CA on fire
 

The season is starting early, shame the National Guard's out of town.
That's the Hollywood Hills, in case you didn't know.

I really want to know when it is going to fall into the ocean.

I used to think that way about California, but after I visited it, my opinion changed. California is beautiful...it's just the people that are crazy. And it's not all of them...just a lot of 'em.

So basically what you are saying is that Neutron Bomb is in order and I should stop waiting for it to fall in the ocean?

I thought N. Calif was stunning. Southern Calif is more like Mexico.

I lived near there for a long time. The fires happen every year and I thought they were beautiful to watch. I probably would think less of them if it was my stuff burning though.
What I never understood was why would someone re-build over and over again in the same place when it keeps burning every few years?

I guess it's like the people that want to rebuild in the Lower 9th in Nola, or the people that rebuilt in St. Louis after the 1993 floods. I'd say part of it is sentimental attachment and another part of it is just being ornery. "Oh, you don't think I should rebuild here? Well, fuck you! I'm gonna do it anyway!"

I might rebuild once, but a second time? That's probably God telling me to go.

If only the idiots in Malibu took the hint. Fires, floods and mudslides every year and they still stay!
And it's not really all that great a place. Too foggy in the mornings.

Rebuild on anchored concrete stilts I say!

Be the one house on your block to survive... AND thus catch all the debris of the other houses on the block! It's looting without the hard work!

How is California like granola?

If you get rid of all the fruits and nuts the only thing left is the flakes.

A little fire don't scare me! I'm still moving out there to teach in the Capistrano Unified School District in three years.
If it breaks off into the ocean, that just means two coasts!

California is too beautiful to say no to.

But for a series of events over which I had little control I would be a permanent resident of California. Northern California, that is. Southern Cal just didn't work for me at all.

You know, I've often said that I wouldn't piss on California if it was on fire, and look! Here's my opportunity!

Does anyone know the extent to which the fires are the result of "environmental" regs that don't allow communities to clear brush and cut firebreaks?

Insurance pays for the loss, and in a few years between fires they don't have many keepsakes accumulated.
Plus, like Wolf said, they have a bunch of stupid laws keeping them from fire-proofing the landscape in built up areas.

Here in San Diego, our average yearly rainfall is something like 13". Total. Most years it does not rain between say April 1st and October...dew and Fog, but no raindrops.

We're several inches behind this year, and LA is worse, things are already crispy and ready to go and the hot weather really hasn't started yet. The dry climate breeds woody scrub with a high resin content, basically made to burn. The illegals are very careful in their tent cities in the canyons, they grew up with the fire threat. It's the city folk, or bored suburban teenagers, or firebugs. Throw in hot Santa Anna desert winds at 30 mph and 10% RH and wait for the fun.

Fire breaks are required in our area, and stucco construction with concrete tile roofs. The bad fires 3 1/2 years ago got within a mile, and this is not a high risk area. I've got pics from the end of the street, 30' high walls of flame, dry eucalyptus trees exploding in flames. It was exactly then that I realized the blizzards I grew up with were a nuisance, but not life or property threatening.

My end of SoCal is, oh, just about enough like Mexico -- you get the authentic Mexican savor to the Mexican food. (No quiero Taco Bell.)

Blizzards cave your roof in if the wind didn't blow the snow off. I spent my teenage years in South Dakota. I haven't been back, and there's a reason.

Probably the best picture of the fire is the one of the smoke column and the Hollywood sign.

We get two kinds of fire seasons: early and late. This one's an early, and it happens in dry years, when the vegetation dries out the sooner and the fires get going, but there's not a great deal of foliage for them to burn. Late fire seasons are when we get a good year for rain and lots of plant growth, which then dries out later, and then the later fire season has lots to burn.

Aside from its location, this one is neither particularly bad nor especially remarkable. Now if we could just get the newsies to stop saying "wildfire" about every blaze not domesticated in a fireplace, we'd be making real progress. Let's have sense and sensibility, guys.

Wolf, I'm getting naughty thoughts of you squatting...:p And I don't do golden showers, living by the adage that it is better to be pissed off than pissed on. ;)

Granted the "newsies" are a pain, but an uncontrolled fire is a wildfire, isn't it? Not a forest fire because of no forest. Oh and you're causing global warming, too.

Somebody get me a Hot DOG!:eek:

When I was out there in the early 80's I helped a few of those out , hot nast work !!!

From Bullit (Capistrano Unified School District )
If you get to San Yun Caoistrano look up this little dinner called the SunSet dinner ( if it is still there ) WAY KILLER breakfast !!!!

It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. If you clear the brush to cut down on the fires, then you don't have anything holding the dirt in place, and the mudslides are worse. If you keep the dry vegetation there, then the fires are bad. You can't win. Maybe they should build their houses in a safer location.

I think I may have been there some time ago. I used to live in Dana Point, I'm guessing you meant San Juan Capistrano.

San Juan Capistrano.
San Yun Caoistrano
Damn that IS bad ain't it ???

Yeppers thats the place ,

If you have goats chew it down there is little to burn and the roots are still holding it together. As long as you keep the herd moving to new locations every few days to a week, you're golden.

And if you're determined also, you can get goats' milk for cheese!

Back when Griff and BigV were bantering about goats, I read an article about a private enclave in CA that hired a farmer to bring in his goats and move them around the enclave to keep the vegetation under control. Worked like a charm, practically zero fire danger, cost nothing...... then the state said they couldn't do that. Fucking idiots.

At Camp Pendelton in the early 80's they used to hire sheperds to have their herds graze in sections , it HELPED ( oh and the little lambs were TASTY !!! )

Griff, great pics! :D

had goats on the neighborhood last fall, munching on the underbrush in the firebreaks. way cheaper than city crews...the people love it, but somewhere I think I read that the professionals are skeptical about actual benefits.

dunno, it seems like it would be poetic to let the local illegals, err... guest workers... manage the herds out of their tent encampments as a mutually agreeable public service.

As a forest ranger's son who has seen a major fire and a couple minor ones counting that time the dry grass in the back yard got lit up one windy winter day -- little problem with bad ash from the trash incinerator -- I reserve the term wildfire for blazes crowning out in treetops and prairie fires running before forty mph winds: not merely not contained, but big fires moving very fast. Such fires as make genuine firestorms. A crowned out blaze in a large grove of tall trees gets close -- and you don't want to get close.

Generally, if it's not trees, it's brush. So, brush fire. It's also quite okay to just mention what kind of terrain is being burned over.

Stylistically, I'm okay with "wild fire" as two words -- but only okay. I think there are terms available that are both more accurate and more sensible.

California is on fire again. You hear about the one near LA in the news a fair amount this week, and may have an idea that there are one or two more, but there are 12 big ones:
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