Wildfires form massive California blaze

I've been following it - friends of friends have been affected, besides my usual despair about the matter of dealing with the fire ecology of California.

Thanks, osso.
Strange, I haven't heard another mention of it since that ABC item I posted (above) yesterday. I guess it must be under control, then?

They are getting there, but it's still bad.

California Fire

I grew up in that area. I am about an hour and a half away right now. We are actually used to it.

Thanks for the link, Joe.
Sounds pretty grim, still.

Did you know that California & SE Australia share the unfortunate distinction of being the most wildfire prone areas on earth? (In Oz we call them "bushfires".) A feature of every summer here, it seems. Grim stuff!

I've never gotten used to it Amigo, even as a city slicker following the news bulletins ... the lost homes, sometimes the death of firefighters (mostly volunteers, here) & the poor bloody wildlife!

This is such a familiar sight:

I feel kind of bad now that you put that way.

I didn't intend to make you feel bad, Amigo.

Ok

Anyone who comes to Califronia stays at my house for free.

All righteeee! (I'm packing right now! :wink: )

Now I have to clean the place.

That'll teach you to offer!




Just curious, Amigo. Are your firefighters mostly professionals or are many of them volunteers, like here? Fires being such common occurrence in your part of California. (As I recall, during last summer's bushfires in Victoria & New South Wales we had reinforcements from California flown in to help out. Big fires, that took ages to get under control.)

Both, Also they have a prison program were if you qualify you can go too "fire camp" were instead of being in prison you get to live at a camp in the woods. Many ex-cons talk about all the positive things they learned at firecamp and how people would come up to them and hug them and tell them "thank you so much for your help" and a life they had never knew existed int the ghettos of the city.

Fire camp. Hey, that's interesting, Amigo. I've never heard of a program like that before. That's great!

Ain't it, and it's hard work so it is still a punishment and out there you might experience some real soul searching and introspection.

p.s. bring a clean towel. ............. no kidding

No problem. Packing it now!








Er ... did I tell you that I'm a strict vegan? (Just so's you can get the right food in!)




(Kidding!
Stop panicking, Amigo!)

I'm just kidding too. But the offer is open. I am also a traveler and have had lots of people stay at my house with no hidden motives except to extend things that have been extended to me.

And fair enough, too!

So much of California is subject to fires.. but then the fire was here before we were. Human populations and defense of them change, to some extent, the manner of fires happening - fires tend to burn to the edge of the last fire edge, or so I've read. My impression is that fires have gotten much bigger than they were before we all got to California - with fire not burning to it's natural edge and then the area between that defense line and the next burn getting larger. There are all sorts of complications, pros and cons, about the best way to deal with the natural fire ecology and human habitation. Add to this that we have "firebugs", arsonists who start a fair number of the fires. And we have trees that aren't native (oh, say, eucalyptus) that can to be explosive in fire girdling people's homes. And we have quandaries about clearcutting and clearing out underbrush going on.

When I lived in west Los Angeles in the early sixties, one of the fires on the west side came within six blocks of my family's house. By now there is a lot of information available about how to best build your abode, how to plant around it in zones to reduce fire fuel, what areas to water (water being a scarce substance), and what plants are resistant, or tend to be.
In many ways we live too heavily on the land when we should be living lighter and smarter. (soapbox)

My son had a college friend with a hobby of volunteering for fire fighting. He hoped to help in every state in the West before he turned thirty.