Orange County Fire

Down Up Dick

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North Orange County, CA is on fire! The sky is orange and there’s lots of ash blowing around. The spent embers crunch under foot. It’s showing on all our TV Channels. Lots of houses and cars have burned. Many evacuations.

Very, very bad day for lots of people. :eek:ld:
 
Most of the burning homes seem to be large, expensive ones. TV said the smoke and ash goes clear to Long Beach (City). The fire continues to spread.

I feel so sorry for those who have lost every thing they owned. :eek:ld:
 
Everyone was okay yesterday down here, but 10 died up in the Wine Country and injuries too. My wife and I really enjoyed tandem cycle touring up there. This fire was a really bad one, Lots of homes burned.

This morning the smell of smoke is really strong. We haven,t checked TV yet. :eek:ld:
 
Tv news this AM said that CA 'Wine Country' is devastated in that both Napa Valley and Sonoma areas count many vineyards among the areas burnt to the ground.

Good news on that is that the current crop was already harvested so no product was lost, and news reporter said that once the fires die down, the carbon and ash left behind will be useful to refresh the soil for the next harvest, so it's not all bad, but they also said MANY additional neighboring areas are going to be evacuated as the fire continues to spread...

I will pray for all of those affected by this tragedy.
 
Yeah, the fires this year have been really bad. The Orange fire was only a coupla miles away. We cancelled our morning walk yesterday and this morning because the smoke lingers (I have asthma.), and there’s ash and spent embers everywhere. They said people at Disneyland could smell the smoke.

Some of our friends were evacuated. The fire’s still burning but not nearby. :eek:ld:
 
Well, our air seems to have cleared up, so I finally got out of the house. We ran some errands and did a “mall crawl”.

The fire here is 65% controlled, but up in the Wine Country it’s growing worse. There’s lots of fatalities and property loss. It’s really a shame. It was really beautiful up there. We enjoyed riding our bikes there and visiting the different wineries. Many fires are burning in different places and even some of the vines have been burned,

All this has made my wife and I feel very sad, and we feel sorry for all those who have lost everything they owned.
 
Maybe I'm just completely ignorant, but I really am dumbfounded by the fact that these massive, and devastating wild fires happen ALL the time in California...

Is there such a severe drought that just a hot day causes the fires?

Or is this a man-made thing from a clandestine band of serial-arsonists?

I mean, I just dont get it why there have always been such fires in California going back as long as I can remember...

I would think that some time in the past 40 yrs or so, that SOMEBODY would have tried to find a method of prevention, or put in place some kind of water reserves or batch of flame-retardant materials in enough volume to put the fires out without causing further environmental harm from the chemicals used...

The cost of insurance against property damage from fire, in California, must be insanely high, if even offered at all.

Not to drum up conspiracy theories, but the 'tolerance' for letting this happen seems to be like an ongoing story arc from the X-Files tv series to me...
 
Booli, lots of California is just very dry. It rains here and even snows some places but not like other states. Some of the fires are caused by accident like flipping one’s cigarette out of a car window, and some are caused by fire nuts. The underbrush and weeds seem to grow very well here and then dry out and die—ideal tinder. Then the trees catch.

I don’t know what could be done because no one knows where the next one will be. Some places haven’t burned for decades. I guess it’s just somethin’ we have.

Arizona and Colorado and other western states have similar problems. You have hurricanes; we have fires. :eek:ld:
 
I suspect that these wildfires are naturally occuring events. Even if humans were not living in the landscape and trying to manage it, they would still happen regularly. The seeds of some types of vegetation do not germinate until they are stimulated by fire - then when they do start to grow, they have the benefit of all that nutritious ash.

If there are areas nearby that have not experienced a forest fire for several years - look out! They will contain lots of dead undergrowth, and many, many well grown trees. That sounds like a recipe for a big wildfire.

The pictures I've been seeing on the news are heart-breaking. I can't imagine what it must be like to be visited by such a terrifying event.
 
ukantor, I agree with what you’ve said. I’ve heard about the “good” fire too, but it just ain’t fair to us humans. :eek:ld:
 
I've never lived in CA, but I've fought one forest fire, damn near died. I heard that CA stopped doing prescribed burn because of smog. Baby, they got smog now, equivalent to a year's worth of car exhaust. They don't appear to be mowing the wild grasses, either, and removing the cuttings. I doubt if they plow the soil to create barriers, either. I did hear that one fire jumped a 6 lane highway. I also hear that they've lost one hundred million trees this year. That's a large forest, friends. We were just wondering what happened to all the animal wildlife...
 
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