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Location: closely held secret | Originally posted by Paul Blanchard:
Head of FEMA was interviewed by CNN this morning and asked point-blank: are you going to let this be another Katrina? That's ironic. FEMA didn't cause Katrina.
Katrina was a 'disaster' because of the incompetent people running the state and the city. Much like SoCal, because of caving to the environmentalists concerning forest management. We have exactly the same problem here, and have had our own disastrous fires though nowhere near the scale of destruction and suffering this one is causing. My heart really goes out to the people down there.
Be safe, you all. |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Pave it all!! |
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Location: Blue Ridge Mountains | That's ironic. FEMA didn't cause Katrina.
Katrina was a 'disaster' because of the incompetent people running the state and the city. Wabbit you are exactly right: I was there for some rebuilding and I heard and saw it first hand! But you'll never hear CNN tell it that way! Always the Federal Governmnet's fault...bull! People need to stop being Media Lemmings and research the real truth! But it's so much easier to be told something as fact than to research ig for one's self and actually learn the truth/facts.
My heart goes out to the folks in SoCal...as a volunteer fireman, we are looking into going to help if we are needed. We will probably send three from out department. We're waiting for official clearance: we got packed and ready last night! |
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Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | To paraphrase Ike: Beware the real estate developers complex. The bad news is that if either Bloomberg, Hillary or Guilani become president it is a certainty that the whole country will become safe for real estate developers. God save us. |
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Location: SoCal | Well Mike, get your ass out here! When you're done, stay an extra couple of days and we'll sit around and pick.
Nah. You need to stay home and take care of your wife. |
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Location: closely held secret | Let's not let this degenerate into another locked thread because we wandered into politics.
The point I was trying to make was that these uncontrollable fires, as well as those in all the other western states, happen because of bad forest management practices.
Allowing developers to build communities in the middle of that tinder box is the second mistake. I have nothing against nice home developments, but for crying out loud, don't let them build in the middle of a box of kindling unless it's cleaned out first! |
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Location: Blue Ridge Mountains | Well Mike, get your ass out here! When you're done, stay an extra couple of days and we'll sit around and pick.
Nah. You need to stay home and take care of your wife.
Paul,
If we get the invite from the fire officials or state, we're coming...waiting for clearance or else we just may be turned around...and we want to go where we're most needed (although I know: we're needed all over)...I'm on my way over to the Chief's house now and then to the station...If for some reason I can't go; we have others that will.
Violetta is doing much better: she is hoping to return to work Saturday night. Her neck is still stiff and the eye won't clear up for another three or four weeks, but considering, she is doing fantastic. We settled with State Farm yesterday afternoon and bought another vehicle for her as well: she didn't want another SUV: so she got a Cadillac Deville: used but in great shape and a whole lot less than what a new one goes for. I have dubbed it the "Luxury Tank"! At least the kids will be safe: both of their car seats were ruined in the wreck: as would they have been if they had been in it. Whew! State Farm replaced both seats with new ones.
As for pickin…I’ll certainly try if schedules permit… |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | I find it interesting that the reasons these fires have gotten so bad in recent years, is really because of how well firefighting technology has "progressed." Now of course discounting "started" fires, fires do happen. All of the underbrush is burnt, makes good base for new growth. Without any fires, the underbrush just dies and dries up. This is NOT good and realized a little late too.
Not sure what can be done. I'm sure brush clearing before building is probably a good start, but as much as has burned, there is plenty that hasn't.
I also don't think people that haven't been to Southern Cali really appreciate the geography. Using Google Earth might help with that.
Essentially you've got this strip of land along the coast where everyone lives. It's not that wide in the scheme of things, only about 30 miles. Then for the next.... oh.. 200 miles is a combo of desert and mountains into highlands desert that much to my dismay I found has little "sand" but lots of brush and shrubs. That area DWARFS the populated area.
So let me oversimplify going west to east. You gots the Pacific Ocean. Then a roughly 100 mile long strip of populated coastline that's only about 30 miles wide bordering to the east a 200 mile wide strip of some of the best kindling fuel on the planet, followed even further east by more high plains desert.
I guess the good news is that when Cali finally falls off into the Ocean, the Anzo-Borrego Desert Park will make a nice beach. |
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Location: SoCal | The other thing to keep in mind regarding California is that the coastal area is considered "coastal desert". Even it is dry. |
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Location: Boise, Idaho | Fires are pretty much a part of life out West. They've been debating the forest and range management practices for years. We had over a million acres burn this summer. The difference is the fires didn't move nearly as fast as they have been in California and there were few structures and fewer people. If people want to live by the forest or out in the sagebrush, fires have to be anticipated. We could pave it like Jeff suggests and then nobody would want to live there. It would be too much like New York or LA. OK, I know that doesn't make sense. |
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Location: SoCal | Listening to the news today, I heard a number of politicians talking about the fires being a result of global warming.
Hell, we've had fires out here for as long as I can remember. |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | This global warming thing is a lot of BS. Walking the dog this morning I had to actually wear a long sleeve shirt. Brrrrr. |
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Location: big island | Originally posted by moody, p.i.:
Listening to the news today, I heard a number of politicians talking about the fires being a result of global warming.
Hell, we've had fires out here for as long as I can remember. and our president is linking the fires to terrorists...
this is a repeat of katrina in the sense that all the funds that were designed to help prevent and battle these two disasters were detoured for his war. |
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Location: Blue Ridge Mountains | Another example of Big Brother n action: we were informed today at the Department that in order to go and help out in the disaster in California we would need special testing by the Fed. Govt. (which there is no time for). We are sending money and offering equipment. but would have liked to go and help as well. |
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Location: Boise, Idaho | We've got some firefighters going down tonight. They should be there for 2 weeks. It finally quit burning here. We had the same amount of land burn in 2 months that Southern Cal has burned in 3 days, so I hope things get under control down there soon. |
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Location: SoCal | Mark,
My son-in-law was in Idaho with his Marine Battalion working the fires in 2000. |
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Location: Boise, Idaho | We had crews from California fighting our fires this summer. Seems your fire season starts about when ours ends. How convenient. |
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Location: SoCal | problem with the Cedar file in 2003, all at once...was almost impossible to get our crews back, other crews needed in support of their own areas.
Now talking about arson, previous intel that a bad guy at GitMo had talked about using arson...just seems strange how they all hit within about six hours and prior to the main Santa Ana. |
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Location: Tennessee | The other thing to remeber about the topography is that we have coastal hills in this "coastal desert" area ... hills that people in most other parts of the country call mountains (3000ft +). There are deep canyons, full of brush that have a lot of natural oils, that cut through the 30 mile area that Miles spoke about. Very tough places to fight fires.
I grew up in SoCal, and fought on the fire lines for four days during the great Malibu fire of 1977. In those days, if you were able bodied and willing, they would outfit you with gear and put you on a team. So that's what we did. I fought a total of four fires over about six years, not to mention the small blazes that erupted in the canyons where I lived.
Devastating fires are a way of life in California ... always have been, always will be. There is little one can do, even with the technology we have, to out smart Mother Nature. Other than shooting arsonists on sight, that is.
The most devastating fire I was around was actually in Northern California in 1991. A small fire started on a hillside in Oakland on a dry, hot windy Sunday afternoon ... within 18 hours it consumed over 3500 homes and killed scores of people.
A lot of the new systems (ie reverse 911) have worked well this time around in SoCal. The fact that there are only a handful of deaths from the fire is amazing. |
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Location: SoCal | What Bobbo said..... |
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Moody P.I --fire close to you?
