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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Nov 11, 2018 - 02:21am PT
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hey there say, winemaker... oh my...
my best wishes for someone to come and help her cousin...
:(
thankful, cousin is alive, and, cat, ... but, yes-- will have a hard road
to get into a new life, and home... :(
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Nov 11, 2018 - 05:31am PT
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From the LA Times FB page "An owl sits on the beach in Malibu as the Woolsey Fire approaches"
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mynameismud
climber
backseat
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Nov 11, 2018 - 07:38am PT
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If anyone by chance hears of or by chance has a connection to a guy name Dave Wood ask him to drop me line. His place is in the fire zone. One of my better climbing partners back in the day. I have been trying to get a hold of him.
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bearbnz
Trad climber
East Side, California
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Nov 11, 2018 - 08:19am PT
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A satellite image from yesterday.
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10b4me
Social climber
Lida Junction
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Nov 11, 2018 - 08:27am PT
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He plays it into a cynical screw California/water rights thing. Most of the country isn't "his people" and California is firmly in that category for the great divider.
Sorry for your cousin's losses of home and lives. And for all in that area. It's damn smoke bowl over here, at least we aren't in the inferno. drumpf is a f*#king moron.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 11, 2018 - 08:50am PT
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Major mainstream media TV networks covering these fires are morons.
Blah blah blah Blah blah blah Blah blah blah
repeating the same sh!t over and over standing in front of somebody's house burning down.
"Look behind me the house is burning down."
NO SH!T dumb azzz !!!!
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Nov 11, 2018 - 09:16am PT
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^^^ Or the questions they ask people who just lost their homes.
“How do you feel now?”
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John M
climber
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Nov 11, 2018 - 02:54pm PT
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Not sure what horseshit that you are talking about. When I said it was overgrown I was talking about the town itself. I also said that the exit roads were overgrown 4 years ago. I was comparing that area to what they do in other counties up that way. I have no idea what the surrounding forest was like and made no comment about it. So hopefully you weren't speaking about my posts.
I'm sorry about the loses of your friends. Its hard for me to imagine just how bad that is.
I do appreciate your posts, especially about the condition of the surrounding forest and hope that you continue to keep us updated.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Nov 11, 2018 - 03:11pm PT
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hey there, say, andy.. timid...
thank you so very kindly...
so many of us, calif-folks, that grew up here and have gone
through droughts, and seen our loved ones goes through them,
we fear for them, as to fires, and wonder what the forests are like...
we need folks like you all to share these things, as, we wish we understood more...
so very sad, all this...
thank you so much, once again...
go glad you and nita, are okay, through all this...
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TLP
climber
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Nov 11, 2018 - 03:19pm PT
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Thanks a lot, Timid, for the information and photos. What a concept: actual facts from direct observation of the site in question not some other place 100 miles away and completely different habitat.
I won't try to drag you into the mud of the hypothetical discussions, but it would seem that either there are things we can do about fuel management and/or building materials in semi-densely developed areas like most of Paradise (and Coffey Park though that's a different setting...150 miles away), or we're going to have annual or at least frequent losses of thousands of homes to these fires. It's neither possible to prevent nor to immediately control wildland fires under the conditions that existed on Nov. 9, and they're going to quickly arrive at these types of communities.
IMHO, we need to be paying some attention to how to reduce how many houses are consumed once that happens; which has zero to do with forest or any other kind of habitat management. It's an urban/suburban setting.
Thanks again and hoping for the best for everyone affected.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Nov 11, 2018 - 06:47pm PT
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most of the California counties codes request a 100ft perimeter of clearcut around each home. If everyone did that; no homes would burn, period!
Since this is a Climber’s site;; did anyone else see those crags and boulders showing up in the Woolsley fire🤗
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John M
climber
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Nov 11, 2018 - 07:00pm PT
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If everyone did that; no homes would burn, period!
not true in 50+ mph winds. Coals blow a lot further then 100 feet. The main thing it might do is slow the fire down so that it is safer to escape. What 100 clearance does is give you more safety in lower speed winds.
Look at satellite of the feather river hospital. It nearly burned down and is surrounded by parking lots.
Edit: homes in southern california burned down with that clearance. I watched video of it.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Nov 11, 2018 - 07:03pm PT
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I have a college degree in armchair quarterbacking...If we could train meth heads to eat dried brush these fires wouldn't be happening....
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john hansen
climber
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Nov 11, 2018 - 08:08pm PT
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Even goats would probably not eat manzanita or grease wood in a chaparral
environment. And if they could they would just hasten desertification.
California has always been the land of earthquakes and fires and floods for thousands of years. And sections of the landscape burned every 10 or 20 years.
But now there are people in the way and the land is drying out because of climate change. That area is in extreme drought.
The Santa Ana winds show up every year , some where, some place, along that coast in the fall,,
The Camp fire in Paradise, and the Tubb's fire in Santa Rosa, and the Oakland Hills fire were all wind driven urban interface events.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Nov 11, 2018 - 08:15pm PT
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how bout llamas...?
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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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Nov 11, 2018 - 08:40pm PT
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Friends of mine have a cabin in Goose Prairie, WA near Chinook Pass. Wind storms over the past ten years have knocked down so many trees it's impossible to even get to some areas. The amount of fallen branches/trees on the ground is amazing. So how are we supposed to clear this 'brush' out? This is an impossible task and when a fire comes through, which it will, it will have plenty of fuel to burn hot and fast. The idea that we can manage this stuff is bullsh#t.
Trees are dying up here from beetle infestation adding to the fuel available. We are seeing less and less rain here in the rainy Pacific Northwest. This is an issue of climate change, not some bullshit political agenda. Forest management? Like we can affect the climate. Head in sand anti-science doesn't cut it.
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TLP
climber
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Nov 11, 2018 - 09:10pm PT
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Blueblocr's post exemplifies the widespread misconception about the behavior of these fires in urbanized/suburbanized situations such as the town of Paradise. Outside the town, the beginning of the fire was in vegetation, might have been grassland, or shrubland, or oak woodland, or something. But basically a vegetation fire.
However, once the fire got to the town, it probably became an urban fire. Houses were set alight by embers, then created enough heat to ignite other nearby houses, and so on. That's exactly what happened in Coffey Park (Santa Rosa), where the vast majority of the houses that were consumed were in just the one densely built neighborhood. Practically no vegetation at all, and of that, some green vegetation remained after the fire (check the photos and aerials). Same thing in the Waldo Fire in Colorado a couple years back. Likewise in Paradise. If you go on news sites and click through the photos, you'll see unburned vegetation in the background of photos of actively burning houses. The immediately adjacent trees were burned...by the flaming houses, not the other way around. This is a pattern that is repeated over and over and over again in these settings. Yet we continue only to hear about defensible space blah blah blah. This is wrong: these are NOT wildland vegetation fires that happen to burn a few houses as they consume all the vegetation, but rather urban fires spreading by ember ignitions and proximity of fully engulfed houses.
It's too early to have good aerials for Paradise, but it's very likely that it's the same situation as at least four other fires that consumed a few hundred or few thousand houses, of which I have examined before and after aerial photos. It's time to recognize that lack of vegetation clearance is not the main issue, it's that there's a highly flammable house less than 100 feet away - as little as 20 feet away (less for Coffey Park). I don't have a simple solution, but we'll never come up with one until we recognize what the problem actually is. For sure, some, perhaps even a lot, of the area burned within the limits of Paradise was just all vegetation, but it's unwise not to focus on the urban aspect of the fire behavior.
As pointed out correctly by others, when it's really windy, even 100 ft or 200 ft may not be enough: these fires spot ahead by 1000 ft or more. If houses/decks/sheds/whatever are susceptible to ignition by embers, there's no feasible amount of defensible space that's enough.
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murcy
Gym climber
sanfrancisco
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Nov 11, 2018 - 09:44pm PT
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Andy and Nita, very sorry. What horrible losses.
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TLP
climber
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Nov 11, 2018 - 11:21pm PT
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I agree DMT, but multiple people already posted saying if only X or Y then it wouldn't have been so bad. Not so. I'll be interested to see what you have to contribute when the time is right.
I had friends and colleagues whose whole worlds burned up in Santa Rosa, and even though that's a year ago, it's still awfully fresh and painful. This new abnormal is a scary reality for California.
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