Leroy N. Soetoro
2018-11-10 19:17:27 UTC
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-camp-fire-science-20181110-
story.html
The Camp fire raging in Butte County and the Tubbs fire that torched
Northern Californias wine country are a year and 100 miles apart. But
they have much in common.
Flames and embers, pushed by strong dry winds out of the north and
northeast, setting a town ablaze. Thousands of buildings destroyed.
Fleeing residents burned to death.
Both burned their way into the record books by searing areas that have
burned before and will undoubtedly burn again.
By Friday night, the Camp had destroyed more than 6,700 buildings as it
leaped across land scorched a mere decade ago in a siege of Northern
California lightning fires.
The Tubbs erased entire neighborhoods in Santa Rosa, sprinting across the
same oak-studded grasslands blackened a half-century earlier by the wind-
driven Hanley, when there were far fewer homes to burn in the region.
Californias wildfire narrative is one of repetition.
We have these Santa Ana-like events happening in places that are
appearing to catch people by surprise, said Max Moritz, a cooperative
extension wildfire specialist at UC Santa Barbaras Bren School. But they
shouldnt be catching people by surprise.
These are areas that have burned before, he said. And if we were to go
back and do the wind mapping, we would find that at some intervals, these
areas are prone to these north and northeasterly Santa Ana-like events.
They go by different names Santa Anas, sundowners, diablos but autumn
winds that gain heat and speed as they blow from the interior down the
states mountain ranges are inevitably the prime ingredient of
Californias most destructive wildfires.
The Camp fire started at 6:30 a.m. Thursday in a granite canyon with steep
slopes. By 10 a.m., it had ballooned to 5,000 acres, pushed by 50-mph
gusts from the northeast.
This got up and going really, really rapidly, said Dave Sapsis, a
wildland fire scientist with the California Department of Forestry and
Fire Protection. It had almost a direct-arrow line to Paradise, a town
of 26,000 sitting atop a ridge in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
We were told about a red-flag warning, a big heavy wind, said Butte
County Sheriff Kory Honea. Its not uncommon for a wind to blow through
that area, but the wind event we were experiencing was above average and
contributed to how rapidly this fire moved through. You get to a point
where you cant get ahead of it. You cant get ahead of the fire.
Within the fires first hour, the sheriff was helping direct traffic off
the ridge.
Its the morning time and its like pitch black, the middle of the night.
Ash and embers are raining down on you, and you are trying to get people
going, he said.
Theres this quote, being in the fog of war. That is exactly what it
feels like, he added. Youre trying to figure out where the fire is
coming from and whats going on. It becomes very, very difficult to keep
track of all of the moving parts.
First, residential areas went up in smoke. Then flames erupted in the
Paradise business district, skipping around the towns main drag. Youll
see two or three businesses burned out and one survives, Honea said.
Its an absolute tragedy for my community.
The property loss wrought by the Camp fire has eclipsed the modern record
set just a year ago by the Tubbs, which leveled 5,636 buildings in the
wine country and left 22 dead. At least nine people have died in the Camp,
some of them killed when their vehicles were overtaken by flames.
In July, the fast-moving Mendocino Complex fire in Northern California
charred 459,123 acres, becoming the largest wildfire in modern state
history and bumping last Decembers, wind-driven Thomas fire in Southern
California to second place.
Moritz argues that the state has learned little from this stunning trail
of death and destruction.
We are failing ourselves, he said.
We have all kinds of tools to help us do this smarter, to build in a more
sustainable way and to co-exist with fire, he said. But everybody throws
up their hands and says, Oh, all land-use planning is local. You cant
tell people that they cant build there. And the conversation stops right
there.
The new houses rising from the ashes in Santa Rosa will have fire-
resistant trappings such as sprinkler systems and double-paned windows,
but the city is not curbing rebuilding in fire zones.
We had these epic, terrible events last year and our governor came out
swinging, talking about climate change. [But] he ended up with decrees and
bills that focused on thinning the forest, Moritz added.
There was a lot of potential for progress in terms of building codes and
design and building more fire-resistant communities. The legislation that
could have gone forward didnt. We dropped the ball, he lamented.
Forest thinning would not have stopped the Camp or the Tubbs. Fueled by
dry grass growing amid scattered pine and oak trees, the Camp tore across
land thinned by flames just 10 years ago. The Tubbs burned grassy oak
woodlands, not timber land.
Wildfires have blackened more than 1.5-million acres in California this
year, most of it in Northern California. That outstrips 2008, which, at
nearly 1.4-million acres, had held the record for the most burned in any
single year in recent decades.
The Southern California Woolsey fire and the Camp will push that number
even higher.
And the Southlands Santa Ana wind season has a couple of months to go.
--
Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton on December 19th, 2016. The clown car
parade of the democrat party ran out of gas and got run over by a Trump
truck.
Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for cleaning up the disaster
of the Obama presidency.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp.
ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its
supporters can dispute that.
Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum
wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.
Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he was in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood queer
liberal democrat donors.
story.html
The Camp fire raging in Butte County and the Tubbs fire that torched
Northern Californias wine country are a year and 100 miles apart. But
they have much in common.
Flames and embers, pushed by strong dry winds out of the north and
northeast, setting a town ablaze. Thousands of buildings destroyed.
Fleeing residents burned to death.
Both burned their way into the record books by searing areas that have
burned before and will undoubtedly burn again.
By Friday night, the Camp had destroyed more than 6,700 buildings as it
leaped across land scorched a mere decade ago in a siege of Northern
California lightning fires.
The Tubbs erased entire neighborhoods in Santa Rosa, sprinting across the
same oak-studded grasslands blackened a half-century earlier by the wind-
driven Hanley, when there were far fewer homes to burn in the region.
Californias wildfire narrative is one of repetition.
We have these Santa Ana-like events happening in places that are
appearing to catch people by surprise, said Max Moritz, a cooperative
extension wildfire specialist at UC Santa Barbaras Bren School. But they
shouldnt be catching people by surprise.
These are areas that have burned before, he said. And if we were to go
back and do the wind mapping, we would find that at some intervals, these
areas are prone to these north and northeasterly Santa Ana-like events.
They go by different names Santa Anas, sundowners, diablos but autumn
winds that gain heat and speed as they blow from the interior down the
states mountain ranges are inevitably the prime ingredient of
Californias most destructive wildfires.
The Camp fire started at 6:30 a.m. Thursday in a granite canyon with steep
slopes. By 10 a.m., it had ballooned to 5,000 acres, pushed by 50-mph
gusts from the northeast.
This got up and going really, really rapidly, said Dave Sapsis, a
wildland fire scientist with the California Department of Forestry and
Fire Protection. It had almost a direct-arrow line to Paradise, a town
of 26,000 sitting atop a ridge in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
We were told about a red-flag warning, a big heavy wind, said Butte
County Sheriff Kory Honea. Its not uncommon for a wind to blow through
that area, but the wind event we were experiencing was above average and
contributed to how rapidly this fire moved through. You get to a point
where you cant get ahead of it. You cant get ahead of the fire.
Within the fires first hour, the sheriff was helping direct traffic off
the ridge.
Its the morning time and its like pitch black, the middle of the night.
Ash and embers are raining down on you, and you are trying to get people
going, he said.
Theres this quote, being in the fog of war. That is exactly what it
feels like, he added. Youre trying to figure out where the fire is
coming from and whats going on. It becomes very, very difficult to keep
track of all of the moving parts.
First, residential areas went up in smoke. Then flames erupted in the
Paradise business district, skipping around the towns main drag. Youll
see two or three businesses burned out and one survives, Honea said.
Its an absolute tragedy for my community.
The property loss wrought by the Camp fire has eclipsed the modern record
set just a year ago by the Tubbs, which leveled 5,636 buildings in the
wine country and left 22 dead. At least nine people have died in the Camp,
some of them killed when their vehicles were overtaken by flames.
In July, the fast-moving Mendocino Complex fire in Northern California
charred 459,123 acres, becoming the largest wildfire in modern state
history and bumping last Decembers, wind-driven Thomas fire in Southern
California to second place.
Moritz argues that the state has learned little from this stunning trail
of death and destruction.
We are failing ourselves, he said.
We have all kinds of tools to help us do this smarter, to build in a more
sustainable way and to co-exist with fire, he said. But everybody throws
up their hands and says, Oh, all land-use planning is local. You cant
tell people that they cant build there. And the conversation stops right
there.
The new houses rising from the ashes in Santa Rosa will have fire-
resistant trappings such as sprinkler systems and double-paned windows,
but the city is not curbing rebuilding in fire zones.
We had these epic, terrible events last year and our governor came out
swinging, talking about climate change. [But] he ended up with decrees and
bills that focused on thinning the forest, Moritz added.
There was a lot of potential for progress in terms of building codes and
design and building more fire-resistant communities. The legislation that
could have gone forward didnt. We dropped the ball, he lamented.
Forest thinning would not have stopped the Camp or the Tubbs. Fueled by
dry grass growing amid scattered pine and oak trees, the Camp tore across
land thinned by flames just 10 years ago. The Tubbs burned grassy oak
woodlands, not timber land.
Wildfires have blackened more than 1.5-million acres in California this
year, most of it in Northern California. That outstrips 2008, which, at
nearly 1.4-million acres, had held the record for the most burned in any
single year in recent decades.
The Southern California Woolsey fire and the Camp will push that number
even higher.
And the Southlands Santa Ana wind season has a couple of months to go.
--
Donald J. Trump, 304 electoral votes to 227, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton on December 19th, 2016. The clown car
parade of the democrat party ran out of gas and got run over by a Trump
truck.
Congratulations President Trump. Thank you for cleaning up the disaster
of the Obama presidency.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp.
ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its
supporters can dispute that.
Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum
wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.
Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he was in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood queer
liberal democrat donors.