Thursday, November 15, 2018

Fires Everywhere

This is Thursday 8:00 AM looking north from the Dawghaus.  Briggs Fire. 

This was the panorama looking south from the Camarillo airport at the Woolsey Fire as it approached Malibu.

45 comments:

Firemane said...

I thought Dodd-Frank was supposed to put an end to FIRE.

Lawyerliz said...

Happy you are back. Hub says yay!!

LBD said...

Frank Dodd put an end to their careers.

Hope your running shoes still fit and ready to go! Don't hang around it's only stuff.

Rob Dawg said...

Liz, are you and hub ready for the Falcon 9 launch in a few hours?

Rob Dawg said...

The fire is out! The last aerial drop was an hour ago. There might be a few ground crews over the ridge but no smoke whatsoever. So many resources so close that they jumped on this one within minutes.

Firemane said...

Hear, Hear! A toast to Dawg not becoming toast!

Rob Dawg said...

Coming from "Firemane" that's reassuring.

What was that redheaded english/irish/scottish king's name you had for a bit?

Lawyerliz said...

Yep. Window just opened, but thick cloud cover.

Firemane said...

LOL!

Don't recall ever posing as or using the alias of any king.

However, I do refer to my little townhouse as "The Sand Castle".

My only actual earned title is: "Fleet Captain" Sandy Hemenway

"Fleet Captain" is the honorific bestowed on each Starfleet Battles National Champion. Mine was earned in 1988.

(never got 'nuff schoolin' ta be called doc)

Lawyerliz said...

We saw the Queen movie.
We liked it.

Rob Dawg said...

I always had trouble matching the band members to their music. It was always like meeting NPR radio personalities in person. Not what you expected.

Rob Dawg said...

So pretty!

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/spacex-launches-qatari-communications-satellite/

Rob Dawg said...

Wow. They are asking for DNA samples as what they are finding in Paradise, CA isn't recognizable. 56 confirmed, 300 missing/unaccounted. 2/3rds over 65 years old. Not looking good.

Lawyerliz said...

The launch was behind heavy clouds, we didn't even heard anything, we were on the road.
I don't think they should rebuild that town.

Lawyerliz said...

So sad. Bad way to go.

Rob Dawg said...

Death toll 63. Missing 631. Until now 2/3rds were 65+ so this is going to get worse and possibly much worse.

Listened to the eulogies for the Sheriff's Sargent killed in the bar shooting. Very emotional. This guy would let people off a traffic ticket if they could tell him good joke. He was a senior little league umpire. That kind of guy.

Lawyerliz said...

Horrible. Poor family.

LBD said...

Good Morning!

PG&E looks like the first pockets to hit for the fire with the biggest death toll. My guess is their liability will get reduced based on the lack of maintaining the forest. Seems Brown cut funds for clearing and fire breaks contributing to the extreme blaze. When will people wake up and face the realities of the conditions they live in. Sad, very sad. :(

We have grass fires here which can explode and travel very fast with dry windy conditions and ranchers collaborate on cleaning ceder trees and ditches, Idiot former BIL with fire works started a grass fire and everyone against my suggestion pushed for him to continue as I went to get a water hose. It light up and I was there none to soon as it went up like raw gasoline. I can only imagine the fire storm in Kali.

Lawyerliz said...

The glades burn from time to time, but haven't for a while, as it's been quite wet. They burn in relatively small areas.
NASA does controlled, heavily monitored burns, have only got a medium amount out of control, once that I remember. People were quite indignant.

Lawyerliz said...

Still waiting for Hamilton tickets, haven't sold out yet.

Firemane said...

No doubt there are plenty of idiots out there when it comes to fire.

However, there are also plenty of instances of scientific backing of what "seemed" like good ideas (at the time) that didn't turn out as planned.

I remember reading years ago (before climate change was a big issue), that policy was implemented to immediately put out every small brush fire the instant they appeared. And in those areas where the policy was tried - there was an immediate decrease in "major" fires. So, the policy was dubbed a success and spread (like wildfire) to other sectors.

But, after about 5 years, when major fires started, they were much, much, much worse than they had been previously. Seems that by not allowing the naturally occurring "small" fires to clear out the underbrush regularly, the policy was perfect for creating much, much worse major wildfires.

This is one of the reasons that current generally accepted policy (:in many places) is to "contain" naturally occurring (lightning strike) fires -- but be more aggressive with manmade started fires. But, finding the right balance is as much art as science - and of course, is routinely influenced (in bad ways) by funding battles.

Now -- take all of the guesses, hunches, assumptions and varying policies for fire prevention and then throw climate change into the equation, creating on-the-ground conditions in this area and that which nobody has any experience with and you've pretty much got a recipe that is going to be rife with error and bad results.

Science can be good - when making plans based on starting conditions that are within a consistent historic boundary range. When conditions move beyond previously encountered boundaries, then it all becomes guesswork.

Doesn't help when you have cases where "We haven't seen these conditions in a hundred years -- and 100 years ago, there was no human settlement footprint to speak of in the area.

LBD said...

Missing are the death of the logging industry and I assume the lack of maintaing fire breaks had lot to do with the intensity and spread of these kind of fires. People living in the forest assume the responsibility of fire problems. Maybe fire protection rooms should be mandated like tornado shelters are here in new build public housing.

Lawyerliz said...

They could build a combo fall out/ fire protection shelter. With a mudslide and earthquake annex, and asteroid deflector.

Lawyerliz said...

Oops, I forgot aliens. They would Choose Kali over even Washington oD.C.

LBD said...

Aliens would go unnoticed in Kali. =:o

Firemane said...

Aliens from other worlds are only welcome in the US if they have exceptional resumes or outstanding financial portfolios.

Lawyerliz said...

Got tickets to Hamilton in Orlando. Not together either. Waited in queue nearly 6 hours! But still yay. We not have to listen to the lyrics a few times, so we can learn the words

Lawyerliz said...

We do have to listen.

Firemane said...

I used to have a roommate who was editor at the NC State campus newspaper in the '70s. He said the word "NOW" was forbidden to be used by any reporter in any story. The reason?

In nearly every case it was used, it was superfluous (the sentence conveyed the same meaning if the word was not there at all). But, more important the typo "not" changed the meaning of most sentences to exactly the opposite of what was intended.

"The Senator will now be resigning from office."
"The Senator will not be resigning from office."

So, the word "Now" was considered a journalistic pipe bomb. If you continued using it, eventually, it was going to blow up in your face. Even if the writer and editor didn't make a mistake, the typesetter always could.




Firemane said...

Oh ... and congrats on landing the tickets.

Rob Dawg said...

Yeah tickets! Like I said, we loved Phantom on Broadway last month. After picking up the tickets we literally stumbled upon Rupert Jee's Hello Deli (as Seen on Letterman) and had some very nice sandwiches.

Rob Dawg said...

These days "now" is a fatal flaw in every earth science article or blog. I tune out. I will make an exception if an asteroid is discovered on an intercept course. Until then "now" is absolutely unsupportable in earth sciences.

Rob Dawg said...

In the West, logging didn't die; it was murdered. California spent misspent two generations using the Whole Earth Catalog as canon law. It is true early on logging was sometimes the bad guy. The industry was trip mining instead of harvesting. The pendulum just swung to far too long to the other extreme.

Firemane said...

Dawg,

That's true in so many arenas.

Our current laughably ineffectual, tragically dangerous mental health care system is a result of attempting to remedy the horrific abuses of previous generations laughably ineffectual, tragically dangerous mental health system.

Of course, attempting to judge which horror is worse (random unsubstantiated or supported accusation can land a person in a mental health ward, where Doctor's have free reign to simply slice away pieces of their brains if they wish) or (because they don't have insurance, clearly dangerous individuals are routinely released from treatment where it's easy and legal for them to buy automatic weapons) ... well ... who knows?


Lawyerliz said...

Trip/strip, to/too.

Lawyerliz said...

We are just now (hehehe) at the beginning. We can do a lot about some things, and a little bit about other things. We need to keep on.

Firemane said...

True Liz.

I laughed at you "now". But to paraphrase my grandmother ... "If you keep using that word, I'm gonna jerk a now into you."

Commentary: I never actually learned what "jerking a knot" into someone actually entailed - but it certainly sounded like something unpleasant enough that it should be avoided.

Final comment on the general topic of bad science / policy decisions, one of my stock pet sayings that I toss out regularly:

No scientific field has ever believed itself to be at the "leeches and bloodletting" stage of understanding.

Lawyerliz said...

Actually yh both of those things can actually work, for too much iron, and cleaning wounds.

EngineerJim said...

Supposedly we are now going into a mini ice age.
Maybe some global warming will now be welcomed.

Lawyerliz said...

We are in an ice age right now. It fluctuates.

Lawyerliz said...

Maybe the 2 will cancel each other out. Nah. We are not so lucky.😫

Rob Dawg said...

Our friend Cinco X recently linked this gem:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive

Personally i think we are in a 40+ year general cooling trend barely strong enough to identify outside the normal variations. much like the last 40-50 years of barely warming outside the normal variations.

When I was a little kid I remember snow up to my waist. Now it rarely gets up to my knees. (Think about it)

Rob Dawg said...

New post with an example of potential market topping.

Lawyerliz said...

You grew!!!!

Unknown said...

Firemane, I'd really appreciate it if you would bother to learn what the federal ( And your State's) Firearms laws are before commenting on them.
It would also be nice if you could learn to distinguish between self loading weapons and automatic weapons.
Mentally ill people persons are barred from legally possessing firearms by federal law.
And Automatic weapons are only legally available to non law enforcement persons in some states, and they are quite expensive due to the tax stamp...they are only affordable to the well to do or wealthy.