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Land clearing helps a lot but when the wind is blowing sustained 35-45 mph in a wildfire your fucked.

It's so sad to watch the death toll climb, this could happen most anywhere in CA when we go 4-5 months without rain.

To those who haven't done so yet please donate some $$ to Red Cross or whoever you chose, those folks need our help.

 
Land clearing helps a lot but when the wind is blowing sustained 35-45 mph in a wildfire your fucked.
That's true then add to that very low humidity. However, rapid response needs to happen and you don't accomplish that when you are mobilizing fire fighting resources for an event taking place in the west using personnel in the east. It can take 24 or more hours to respond in this fashion. Used to be if you got a fire start on a national forest in place personnel would immediately get on it with all hands on the fire line including office folks. The USFS would close offices on the effected forest and hit it with all able bodied personnel. This isn't how it's done now. I have first hand knowledge.

Besides wind you need an ignition source for a fire to start. About the only natural source of ignition I know of is lightning all other sources are human in origin hence 82% of wild land fires are human caused and 0% are caused by wind. In the case of a fire start caused by PGE equipment it could be as pathetic as some fool out in the pucker brush shooting at transmission line insulators. I wouldn't jump to conclusions concerning the power company. Face it when it comes to fools in CA or anywhere for that matter how high can you count?

 
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On a positive note....RAIN is in the forecast starting Wednesday.
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Got this on my work email. Out of the fire, and into the frying pan......

Hope it doesn't work out this way, those people have been through enough without this to top the crap Sunday that has been our fire season....

Flash Flood Watch
Weather Updated: Nov 19 12:41PM
Issued by the National Weather Service
For Northern Sacramento Valley, California
FLASH FLOOD WATCH FROM 12PM PST WED UNTIL 12PM PST FRI ...FLASH FLOOD WATCH IN EFFECT FROM WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH FRIDAY MORNING FOR THE CAMP, CARR, DELTA, HIRZ, AND THE MENDOCINO COMPLEX WILDFIRE BURN AREAS... THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN SACRAMENTO HAS ISSUED A * FLASH FLOOD WATCH FOR THE CAMP FIRE WILDFIRE IN BUTTE COUNTY, THE CARR, DELTA AND HIRZ WILDFIRES IN SHASTA COUNTY AND THE MENDOCINO COMPLEX IN LAKE COUNTY BURN AREAS IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. * FROM WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH FRIDAY MORNING * FLASH FLOODS AND DEBRIS FLOWS WILL BE A PARTICULAR THREAT IN THE WILDFIRE BURN AREAS MENTIONED ABOVE. HEAVY RAINFALL AT TIMES IS POSSIBLE OVER THE BURN AREAS. * THOSE TRAVELING OR IN THE AREAS ALONG INTERSTATE 5 AND HIGHWAY 299 IN THE WESTERN PORTION OF SHASTA COUNTY, AND ALONG PORTIONS OF HIGHWAY 70 AND THE SKYWAY IN BUTTE COUNTY SHOULD BE ALERT FOR POSSIBLE ROAD PROBLEMS DUE TO FLOODING, ROCK, AND DEBRIS FLOWS. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... THIS COULD QUICKLY BECOME A DANGEROUS SITUATION. RESIDENTS, EMERGENCY RESPONDERS, PERSONS TRAVELING WITHIN THE BURN AREA SHOULD REMAIN ALERT AND TAKE ACTION SHOULD HEAVY RAIN DEVELOP. A FLASH FLOOD WATCH FOR A BURN AREA MEANS THAT CONDITIONS MAY DEVELOP THAT LEAD TO FLASH FLOODS, ROCKSLIDES, AND/OR DEBRIS FLOWS. && INTERACT WITH US VIA SOCIAL MEDIA WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/NWS.SACRAMENTO WWW.TWITTER.COM/NWSSACRAMENTO

 
Got this on my work email. Out of the fire, and into the frying pan......
Hope it doesn't work out this way, those people have been through enough without this to top the crap Sunday that has been our fire season....

Flash Flood Watch

Weather Updated: Nov 19 12:41PM

Issued by the National Weather Service

For Northern Sacramento Valley, California

FLASH FLOOD WATCH FROM 12PM PST WED UNTIL 12PM PST FRI ...FLASH FLOOD WATCH IN EFFECT FROM WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH FRIDAY MORNING FOR THE CAMP, CARR, DELTA, HIRZ, AND THE MENDOCINO COMPLEX WILDFIRE BURN AREAS... THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN SACRAMENTO HAS ISSUED A * FLASH FLOOD WATCH FOR THE CAMP FIRE WILDFIRE IN BUTTE COUNTY, THE CARR, DELTA AND HIRZ WILDFIRES IN SHASTA COUNTY AND THE MENDOCINO COMPLEX IN LAKE COUNTY BURN AREAS IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. * FROM WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH FRIDAY MORNING * FLASH FLOODS AND DEBRIS FLOWS WILL BE A PARTICULAR THREAT IN THE WILDFIRE BURN AREAS MENTIONED ABOVE. HEAVY RAINFALL AT TIMES IS POSSIBLE OVER THE BURN AREAS. * THOSE TRAVELING OR IN THE AREAS ALONG INTERSTATE 5 AND HIGHWAY 299 IN THE WESTERN PORTION OF SHASTA COUNTY, AND ALONG PORTIONS OF HIGHWAY 70 AND THE SKYWAY IN BUTTE COUNTY SHOULD BE ALERT FOR POSSIBLE ROAD PROBLEMS DUE TO FLOODING, ROCK, AND DEBRIS FLOWS. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... THIS COULD QUICKLY BECOME A DANGEROUS SITUATION. RESIDENTS, EMERGENCY RESPONDERS, PERSONS TRAVELING WITHIN THE BURN AREA SHOULD REMAIN ALERT AND TAKE ACTION SHOULD HEAVY RAIN DEVELOP. A FLASH FLOOD WATCH FOR A BURN AREA MEANS THAT CONDITIONS MAY DEVELOP THAT LEAD TO FLASH FLOODS, ROCKSLIDES, AND/OR DEBRIS FLOWS. && INTERACT WITH US VIA SOCIAL MEDIA WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/NWS.SACRAMENTO WWW.TWITTER.COM/NWSSACRAMENTO
That 'n the only paved road in 'n out of Magalia, (32 to Butte Meadows, and down Skyway) is gonna get snow.

Guess God hates Butt County! (Prolly for killing Ishi?)

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From the Enterprise- Record in Chico, Ca. Perhaps this sheds some light on why this tragedy was so inevitable.

“Nobody would have ever thought this could happen,” President Donald Trump said while touring the Camp Fire devastation Saturday.

That’s not true. The Camp Fire was inevitable. It is the event that so many dreaded for so long.

People prepared. Fire prevention officials planned. They drilled. They worked with homeowners. They invented fire-safe councils and Fire on the Ridge and sent fire prevention officials to schools via a program called Fire Pals. They raised money to keep fire lookouts open when the state said it wouldn’t.

Eventually, geography and topography proved to be the trap everyone thought it was.

Paradise and Magalia sit on top of a pine-studded ridge between several canyons. There are very few subdivisions. Instead, homes are built one at a time and tucked into trees. Fly over the area in a helicopter and those trees stand like matchsticks surrounding well-hidden homes.

Most cities have grass. Paradise’s predominant ground covering is pine needles — extremely flammable pine needles.

It wasn’t a well-planned city, but rather a village that grew into a city. The grid pattern of Paradise’s roads is haphazard. There are few arterials. Instead, there are two-lane roads without much connectivity. When people tried to evacuate in a flash, those bottlenecks were pronounced. Several people died in their cars, trapped by gridlock.

The large roads leading out of town aren’t large. Only Skyway is two lanes in both directions. Two summers ago, the town decided to turn Skyway from four lanes to two in the downtown area to “calm” traffic and make things more quaint. That couldn’t have helped the escape.

Clark, Pentz and Neal are rural roads, one lane in each direction. The town, in a lesson from the 2008 Humboldt Fire, learned that all lanes on Skyway, Clark and Pentz should be used for downhill traffic out of town in an evacuation. That’s what was done Nov. 8. It had to help, and still there was unprecedented loss of life.

The area around Paradise and Magalia burns every summer. Sometimes homes are destroyed. Usually, aggressive firefighting saves a disaster — and the town would again breathe a collective sigh of relief over escaping the big one.

People always warned it was coming. That’s why Congressman Wally Herger, Supervisor Kim Yamaguchi and others fought so hard early this century for the upper ridge escape route through Butte Meadows. The government purse strings were only loosened when enough politicians became convinced, after years of hammering by our local representatives that this was a disaster waiting to happen. The upper ridge escape route helped last week. Again, it wasn’t enough.

There were overt signs. Larry Mitchell, a retired former Paradise Post and Enterprise-Record reporter, recalls when a new fire chief was hired in the 1980s with strong credentials. He was immediately concerned about the fire danger. He took Mitchell on a tour of places that he said were especially dangerous. “He showed me places along the canyon edges where there were ravines full of brush and talked about how the fire could rush up them, like a chimney,” Mitchell wrote to us this week.

The chief didn’t last long. Mitchell said he got the impression one reason the man left was that he didn’t want to be fire chief of a town that could explode in flames.

With hounding, some residents did an excellent job of creating what firefighters call “defensive space” around their homes. Others weren’t about to touch their pines. And they didn’t like anyone else doing it either. When PG&E went into Paradise earlier this year to cut trees that were near power lines, people complained. Pines were the very reason many people move to Paradise. They accepted the danger, despite warnings from so many people.

There are countless stories in our archives like this headline from 2003: “Firestorms not a matter of if, but when.” It’s not like our headline writer was prescient. That’s what everybody says up here, every year.

And it finally happened.

Now what? Paradise needs to decide how it will rebuild. The maze of streets doesn’t look so charming. The city’s forest doesn’t seem so quaint. The two-lane Skyway downtown looks like a trap.

Paradise will come back, but it can’t be what it once was. It shouldn’t be.

 
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There are hundreds of communities in the same predicament. Towns too numerous to count on the edge of wild lands, and they are all through California. Good post Doug.

 
Exactly, Doug. Well written article.

My Dad was a firefighter for 33 years, most of it as an engineer (drove the truck and operated the pumps distributing water). He was on some of the big wildland fires in southern Cal back in the day and it was a blessing to have his direction when we had 3 fire events in my adolescence that nearly took out the 2.25 acre orange grove I grew up on. I led horses out in the howling wind and blinding smoke once, and had garden hose firefighting experience on our property and a friend's.

But at the end of last October, I went to the defensible space adviser training seminar in Penn Valley. I went in with a healthy respect, but came out of that seminar scared smarter but mostly just scared at the too daunting reality. Like the article illustrates, we have built ourselves into this corner. Far too few people realize how much needs to be done, both to get our wild land encroaching living environs manageably safe, and to maintain that. Until they get a realistic idea about that, the perspective will be something like the ignorantly uttered: “Nobody would have ever thought this could happen.”

Fresh off 9 months of a LOT of work, my place is still not fireproof, though far better and easier to escape. I was also lucky to have a next door neighbor who was a big help, especially when we got to clearing the ingress and egress routes. But this is hella hard work, expensive to get done and time consuming. So, even if people come to understand the issues, stop bitching about taking down trees for safety reasons and begin to cooperate toward a solution, exactly where are we going to get the money and resources to accomplish it? The next thought might take us into "political" territory, so I'll stop.

Thank God the rain is supposed to commence almost any minute.

 
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From the Enterprise- Record in Chico, Ca. Perhaps this sheds some light on why this tragedy was so inevitable.
“Nobody would have ever thought this could happen,” President Donald Trump said while touring the Camp Fire devastation Saturday.

That’s not true. The Camp Fire was inevitable. It is the event that so many dreaded for so long.

People prepared. Fire prevention officials planned. They drilled. They worked with homeowners. They invented fire-safe councils and Fire on the Ridge and sent fire prevention officials to schools via a program called Fire Pals. They raised money to keep fire lookouts open when the state said it wouldn’t.

Eventually, geography and topography proved to be the trap everyone thought it was.

Paradise and Magalia sit on top of a pine-studded ridge between several canyons. There are very few subdivisions. Instead, homes are built one at a time and tucked into trees. Fly over the area in a helicopter and those trees stand like matchsticks surrounding well-hidden homes.

Most cities have grass. Paradise’s predominant ground covering is pine needles — extremely flammable pine needles.

It wasn’t a well-planned city, but rather a village that grew into a city. The grid pattern of Paradise’s roads is haphazard. There are few arterials. Instead, there are two-lane roads without much connectivity. When people tried to evacuate in a flash, those bottlenecks were pronounced. Several people died in their cars, trapped by gridlock.

The large roads leading out of town aren’t large. Only Skyway is two lanes in both directions. Two summers ago, the town decided to turn Skyway from four lanes to two in the downtown area to “calm” traffic and make things more quaint. That couldn’t have helped the escape.

Clark, Pentz and Neal are rural roads, one lane in each direction. The town, in a lesson from the 2008 Humboldt Fire, learned that all lanes on Skyway, Clark and Pentz should be used for downhill traffic out of town in an evacuation. That’s what was done Nov. 8. It had to help, and still there was unprecedented loss of life.

The area around Paradise and Magalia burns every summer. Sometimes homes are destroyed. Usually, aggressive firefighting saves a disaster — and the town would again breathe a collective sigh of relief over escaping the big one.

People always warned it was coming. That’s why Congressman Wally Herger, Supervisor Kim Yamaguchi and others fought so hard early this century for the upper ridge escape route through Butte Meadows. The government purse strings were only loosened when enough politicians became convinced, after years of hammering by our local representatives that this was a disaster waiting to happen. The upper ridge escape route helped last week. Again, it wasn’t enough.

There were overt signs. Larry Mitchell, a retired former Paradise Post and Enterprise-Record reporter, recalls when a new fire chief was hired in the 1980s with strong credentials. He was immediately concerned about the fire danger. He took Mitchell on a tour of places that he said were especially dangerous. “He showed me places along the canyon edges where there were ravines full of brush and talked about how the fire could rush up them, like a chimney,” Mitchell wrote to us this week.

The chief didn’t last long. Mitchell said he got the impression one reason the man left was that he didn’t want to be fire chief of a town that could explode in flames.

With hounding, some residents did an excellent job of creating what firefighters call “defensive space” around their homes. Others weren’t about to touch their pines. And they didn’t like anyone else doing it either. When PG&E went into Paradise earlier this year to cut trees that were near power lines, people complained. Pines were the very reason many people move to Paradise. They accepted the danger, despite warnings from so many people.

There are countless stories in our archives like this headline from 2003: “Firestorms not a matter of if, but when.” It’s not like our headline writer was prescient. That’s what everybody says up here, every year.

And it finally happened.

Now what? Paradise needs to decide how it will rebuild. The maze of streets doesn’t look so charming. The city’s forest doesn’t seem so quaint. The two-lane Skyway downtown looks like a trap.

Paradise will come back, but it can’t be what it once was. It shouldn’t be.

Excellent summary. It gives us an insightful warning of what can happen and what was known could happen!! well done.

 
Well, 7 days after the all day chipping job that finished off my 9 month defensible space project here, ~50 miles south of the Camp Fire, FIRE SEASON IS OVER !!!!! Yesterday we got a real soaker from the heavens and more is in the forecast.

But for those who have already lost their houses and possessions and are living in a Walmart parking lot, drenching rain on ash and denuded landscapes just adds another dimension to the tragedy. At the least, say a prayer today for those less fortunate brothers and sisters in humanity before you feast.

 
In our area we're starting to have some insurance companies require various forms if trimming back trees close to the structures as a condition of coverage.

 
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