t have no trees
The difference between the Camp and Woolsey fires is that the Woolsey fire had the combined fire departments of a region of 15 million people and it was still a very close fought thing. Had the winds not died down on Saturday it would have been a different story. That one day lull allowed hundreds off additional engine companies to arrive and deploy and for Cal Fire to HIRE additional aviation assets and get them into the air. Without that lull Ventura County and parts of LA would look like Paradise.
100 gallons of water weighs 833.33 pouds. Dropped from a B-52 that is flying at least 200mph does not strike me as a paticularly sane way to fight a fire in the urban/wild interface where these fires are burning. Maybe in the middle of the forest but you had better be damn sure there is nobody on the ground where you arc light strike is going to land.
If people knew B-52s were going to conduct a water bomb carpet bombing over a fire they might heed the MANDATORY EVACUATION ORDER!
I figured a little spark got away from control and a bunch of marijuana caught on fire.
I’d like to have a concession on Doritos, Cokes and other junk food about now.
Smoke is a bitch.
Next up…mudslides.
Coming to a Malibu near you next week.
There are trailer parks in California??? I thought there were only mansions inhabited by rich, lazy, worthless Millenials. Who would have thunk it!!!
In Oz, houses have to be built to standards dependnt on how close they are to a fire source. The ones in Paradise need to be built to Flame Zone standards – able to withstand direct flame attack. That means the houses will be a couple hundred thousand dollars more expensive to build. But they are then unlikely to burn.
Dont build in a forest in a hot, dry area. That is the best solution.
By The Way…You have to admit that there are precious few sites that would allow the shit flinging that goes on here without some serious banning. Jim is, being the holder of the golden key, master and commander of this show. That he allows shit to flow both ways is not only commendable, but rare in this blogesphere.
Live long and proper.
The Rock Store? Is that just down from The Stick Outlet and Leaf Mart?
But seriously, thanks for the info and stay safe out there HR
The white harley with mini apes is mine.
Been there done that and have the burn scars to prove it. Before you wait for the TRIBE to come save your ass you might want to try a few things on your own. I do live were the forest fires grow. I bought a 2 room 312 sq. foot cabin in the woods in 1986. As I added to the cabin I used as much fire resistant materials as possible. I also have premade covers for all attic and other vents to prevent wind driven sparks from entering. I mow like mad in the summer, my place and on the neighbors when allowed. I moved to the woods in 86. In 88 I mitigated the trees with an 8′ ladder and a hand saw. I progressed with saws and equipment over the years. Last mitigation in 2012 was with a 60′ boom lift a gas chain saw and electric pole saw. The first fire here was 2012 on the west side of Colorado Springs. Well away from me but I still practiced packing a pick-up truck for evacuation and learned a few more lessons. 300 plus houses and 2 people up in smoke. Mutual aid came from as far as northern Denver. You have never seen a more impressive sight than 50+ pieces of fire equipment running down the interstate highway at high speed. June 13 2013 Daytime temps have been regularly exceeding 100 degrees. Total winter snow less than a foot. Usually I get 6 feet over the course of a winter. 1 rain storm in April and it usually rains plenty in the spring. The wind has been blowing steady for weeks out of the SSW with gusts to 35-40mph. I and all my neighbors were living in the middle of a boy scout campfire looking for a match. It started shortly after noon. I learned of the coming onslaught at 1. Walked to the road, looked west and shit a brick. Informed the neighbor I share a driveway with to pack and get out. Called the little old lady behind me, grandsons on the way to evac her. I loaded as much of the gun collection that will fit on a single pick-up and started taking lots of pictures. I sent the last e-mail to the family at 4 telling them that I was on the edge of the fire the smoke was very heavy 20 foot at times was as far as you could see and that I was preparing to pull out. I sat on the bridge near enough to my home that as the smoke backed and filled I would be able to see a lot of sweat equity get turned to air pollution. As I waited a guy with the forest service came buy, checked the place out and said with all the mitigation work done, my and the neighbors places looked pretty defenseable and he would see if he could find some firemen. tick tock, tick tock and the fire is crowning hard 200 yards NNW of my home. I am crying and asking GOD for a miracle, I got 2. A ch-47 Chinook out of Ft. Carson made a water drop on that crowning spot and the forest service guy came back with 6 trucks from at least 3 departments. The lead truck was from my fathers old outfit, he was a volunteer for many years and eventually became asschief. He retired from active duty and sat on the board for another 15 years. When he passed away they put a plaque with his name on it on one of the trucks and that truck was in the group of six. During the course of the night firemen and women came and went 3 times. I took a 3000 pound crawler tractor that had a blade added to it into that fire that night. You have not truly lived until you have siphoned off gasoline from your escape vehicle to fuel a tractor during the course of a forest fire. I ran that old Oliver till it quit, the shovel burned with the neighbors 20 cord firewood pile I left it leaned against. Pushing that bonfire out of her yard is what did ollie in. Tractor out of the fight, shovel gone what the hell I wear size 15eee boots and you can still stomp on stuff. Had to throw away a 1 day old pair of redwing boots after that night. The drive way neighbor lost a barn, the little old lady lost a house, I lost nothing but skin. The take away from all this? I learned that some of those old sayings are quite true. . . The Lord helps those that help themselves. Don’t wait for the “TRIBE” or any one else to help you. Be it fire, flood or any other natural disaster or the soon to come man made apocalypse that is approaching at warp speed, HELP YOURSELF mitigate for fire , have supplies to secure a home in case of bad weather, PREP, and then pray for the tribe to pitch in. FOOT in the Forest
Firebreaks need to be mowed grass a hundred yards wide when in a forest because I’ve seen balls of flame many times larger than a house fly 100 feet up in the air that far. Cities build houses way to close; they are effectively wood piles begging to burn and would without firemen. My Florida Coasts are playgrounds of the Yankee rich who always rebuild because their insurance is subsidized by the rest of us Floridians (thanks to the REIMF Owned Politicians). The nation got to see Democrat Vote Fraud in this election; 6 counties (mostly Broward, Palm Beach & Miami) cheat like hell and “out vote” 60 others to “elect” Democrats to state and national offices; hopefully Trump will put a stop to that here and elsewhere.
ATTACK ON CALIFORNIA: An Open Letter to President Trump
Posted on November 17, 2018 by State of the Nation
We retired to a 15 acre property in NW Tennessee in 2015. My nearest neighbor is two miles as the crow flies with acres of either corn, soybeans, cotton, winter wheat etc.
This area is heavily wooded with old growth forest. I have 1500’ of gravel driveway from my driveway to the county road in. This year so far we’ve received over 80” of rain so generally speaking the forest floor is well composted and generally damp.
I’ve spent the past three years “raising the canopy” on the trees that are “outside the tree line”, clearing brambles, underbrush, down trees.
My heavily wooded areas are managed with the assistance of a local select cut logging company, part of an old family lumber yard driven to logging because of demand.
I earn a little selling trees, they do the work, I get lumber at cost.
If you want your best chance to save your life, you have to do it yourself. As shown, government will just fuckitup
Every time