Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire CA fire...sad pic

I live 160 miles south of Redding and the smoke built up heavily yesterday. The morning sky was metallic, a sickly grey. The sunset was smoky red, beautiful if not for it's cause. It got to 103 at my house, and I am only 15 miles from the delta. I feel really bad by those up there. God Bless out firemen.

How does that apply here?

OK, assuming he meant this...

Has anyone heard from Nifty yet?

Fire has grown to over 80K acres, heading south with the North winds last night. Small town of Igo under evacuation orders now. All this info is from the local Redding news station, and sometimes they're a bit behind. A half hour ago they had it at 48K acres.

Still only 5% contained according to the news. I was hoping for closer to 15-20% by now. If it keeps going like this it might make it to Cottonwood.

Geno

Thanks to 45_100, the effort to find Nifty-two fifty's phone number paid off. Mark talked with Milo a short while ago - he is OK and very busy transporting less-able folks who need help. He has been driving the van for more than 25 hours in the past two days. Seeking some rest now.

Milo lives east of I5 and, so far, the raging fire has been west of that interstate. He says that their essential are packed and they are ready to roll if the fire gets to their place.

That's a helluva man to get that much done at his age. The Campfire is full of great people.

I guess it could move into Redding proper with a little wind shift? Weather bad for the coming week?

Sad. I have a road trip planned out to big sur and back through Yosemite. Hope something is left to see. More importantly I hope everyone affected is ok. Can’t even fathom the loss and devastation. As bad as the pictures look I know it is likely much worse in person.

Winds have been coming from the WNW downslope for awhile now every evening. 103-110 for at least the next 7 days.

Text book worst conditions.

Weather will remain about the same. Hot and dry. Haven’t heard from anyone today but am familiar with where the fire is headed and it’s not good. If it keeps heading south then both Anderson and Cottonwood could be affected. West Redding is in real serious danger of burning up.

With conditions the way they were Calfire should have thrown everything they had at this fire when it was 50 acres. They did the typical minimums and it blew up.

Steelhead,

If not for the fire, the weather forecast would be considered "normal" for this time of year. Tonight's winds from the N/NW are not going to be helpful for keeping it out of populated areas. It's mostly wildlands with some small communities to the W/SW of the fire, but East is toward the I5 corridor and all the towns up and down it. If the wind switches back around, as predicted, on Sunday to coming out of the south, it might help drive the fire back over the burned area which is a big benefit to getting it contained.

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.5876&lon=-122.3925#.W1yRiML3nIU

Geno

Cousin got vehicles and most of his firearms out. They had 2-3 hours notice before mandatory evac. Home is across the street fom Falks lake. They have not heard of the house yet. On a dif map it is called Mary Lake.

Milo was a Marine....He's just doing what Marines do....once a Marine, always a Marine...

Springcove,

I certainly hope this is not the case. Having seen how fast these things can take off, it wouldn't surprise me if the resources they did send just got overwhelmed. One good gust and the fire is past the line and headed uphill fast. And as you know, there's a whole lot of dry material out where it started at this time of the year.

If it is shown that they were negligent in getting enough resources out there at the start, the leaders should be prosecuted.

Geno

Thumbs up there Allan, Glad they're safe.

Geno

They've had a rough year out there.

Geno from what I understand from people I know that’s exactly what happened. At 50 acres they said they had in contained. Then it went to 1500 acres then to 20,000. It would not be the first time that Calfire approached a fire this way.

Allan some people in Mary lake lost homes some did not. Haven’t heard from the people I know in that neighborhood.

Easy to see what it means, when you live here....

Courtesy of the bureaucratic tree huggers and liberals who run the Forest Service, and local state Fire Agencies...
These fires keep burning the same places year after year...

The bureaucrats won't allow logging companies to go in and log off, clear out the areas that burn....
so each year it has undergrowth, that left alone can get quit thick, among the deadfall from the last fire...
wet springs give the undergrowth plenty of water to flourish, until dry summer sun and high heat dry them out..

Then whether these fires start naturally, such as a lightning strike, or something man made, like this fire threatening Redding this time.....the underbrush is like a pile of kindling you'd start a campfire with... for miles..
This fire was started initially from sparks from a disabled vehicle. The fire could have been put out easily when it started, but as always minimal resources are sent to it... or the person in charge just lets it burn.

In a typical democRAT way.... the bigger a problem is each year, the more money agencies can get from Washington DC to throw at it thru higher budgets next year....so by managing fires into a bigger problem each year, than need be... the bureaucrats are creating job security each year... the public and their health be damned...

A divorced woman with 5 kids, she is 40' ish....that my son went thru the paramedic program with.. lives on the west side of Redding... her house and all of her belongings are GONE...she and her kids got out with her car, a toothbrush and a change of underwear and that is about it...she is a paramedic out with the fire agencies, as she was also a firefighter...she got the word that danger was imminent to her home, while she was out on duty, serving the community with her fire agency....



A report I heard on NPR ( no less) coming up thru Nevada last year....

Up until about 1980, Nevada had an average of 30,000 acres of land burned from wild fires annually...

After 1980, with changes in the Forest Services policies.... ( the hippies and tree huggers, liberals etc, who grew up in the 60s, and went into the Forest Circus after college, had been around long enough to finally be into management positions )...
Changes made during and after that period... The State of Nevada now manages to lose 300,000 to 600,000 acres burned each year.. and has for the last going on 40 years.....10 to 20 times as much, as previously before 1980....

That is an example of why the west is burning down every damned summer....

Trump needs to clean house with the Forest Service....and California state government is their own problem...
every election period, the Republicans in CA need to be showing videos of these fires.. and remind their residents of who is running these programs, and this is the result of their 'success' rates...

California centralized the firefighting strategy and resources responsibility - a state agency (CalFire) runs this show - and this is not the first "blow-up" that caught them off guard. Remember the horrific damage last year when the fire near Santa Rosa went wild on CalFire? So, Geno, do you think that employees in that Cal state agency would be prosecuted for any bad work?

I don't live there and cant criticize with specific local insight - it is a distant view. But, long experience and knowing the major difference between the value and effectiveness of local knowledge and effort by devoted local experts - as compared with what gets done by a bureaucratic state agency - looks like another waste. As a parallel - think about your local school board vs. government bureaucrats setting policy for you local schools.