Pray for Redding Ca.

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Just catching up on this Dave.
Scary stuff - I hope your Mum is safe, and that the fires can be brought under control.
We had a couple of large moorland fires in my region, which burned for over a week (although about 25 miles away as the crow flies), but not as severe as those in your area.
 
Its a shame that years ago so many good old fire bombers were grounded and basically put out of business. Even retiring the old martin mars, rather than retirement they should be building more of them. Another small item since I do have small scale forest fire fighting experience sitting in the seat of a bulldozer, if they were used correctly many of the fires could be stopped very quickly, I've done it.
 
Thanks again to all my friends here for the well wishes, thoughts and prayers.

As it stands, the Carr Fire has burned to the edge of the town of Lewiston (to the west of Redding) and stalled due to prevailing weather conditions.
As the fire's advance lost momentum, the Global 747 tanker (and other air assets) made attacks on the line, allowing them to prevent the fire from getting into Lewiston. Weaverville, where my Mom lives, is just to the west of Lewiston, over a ridge, about 3-4 miles as the crow flies.
She's doing fine, but has had to deal with the power being interrupted constantly.

Here in Redding, we're starting to pick up the pieces, still choking smoke, many areas still under mandatory evacuation and we've lost nearly 1,000 homes, 2 fire fighters, one Utility lineman and 5 civilians.
 
.... quite the butcher's bill. Sorry to hear about the losses ... it's war .... but before the arrival of the white wave the land would have regularly undergone such events and, with no counter-measures except for the weather and physical environment. I don't know what the answer to these catastrophic events is, Dave - we are defending property - property, the counter to the natural cycle.
The media conflates such events into $$$$ [property] and turns out weather-catastrophe porn.
How is the cat adapting ?
 
She's doing fine! Once she stared down the wave of ashes (which took several hours) she felt satisfied that everything was under control and she could go back to her usual routine
As for her two boys, Squeeky and Teddy...they never had the slightest interest in the assault of the non "bird, bug or leaves" happening outside - I suppose they had other priorities!

In regards to the forest situation, we are reaping the whirlwind of the environmental restrictions imposed in the late 70's, which not only killed our timber industry, but completely restricted forest management. It is interesting to note that the private (but still heavily regulated) forests that have been operating under a strict selective harvest regimen have not burned. Meanwhile, millions of acres of National, State and private forest is overcrowded by a high density of young trees, infested with non-native borer beetles and packed wall-to-wall with underbrush and fuels.
The pre-70's environmental movement fires used to quickly "flash off" through the forest, consuming only light fuels and in many cases, opening the Conifer's cones as well as providing essential nutrients to the forest floor but now, we get slow-moving, high temp fires that sterilize the forest floor, jumping from the sick and young tress into the mature crown, killing everything in it's past and you can see this condition developing as soon as ten years (late 80's) after the legal battles that shut down our forests.
Add to that, the explosive population increase in the State, pushing into wildlands that have historically burned nearly every years amd the burden on the natural water tables which cannot fully recover any more even in exceptionally wet years.

It's a big mess and I honestly don't see any real solutions being proposed to fix it
 
A very good friend of mine who lives in Redding, his mother lost her home, and everything really, and his brother lost his home and car collection (mostly Datsun Z cars).

They were both staying with said friend and he came very close to evacuation as well.
 
Thanks Geo and yes, I've heard quite a few "interesting" stats from the media, like for example, we've had the "first ever recorded fire tornado" (which is complete BS), this fire season has been warmer than any other recorded (again, complete BS), this fire (the Carr) is the: 3rd/5th/7th worst fire in California history (not even close - far worse have happened in the past) and my personal favorite: "the Carr fire is a direct reault of Global Warming"...which it's not.

Matter of fact, the king of all fires in California history, was the Great Santiago Canyon fire from the 1800's which burned close to 400,000 acres, annhilated several towns, killed scores of people and over a thousand head of livestock.
 
And I just saw a post by my friend on FB that's in keeping with the forestry issue I mentioned earlier.

He's on the other side of the valley, near Mt. Lassen. He took two photos from the road he's on, which is a border between private forest and Federal forest land.

This is the private land:


And this is Federal land:


And like I said, he was standing in the middle of the road when he took these two photos, one photo to the right and one photo to the left - quite the contrast, isn't it?
 
special ed said:
I read several months ago that the state of Georgia has more wooded acreage than Cal but no forest fires because of forest management and debris cleanup. The article cited specs from U.S. forest service.
Click to expand...
That's great to hear!

I remember the woods when I was a kid, they were magnificent places to be.
 
I can't believe it's still growing in size.
A friend of mine, Jeff has an aunt in the fire zone who has lost her house. Says he has been going up there for almost 50 years.
Hope something good happens soon. Take care mate!
 

Right on, instead of being so fast to fly helicopters around lighting back fires, they should have been bulldozing all that under brush in the forests and
using that new found bio fuel from the cleaning process. But naaaa they would rather attempt prescribed burns to do the job and waste the fuel and then of course like most all prescribed burns have it go out of control and create a nice huge forest fire. To me it is very strange to see acres and acres of dry grass burning in various areas all that grass would be easy to keep cleared out. Also like in the old days of fire breaks there needs to be huge wide areas cleared and kept cleared of all vegetation to help stop fire progression, in times of a fire those areas need to be manned with crews and dozers to make an attack on the fires.
 
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