California Fires

[TrvlBug]

Watching the local news and they are pre-empting the program following for news of the north bay fires. They are showing the Coffey neighborhood in Santa Rosa and it's incredible. This area is not a fire zone area and it truly looks like a bomb was dropped. Street after street after street is nothing but rubble. It's utter devastation.

Weather conditions are getting worse.

 

[Another Reader]

The death toll is up to 21 and the authorities are starting to match the missing to properties that have burned. They will reportedly begin excavating rubble today.

 

[Another Reader]

Shelters and rescues are shifting animals out of Sonoma and Napa Counties to make room for the expected influx from the fire areas. A friend transported from Marin to San Francisco and here is a video of a rescue that pulled from Petaluma Animal Services, south of Santa Rosa (scroll down and click on the video).

https://www.facebook.com/pali.bouch...IHbQ2VLvMsUZEBqCA-GsvSFLp2bSKcNdX-WlkBtWlY-Y8

 

[Sunset]

The death toll is up to 21 and the authorities are starting to match the missing to properties that have burned. They will reportedly begin excavating rubble today.

That's a good idea, but of course some would have gotten out, but might not have made the drive out of the area safely either.

 

[Brat]

Looking at the ARCgis website it also looks like there are also hot spots in the vicinity of Martinez, Richmand and something contained near Hercules... there are large refineries and chemical plants around there. CalFire needs help fast!!

 

[Another Reader]

That's a good idea, but of course some would have gotten out, but might not have made the drive out of the area safely either.

Cell service is spotty and a number of towers are down. Communication is difficult and some of the small towns are isolated. My understanding is that the focus is on the destroyed areas of Santa Rosa and some towns where the fire has moved through but have road access.

The fires continue to grow and the winds have picked up. One of the fires is moving south through Green Valley towards Fairfield. Lots of suburban subdivisions there.

 

[Brat]

...
The fires continue to grow and the winds have picked up. One of the fires is moving south through Green Valley towards Fairfield. Lots of suburban subdivisions there.

Fairchild AFB is just to the east of Fairfield.

 

[Travelfreek]

Fairchild AFB is just to the east of Fairfield.

Travis AFB is in Fairfield and, yes, the winds shifted to North winds now driving fires toward I-80 from Napa/Sonoma area and have have caused more damage today. So hard to comprehend! I'm in the Sacramento area to the east so it's on our local news.
I heard there were 50 helicopter rescues of people from rooftops.

Also many old folks were evacuated from nursing homes in that area to other locations. Many folks had no notice to leave their homes. The shifting winds are making it very difficult to contain.

 

[gayl]

Looking at the ARCgis website it also looks like there are also hot spots in the vicinity of Martinez, Richmand and something contained near Hercules... there are large refineries and chemical plants around there. CalFire needs help fast!!

Contra Costa County (Martinez, Richmond, Hercules) are not affected other than supplying support personnel (2 of our Clayton CalFire trucks -- we're cattle country) and poor air quality. I would know if they were as we have a top-notch cell phone alert system which would go countywide on something like this. The Amber Alerts and Lookouts always do. I live on the North Face of Mount Diablo which is part of Contra Costa County, in a little town of Clayton. In fact when the other side of the mountain burned between us and Livermore we were all told to shelter-in-place then. But that was two years ago. The smoke here is so bad it's like sitting down wind from a campfire. But I understand it's like that all over Northern California. I just keep hoping that my sister and her son are fine. But their cell service is down again as are 73 of the cell towers

 

[EastWest Gal]

Also nothing in any search about it. I grew up in that area. I have family in Santa Rosa. Three evacuated to another's house. All ready to evacuate and keeping things wet. Wetting down rooftops int the Oakland Hills fire of 1991 saved many houses. Hard to do when there are diablo winds.

 

[gayl]

Mandatory evacuations for the entire city of Calistoga

Unfortunately that's where three of the evacuation centers are. So now they have to evacuate all of those people from northern Santa Rosa. They're running out of places to send people up there

 

[Another Reader]

In the South Bay, it's so smoky that I can barely see the hills to the east and I can't see the mountains to the west. The smoke makes it look more like sunset than mid-afternoon. Closed all the windows, but it's still hard to breathe.

The areas of Fairfield under evacuation and pre-evacuation alert are in the northwest part, northwest of I-80.

 

[Teacher Terry]

We live 3 1/2 hours away and the smoke is awful. WE are also taking some of their animals.

 

[Persn]

The entire town of Calistoga is being ordered evacuated. I was hoping the worst was over but that may have been too optimistic.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

Contra Costa County (Martinez, Richmond, Hercules) are not affected other than supplying support personnel (2 of our Clayton CalFire trucks -- we're cattle country) and poor air quality. I would know if they were as we have a top-notch cell phone alert system which would go countywide on something like this.

There is a statewide fire map here - nothing showing in Hercules, Martinez or Richmond or any part of the East Bay:

CAL FIRE - California Statewide Fire Map

 

[Another Reader]

Parts of Napa now in pre-evacuation. Confirmed deaths now 23.

 

[Lsbcal]

Please folks, get your facts right or say nothing.

We were evacuated from Bennett Valley yesterday around 5pm. It is not gone and only parts of BV were evacuated.

There are some facts and a map at srcity.org ... see emergency info there.

 

[Mdlerth]

Help me understand

DW and I were visiting Portland in September when the fire broke out just to the east. (Ironically, one of our sons is a firefighter there.) The ash fell like snow, and the sky was so smoggy it might as well have been Los Angeles.

If feels like every year these enormous fires erupt up and down the west coast. Whatever kind of scientific expert studies these events it's not me, so please forgive my ignorance in asking: Why?

• Is this a natural phenomenon that's been affecting CA/OR/WA for millenia? Or did it begin only recently?
• Did temperature/rainfall patterns change? Or maybe they always change, it's just that they go in cycles that last for a long time and we're in a hundred-year warm/dry spell?
• Is it somehow related to the large influx of people over the past two centuries? (I'm not finding fault with anyone who lives there - people have to live somewhere - but might adding an extra 40 million folks drinking water and washing laundry consume moisture that otherwise would have kept the trees and bushes wetter and less prone to ignition?)
• Is it exacerbated by our attempts to control it? For example, would a forest naturally burn fairly gently once every 50 years, but each time humans extinguish the fire all the unburned fuel remains so the next fire is much more intense?
• Do we only notice it now because there are lots of people out there with cameras and blogs and we're bombarded with news all the time? Maybe they had just as many fires 5 generations ago but we didn't have TV so if we didn't live there we wouldn't have known?

Behind every natural disaster is some combination of thermodynamics and chemistry and statistics that somebody, somewhere, has studied. I wonder if one of those scholars has the explanation for this one.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

If feels like every year these enormous fires erupt up and down the west coast. Whatever kind of scientific expert studies these events it's not me, so please forgive my ignorance in asking: Why?

The main theory currently is that 75 mile an hour winds that night with no rain downed power lines and blew transformers, years of drought left dead trees around leaving long burning fuel, and a wet winter left a lot of tinder since the grass and bushes grew high and then dried out since it doesn't rain much here in the summer and it was an unusually hot, dry summer. PG&E, the local energy utility, has a history of poor pipeline and tree trimming maintenance and have been found at fault for other past disasters. If it is found out they diverted funds yet again away from their maintenance programs there will be huge repercussions for them this time.

Story and PG&Es statement here:
PG&E power lines linked to Wine Country fires

There have been bigger fires in California in terms of acreage, but this is different because these are basically forest fires that moved into urban areas. Climate change may be responsible for the extreme weather conditions that led to this point.

 

[Chris7]

Winds are bad again this morning. We are just east of Vacaville. Winds are supposed to come back down this afternoon, but in the meantime, the nightmare continues trying to fight these fires.

Schools in Vacaville and Fairfield are closed for the rest of the week. We have team member families that live in Green Valley. Some left yesterday.

I just don't understand those that want to stay when the mandatory evacuation order comes. Your life is more precious then any belongings.

cd :O)

 

[Brat]

The CAL FIRE website isn't as granular as http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/v...3d8&extent=-122.9142,38.3433,-122.736,38.4602

I see little red dots both around the hatched areas and clusters around Martinez. All of this is dynamic.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

The CAL FIRE website isn't as granular as http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=11487c248b3a407cb6fd446ce8ef73d8&extent=-122.9142%2C38.3433%2C-122.736%2C38.4602

I see little red dots both around the hatched areas and clusters around Martinez. All of this is dynamic.

I don't know what the dots on that map mean, but you can check the news by entering Martinez and fire in Google News. There are no major fires reported in any of those areas or the entire East Bay.

 

[Brat]

Thank heavens.

 

[RobbieB]

It was smokey here all last night, but gone now. Windows back open -

 

[Another Reader]

Wind direction shifted. We are still getting quite a bit of smoke, but not as bad as yesterday. Smells like wood smoke but it's brighter and I can see the outline of the mountains.

Fortunately the fire areas did not get the high winds predicted for last night.

Death toll now 24.