I see on Major Major Major Major’s introductory thread (welcome to Samwise and our new front pager!) that a number of people are concerned about the Carr Fire and the cities in its path. It looks bad.
Looks like NPR will be updating its report, and the FYNYT has a report that will probably be updated, but they won’t tell us that it is. I don’t usually use “FYNYT,” but that is a practice that deserves it. Anyway, you should be able to get relatively recent news in both places. The State of California also has a fire page for it, with evacuations and other information listed. If you’ve got a good information source, please share in the comments.
I was evacuated from Los Alamos and then from White Rock during the Cerro Grande Fire in 2000. We had a few days notice, so I was as prepared as a person ever is for that sort of thing. The evacuation from a friend’s house in White Rock at 1 am to another friend’s in Santa Fe was a surprise, though. I was lucky – my house was unburnt, and my refrigerator wasn’t even ruined by the lack of power. It’s going to be worse for a lot of people in the Redding area. One person has been killed by the fire already.
All good wishes to the residents of Northern California.
More resources:
Inciweb (currently seems to be getting its information from the State of California fire page)
Shasta County Disaster Resources for info about shelters for people and animals, victim assistance, air quality updates and other information.
Ken
On par with the ads for local TV news. “Is a toxic cloud drifting over the city, and are you in any danger? Tune in to your AccuNews Team tonight at 5 to find out!”
Chyron HR
Gosh, is it “the President completely ignores an entire state literally being on fire” season already?
George
I was on standby to evacuate from my apartment in Poway, California, during the fires of October and November 2007. The rest of the town had been evacuated except for my little corner. My small pick up truck was loaded with what valuables I had.
Walking my dog around an empty town filled with smoke was the most surreal experience I can recall. Just a decade ago, those sorts of mass evacuations of fairly large towns were infrequent. Now they seem like an annual event.
Mary G
Climate change effects kicking in are scary as shit. The Arctic has had temperatures 40 degrees above normal for weeks. WaPo finally had an article on the record heats being the new normal. It is engaging to have Republicans in power with their fingers in their ears going “la, la, la, I can’t hear you” while cities burn. Dense Pence had a tweet yesterday about “Coal is back, baby” and I wanted to send him down a mine and leave him there.
Mary G
@Mary G: FYWP and AutoCorrect. I typed enraging, not engaging and no edit available. ???
WaterGirl
@Chyron HR: I have been wondering how purrto rico feels about billions of dollars going to farmers while they got some paper towels.
Alain the site fixer
Test to see if edit now works
Alain the site fixer
@Alain the site fixer: no joy. Le sigh
Another Scott
LA Times now:
[snark] You know it’s bad when TV news people have to leave rather than report live… [/snark]
:-(
Fingers crossed.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ivan X
My mom was just evacuated from from her mountain home (and my childhood summer home) in Idyllwild, CA, which is in the path of the Cranston Fire. Horrifying to know an arsonist, just arrested, appears responsible. Good wishes to all at risk.
laura
It’s so smokey in Sacramento that it looks like a really heavy fog bank-only its over 100° and oppressive.
The news is showing fire tornado and a news crew making tracks as the fire raced up to them.
laura
@laura: point of correction its currently in the 60°s but climbing to 80°s by noon and over 100° shortly thereafter.
I cant imagine how hot it is inside firefighting gear, generating buckets of sweat.
sacrablue
The smoke in my part of Sacramento county hasn’t dropped low enough to bother my eyes or my breathing yet. No tanker planes over head yet either. I’m going to get my walk in right now.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
Redding.com is also a good local source
Also KTLA although they are an LA station not a local station
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: Yes, I do know how to spell Puerto Rico. No edit available from the phone. :-(
trollhattan
Calling it the Carr Fire makes for weird radio coverage (Can’t they put that car out, already?).
Hard to describe how hot the north valley is in summer and harder to imagine confronting a wildfire there. 110 is predicted for Redding through the weekend, it was 113 yesterday. Fun.
Yubanet is a good source for aggregated regional fire information.
Это курам на смех
For current data, the go-to federal page for any active wildfire in the U.S. is Inciweb (Incident Information System), which will then direct you to more detailed official sources. CAL Fire has the goods on this one.
Amir Khalid
@Chyron HR:
He needed an encore for “the President ignores an American territory under water” season. Besides, California is all Democrats and brown people so fuckem.
trollhattan
@Это курам на смех:
For folks who don’t live in the west, because of the federal/state/private land matrix it’s not always obvious which agency has primary response responsibility for a given fire. For California, Inciweb and fire.ca.gov will have the details for every fire.
This Carr fire must too new and fast for them to have incident maps yet, at least I can’t find them. Here’s one for the Ferguson fire outside Yosemite.
Paul T
Inciweb is a must bookmark site for fire information…..
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6036/
Kelly
My cousin has been under Level 2 “be ready to leave at a moments notice” for a week now due to the Taylor Fire just west of Grant’s Pass, OR. Containment work has gone well but it’ll be a worry until the rains hit in the fall.
My father used build fire lines with a dozer for a week or two each summer back in the 60’s and 70’s. The fires were never near a town and a couple fires in the 50,000+ acre category was a big year. I wonder what he’d think of the last few years.
West of the Rockies
I’m about 90 miles south of Redding (where I used to teach college). Skies here are gray-orange. I’m glad they caught the moron who was setting fires. Maybe they can being back a public square pillory for this fool.
Tom DeVries
The Ferguson fire, outside Yosemite, was stopped yesterday by firefighters about 200 feet from my back door. We’re evacuated of course, so I am indebted to strangers who came to my home and saved it. This is the place I raised my children, where much of my life happened, my family’s home, cared for by people whom I don’t know and who don’t know me. It is a very sweet feeling.
opiejeanne
Every spring I start checking the fire reports to see if our cabin in Blue Jay will be in danger again. So far nothing in recent history has come near but the Old Fire in 2003 that destroyed more than 1000 homes and killed several people is the only one that got close. Parts of Lake Arrowhead and Crestline looked like the surface of the moon and one area lost so many large trees that it will never recover its forest. Too dry these days. At most it will be a dusty area of scrubby growth.
HumboldtBlue
@Tom DeVries:
That’s good news, damn good news.
Two confirmed fatalities on the Carr Fire.
opiejeanne
@Another Scott: You reminded me that one of Los Angeles’s local news guys almost died in the Old Fire in 2003. Chuck Henry. He was where he was supposed to be when the fire changed course and was where it was not supposed to be. Rim of the World, IIRC. He and his camera man couldn’t get their truck started and the firemen they had been filming grabbed them and put them in their own vehicle. The fire roared over them, rocking the bus, but everyone survived. He was later criticized by people who weren’t there and defended by the fire fighters who had saved him and the cameraman.
HumboldtBlue
It’s not much, but several Humboldt Strike teams are on the way as well.
InternetDragons
Shasta County Disaster Resources website is being quickly updated, and has info about shelters for people and animals, victim assistance, air quality updates, etc:
http://211norcal.org/shasta/disaster-response/resources/
This Twitter thread includes Northern Californians who are willing to take people or animals in:
https://twitter.com/goldengateblond/status/1022728509913849857
J R in WV
I trained as a Navy firefighter in about 1971 or ’72. Very different type of fire fighting, but you do meet flames up close and personal, in your face wearing protective gear.
Back then they had a concrete bunker mock up of an engine room, with the bilge below a catwalk filled with diesel, which they lit with a spray of avgas. After it was burning good and hot you were allowed to start assembling hoses and nozzles and donning rebreather outfits and coats.
I have helped put down a small slow moving brush fire here in the neighborhood which was started by an idjit pulling a burning fuze flare behind his dirtbike along the ridge top. We started in the late afternoon, 6 of us in pairs with garden tools, and when we put the last bit of fire out between the black woods and overcast sky, it was pitch dark at 11 pm Sunday night.
We sat catching our breath, and then saw a twinkle of light… it was a couple of neighbors with flashlights and a 12-pack… I don’t know which was more welcome, both I guess. The fluids and light got us down off the ridge.
I can’t imagine trying to fight a western wildfire, they are roaring monsters. So far eastern forest fires are mostly subdued compared… but then I think of the fire than burned Gatlinburg, TN a couple of years ago. I guess climate change could bring us fires in the eastern forests just like these fires we’re seeing out west today.
Scary.
I saw where 22 bulldozers were working teh Carr fire, and not making much progress. Unimaginable!
Best of luck everyone!! Stay Frosty!
satby
@Tom DeVries: Good to hear that! I’m a bit worried about occasional commentor Constance, who lives somewhat northeast of Sacramento. Hoping Constance and the other CA and Oregon jackals stay safe during this terrible fire season!
pluky
@West of the Rockies: Back when pillories were a thing, much worse punishments were in store for someone caught doing this kind of shyte. Let’s just say, afterword there was no worry whatsoever of a repeat offense.
J R in WV
After personally fighting a minor brush fire for 6 or 8 hours into the dark, that was set by a pinhead firebug dragging a flare behind his dirt bike, we (pacifists all) were actually pretty willing to call open season of pinhead firebugs.
This 14-y-o (at the time, now probably more like 50ish) went on to burn empty houses in the neighborhood as well. No physical evidence, no proof, but neighbors in farm country can see where a kid has been playing with fire.
This person on CA has set a fire that has already killed a firefighter and a bulldozer operator, so that’s homicide in anyone’s book. Way more serious than he expected I imagine. Life in a CA prison? Something to think about, if he knew how to do that.
ETA:
Off topic edit test for Linux Ubuntu 14.04 and Firefox 61.0.1…. seems OK.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
The CalFire incident reports show what and how many resources are being used in each fire. Remember that a lot of the terrain around places like Redding are extremely steep hills, that a bulldozer can not easily if at all work. So they have to set clearings and ridges as firebreaks to hopefully stop the spread. With high temps and winds those firebreaks often just get overrun in seconds. I was just in Santa Rosa for 2 weeks and while my friends house and housing area was basically surrounded by fire, I could see no really visible signs on the south side of town. I didn’t drive up to the north side to see what that looked like but I’d bet it wasn’t the same as the south side, that’s where most of the structure fires were.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
I kind of wonder if he actually did expect and desire that kind of effect. He’s setting wildfires in the heat of summer/fire season, he’s a fire bug so he’s probably seen the effects of fire many times prior, I’m not giving him credit for not expecting bad things. I’d bet he wanted that, I suspect that being a fire bug is a power trip, look what I did, what power I have sort of thing. And like your example, probably just didn’t expect to be caught, because he’s gotten away with it before.
HumboldtBlue
@J R in WV:
The two deaths in the Carr Fire will not result in criminal charges, that blaze was started by accident, a disabled vehicle sparked dry brush.
Impacts on the coast are poor air quality and the loss of all our Cal Fire crews, local volunteers and municipal departments are now stretched to the limit.
Seanly
I work with our Redding office a lot. The lead engineer was late to a conference call yesterday as he’d gone home at lunch to check on his house. Apparently, he was near the South end & said the fire was heading North. He said he was going to sleep with one eye open. All of the Redding guys on the call said the sky looks very strange & eerie.
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: The firebug in CA set the one near Idyllwild. The Carr fire was caused by a faulty vehicle, not set. That’s where the two deaths were, I think.
Either way, Mr Firebug should not see the light of day ever again. People do die. The Old Fire I mentioned above killed several people, mostly older men who had heart attacks because of the stress. It was set by an idiot who when finally caught admitted he was trying to kill some people he was mad at at the bottom of the mountains. It blew right past their house and up the mountain and burned for something like two weeks, changing course several times with the shifting winds.
opiejeanne
@Seanly: I can’t even imagine this. We drive through Redding several times every year, sometimes staying there. It’s just unbelievable.
Many years ago, probably mid-seventies, we were stopped on I-5 southbound while a brush fire raced across the flat areas just north of Mt Shasta, somewhere around Weed I think. We watched the fire roar through the grass and trees on the west, hardly catching the trees on fire at all, and then jumping the freeway and continuing to the east. It was amazing to see.
CapnMubbers
@J R in WV: As Humboldt Blue said, the Carr fire (NorCal) started with a car malfunction. The arsonist started the Cranston wildfire and others in SoCal.
CapnMubbers
opiejeanne posted as I awaited moderation
HumboldtBlue
For those interested, Cal Fire will hold a press conference at 4 p.m. I will try and find a direct link, they haven’t sent me one yet.
HumboldtBlue
Redding Fire has identified their fatal as Fire Inspector Jeremy Stoke.
Still awaiting confirmation on identity of dozer operator.
HumboldtBlue
Based on previous experience, Cal Fire’s you tube page should host the press conference.
HumboldtBlue
You can donate to the victims of the Car Fire at this go fund me
Mike G
Meanwhile there is an epidemic of forest fires in Sweden, of all places.
Tehanu
I lived in Redding and Shasta Lake City for two years, 6th & 7th grade, a long time ago, and they’re still among my favorite places in the world — in fact, I hope to have my ashes scattered someday up there, in some spot where both Mt. Shasta and Mt. Lassen are in view. This makes me so sad.
opiejeanne
I’m starting to think we didn’t move far enough north.