Fires

Unfortunately, it's that season again here in Cali.

Hope and pray they can get it under control.

We rode through Santa Monica to Malibu/PCH on a ADV bike trip to Eureka a couple weeks back....the devastation there is still unbelievable.

My son goes to San Clemente high school and I had to go pick him up early as the school closed. We live right in the middle of the two that are going but thankfully are far enough away from both that neither are a threat. 

I hope all goes well for you guys. It's a year round thing now. And to make matters worse, the people that lose their homes have such a hard time rebuilding due to government regulations. A while back there were a few photos of Lahaina, and while north of Lahaina it looks like progress, south of Lahaina is still flat. Up in the Palisades, they are now around 1,000 that have started, but after the first year, only less than 15. But even at 1,000, that is only about 1 out of 6 that burned to the ground.

TM

Seems like there must be some type of forest management that could be done AHEAD of time to limit the spread of fires.

So not stoked. 

I’ve got friends under “mandatory evacuation”.

This sucks. 

When I was with the fire dept, these are the folks that cause us to pull man power away from fighting the fire to chasing idiots so they don't get hurt.

Almost impossible in the southern part of the state. 

Grew up in Santee. There is no forest to speak of. Just open, brushy hills 

It was a seasonal event. 

Winds, dry brush, a spark.

And when it gets windy, you literally have flaming tumbleweeds rolling down your street, or gathering up against your fences, or rolling up together in canyons.

More times than I can remember, fires coming down to the edges of our neighborhood.

I grew up in San Carlos and it seemed Cowles mtn burned every couple years and usually turned towards Santee. Sometimes almost made it to Mission Gorge rd. and threatened to go North. I lived in Lakeside from 2000-2017 and we had about 200 acres open space behind us that somehow escaped the 2 big fires that started to the East and grew fast heading West with winds. I had rain bird sprinklers on the hill about 30' up that sprayed 360 Degrees and could hit the roof of our house and the hillside above. That was always a concern that we might get hit next time and part of reason we moved.

That's even dumber than the Darwin Award winners who go up to wildlife in the national parks.  

Useless trivia. The giant Sequoias need periodic fires to propagate. They are fire resistant and the heat causes the seeds to drop.

Stay safe, Dood. 

My son inlaw daughter and grandson went through this a couple months ago. They were put on notice for a while that they may have to evacuate their place. Fortunately they got the fire under control. Smoke was bad in the era for several weeks. Growing up I don’t ever remember the term Fire Season but here we are.  It’s every year now. Prayers for those affected. 🙏

every year, all year I remember the warnings from CDF, etc. They also had to extend the seasonal leases on firefighting aircraft at huge extra budget costs $.

The stupidest thing I recall was some services weren't allowed to airdrop at night, but the military was properly equipped for night drops except they didn't have radios using same frequencies as public/private sector so they couldn't coordinate assets to help.

It didn't look good on day 1. I thought we were going to see neighborhoods go up again, but the firefighters and pilots did real good to only lose a few houses. I also didn't realize how close Cappo is to San Clemente now! Crazy to see what's happened since I left OC 14 years ago.