Hello from the firestorm

[Cloral]

I can't think of any other time that has been more appropriate to call a firestorm than right now. It seems like every 10 minutes they're reporting another new fire. This is frikkin' insane. I just heard they had to evacuate 250,000 people down in San Diego. Where do you put that many people?

I guess I should be thankful that over here we're just getting a lot of smoke and no actual fire, though the fire isn't too far away from here. At least all the farms around here make a good firebreak.

[phattonez]

We have about 4 going in the Los Angeles area. Blame Santa Ana winds.

EDIT: Sorry, that number is really 14!

[Aegix Drakan]

Holy crap...

0_o Well, I hope for your sake the fire stays weeeell away from your house Cloral.

...I hope that steps are taken to take care of the evacuees (sp?)

And 14 fires in the LA area? That's not good either.

[phattonez]

^^Yeah, but it's gonna cool down a lot by Friday. So until then, we have to hold out.

[Gleeok]

Yeah, this fucking sucks bigtime. I can't breath, my nose is stuffed up, it's what seems like 90 degrees here and supposed to be ridiculously hot tomorrow. Fire's burning everything, people running, planes and helecopters, Smoke filled skies, and a char-broiled rabbit. These winds are brutal.

[mikeron]

I had high hopes for those rains last week. :(

[Icey]

My brother and his family live in San Diego and had to be evacuated =/ Luckily they're able to stay at my other brother's place but I hope nothing happens to their house while the fires rage on.

And yes, these fires are crazy. No containment as of yet.

[AtmaWeapon]

What can I say, with that many successful young people in an area, there's probably a lot of iPods in pants and when one of those gets a notion it just goes FOOSH!

Ones who does not have glossy paper will be consumed.

[Dechipher]

I thought you meant Fiyerstorm originally...

[Anarchy_Balsac]

I used to live in california. I swear, there's always firestorms there. I can't even remember how many times me and my sister would sit by the window at night looking at all the blazes on the hillside just for the eerie feel of it. Especially since they appeared so still from the distance.

[Gleeok]

If the air quality down here wasn't bad enough, Jesus.

We are all going to burn...

http://www.salem-news.com/stimg/october222007/la_map350.jpg
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44191000/jpg/_44191530_pooya_2_416.jpg
http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2007/US/10/22/wildfire.emails/art.huse.fire.irpt.jpg

...and I don't have any marshmallows. :shakeno:

I wonder if GW is too busy at the moment to actually do anything...

[mikeron]

My kitchen smells like an ashtray. Real classy, San Diego.

[Cloral]

Well, the good news here in Camarillo is the smoke is a lot better today than it was the last couple of days. And the winds are supposed to start letting up later today. So hopefully they'll be able to start getting a handle on the fires then. I swear, this is the worst Santa Ana event I've ever seen in my 25+ years of living in Southern California.

For those who aren't from the area, let me explain what the Santa Anas are like, since there really isn't anything like them anywhere else. Basically, when the high desert areas (i.e. Nevada and Utah) get cold, the air there gets dense and tries to reach a lower elevation. The easiest outlet for it is the ocean in Southern California, so it starts rushing there at high speed. As it reaches lower elevations, the wind heats up to around 80-90 degrees. And by the time it reaches the coastal areas, the wind is generally traveling at 30-40mph, with gusts often exceeding 50mph. And because the air is from the desert, the humidity levels often reach single digits (on Sunday, the humidity was 6%). So you've got 85 degree, 40mph winds that are bone-dry. Basically, its the worst possible weather you could imagine for fires.

[DarkDragoonX]

With that much fire, the only conceivable option is to lure this guy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay_Puft_Marshmallow_Man) in and make a big-ass s'more.

Okay, now that I have THAT out of the way... it must seriously suck to be down there right now.

[Prrkitty]

Stay safe y'all... and God Bless. Hopefully soon it'll all calm down and be containable.

[Gleeok]

With that much fire, the only conceivable option is to lure this guy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay_Puft_Marshmallow_Man) in and make a big-ass s'more.

Okay, now that I have THAT out of the way... it must seriously suck to be down there right now.

Heh, yeah..even I made a marshmallow joke. It's kinda hard not to. :laughing:

And the wind is starting to die off a bit too. I can breath again. :)

[Radium]

I'm evacuated from the firestorm myself right now. I took some pictures last night... I put them up at www.radium3d.net. Seeing it in person was like watching a volcano erupt. on the hillsides. That is about 5 miles from my house below is the empty closed Interstate 15 highway. We got all of our horses, llama, cats & dogs, guinea pigs, rabbits, chickens out and we're just waiting to see what happens now as a new fire that burned 20,000 acres since THIS MORNING approaches...

[Prrkitty]

Radium, God bless, stay safe and do take care hon. I have a lot of friends in Cali and am praying for everyone ...
(hug)

[Radium]

Radium, God bless, stay safe and do take care hon. I have a lot of friends in Cali and am praying for everyone ...
(hug)

Thanks Prrkitty! We are praying for everyone too.

[Cloral]

Hold crap. And here I was complaining about a little bit of smoke. Hopefully with the winds now more-or-less gone they'll be able to get a handle on these fires and keep your house safe. It sounds like 2 of the earlier fires (Malibu and Agua Dulce) are now like 80% contained, so that's a good sign.

edit:
It's nowhere as good as your pictures, but here's a picture I took on Sunday afternoon around 3pm of the smoke from either the Night Sky or Castaic fire blotting out the sun. Perhaps more telling than the smoke though is the lower of the two palm trees in the foreground. Notice that all the palm fronds are on the same side of the tree. That should give an idea of how strong the winds were for those of you from outside the area.

[The_Amaster]

Wow, it's getting bad over there, huh. Third day in a row that my paper has run a huge feature story on the front of the Nation section. That kinda coverage...

Good luck to you Radium.

[ZTC]

Oi, I know quite a few people that live in those areas; best of luck to them and I'll be praying for their safety.

[Prrkitty]

Cloral, I hope y'all don't have to deal with the fires hon. Stay safe.. <hug>

[Pineconn]

It'll all be okay, people. Though it happens almost every year, you guys will still get massive media coverage, then you'll be able to rebuild with our money via insurance checks.

Then you'll have downpours in the spring. Then mudslides. Then the cycle will continue with wildfires in the following autumn.

Does the truth hurt?

(I read too many 1984/Fahrenheit 451-type books.)

Despite all that, be safe. Don't ignore warnings/evacuation orders. My only remaining advice is to stay strong and optimistic, and don't rely on the government too much (a la Katrina).

[Cloral]

It'll all be okay, people. Though it happens almost every year, you guys will still get massive media coverage, then you'll be able to rebuild with our money via insurance checks.

Yeah, cause you know, we don't pay way more in insurance premiums to cover the cost of living in an area that is prone to wildfires. No, that doesn't happen at all.

[erm2003]

Do they also try to sell you volcano insurance?

But seriously, I know a lot of people are effected by the fires. I hope everyone from here remains safe and sound.

[Pineconn]

Honestly, the last thing I want to do is get into a big argument over the matter of government spending vs. annual income, etc. Though as tempted I am to rebut, I shall not.

[Cloral]

What, so you decided that the discussion is over, so it's over? Convenient, isn't it?

So let me ask you, how do you feel about people living in Florida? Or in Tornado Alley? Or in the Pacific Northwest, where they have volcanoes and tsunamis? Or the Midwest where they get floods? Or Hawaii, which gets volcanoes, tsunamis, and hurricanes? How do you feel about people living anywhere in the US? There's natural disasters everywhere.

Who are you to decide where people should or shouldn't live?

[Pineconn]

As tempted as I am to cordially compensate you for your reputation-giving, I have also decided to abandon your approach at this. Instead, I shall explain myself rationally versus fight fire with fire (no pun/double-meaning intended).

First, not once did I decide where you should live. If you wish to live in a fire-prone, deluge-prone, mudslide-prone, and earthquake-prone state, that's fine with me if it is fine with you.

Second, I am entitled to my opinion. My philosophy on this subject of matter is that I do not feel sorry for you guys because this happens every darn year. Every. Year. And yet it seems to take America by surprise. "OMG F1RES IN THE WE5T!!" Now, you may take me as an apathetic fool, and you probably do. But a house is a house; it is material item. Like I said, one's insurance will cover that, minus the irreplaceable things like photos, etc. In this instance I am sympathetic, as you cannot possibly replace them. In which case, this could have been avoided or lessened if this person had a predetermined plan rather than, "Oh snap, fire's coming, we gotta go! Grab the (insert object here)!"

I am very conservative. I do not believe in the welfare system (which is irrelevant to this, anyway, unless we'd talk about Katrina). I do not think that the poor should be taxed less than the rich. By knowing this, you should be able to at least see how I derived my viewpoint. Though I will never protest the entire concept of "paying for your problems," I can't help but be a little sour at it.

I live in northeast Ohio, thank you very much. Nothing happens where I live, except for an occasional overnight foot of snow, if you'd even consider that to be a natural disaster. I would hardly match a quick Nor'easter with firestorms or hurricanes in terms of deaths or the cost to clean them up. The last tornado to sweep within a 50-mile radius was in 1985. Heck, we're not even in the snow belt. So yeah, it's pretty boring up here.

So now that I have expressed my opinions fully, I earnestly await your refutation.

[phattonez]

Doesn't that whole Midwest region where the earthquakes can be bigger than in California include Ohio? I'm pretty sure St. Louis and Chicago are in that, but I think Ohio get some of it too.

[Pineconn]

I honestly felt only one earthquake, and it was just a tiny little 'thud.' California is practically on a fault line. :p

[phattonez]

No, the midwest can get it much worse, look it up.

[biggiy05]

No, the midwest can get it much worse, look it up.

It can but it doesn't. Ohio doesn't have four seasons. It's whatever the weather feels like doing that day. This morning it was winter, this afternoon it was spring.

We get tornadoes here and there and some are pretty bad but that's about the extent of it other than flooding which hasn't been too bad this year compared to previous years.

83 on my division two exam so that gives me a C on the exam. Not bad but I would have liked at least a B-

[Pineconn]

Ah, I see what you mean, phattonez. Even though the potential risk for earthquakes (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/hazmaps/products_data/images/nshm_us02.gif) is pretty much all over the place (with a concentration existing in California and another along the middle portion of the Mississippi), mother nature may sometimes do otherwise (http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/prepare/factsheets/SaferStructures/USEarthquakes.gif).

[phattonez]

Even though there is no meeting of plates in the midwest, the plate is very weak there and it causes huge earthquakes.

[Cloral]

OK. First of all, fires don't happen here every single year. You're confusing southern california with the entire western united states. Secondly, we do get earthquakes on occasion, but we take that into account when we build so the damage is mitigated. Case in point: a few years ago, there was a six point something earthquake in the central california coast. The damage was minimal, and a total of two people died - they were killed when a historic landmark that was built before current building codes collapsed on them. Several weeks later, a similar sized earthquake hit Iran, and killed about 10,000 people. So while earthquakes seem like crazy scary things to people who aren't used to them, they are things we can prepare for and deal with.
Thirdly, we don't hardly ever get floods. There simply isn't enough water here. Your region of the country is far more prone to flooding than we are. Fourthly, only homes built in the hills are generally suseptible to the wildfires and mudslides. When there are wildfires, they generally start in the chaparral of the hillsides, which is unfortunate because that is the area where they are hardest to fight. Whenever the fires approach the populated lower areas, they can repel the fires as the built up cities give the firefighters defensible space. This most recent set of fires was unusual in that fires did reach into the cities, but this was by far the worst set of fires that has happened in my 25+ years of living here. And as you yourself admitted, unusal circumstances happen everywhere.
Now do I feel sympathy for the idiots who build their homes on top of the hills and then are surprised when the ground below them turns out to not be as solid as they first thought? Not a whole lot, they really should've known better than to build there. But you have to remember that the people who can afford to build on top of the hills have plenty of money and can rebuild without much trouble, so I don't think they generally need our sympathy. As for the rest of us who live in more sensible locations, it takes a pretty unusual event to put our homes in danger. Even though this might be somewhat higher risk than in some other places, we pay for that in our insurance premiums. So don't throw that tax dollar bullshit at me. Even when we do receive some government aid, with the high cost of everything out here we produce plenty of tax revenue out here to see the government throw some of it back our way once in a while.

Now for your attitude. You came into this thread and made a post that was clearly designed to provoke a responce. In fact, you directly stated that you were trying to hurt people with your first post. Considering the situation, that was a downright shameful act and you shouldn't've been the least bit surprised to get the responce that you did. Also, you implied that people shouldn't live here, but then denied that you are telling people where they should live. If you did not mean to tell people where they should or shouldn't live, then you might want to chose your words more carefully in the future.

[deathbyhokie]

Doesn't that whole Midwest region where the earthquakes can be bigger than in California include Ohio? I'm pretty sure St. Louis and Chicago are in that, but I think Ohio get some of it too.

Part of the reason that midwest (and eastern) earthquakes can be worse than Western ones is the bedrock. It's more solid in California, resulting in less of the force reacing the surface. By contrast, out here in the east the bedrock is less firm, meaning much of the force of the quake makes it to the surface, and can be felt for a long way in either direction (The one we've had in my lifetime was cenetered some 300 miles away IIRC).

Not to mention that in the east, buildings aren't designed to withstand earthquake forces.

FYI, The New Madrid Quake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Earthquake)

Hope you continue to be ok over there Cloral.

[mikeron]

I can see the sky again!

[Pineconn]

Sky? :p


OK. First of all, fires don't happen here every single year. You're confusing southern california with the entire western united states.

I very well may be. But as you said, this entire scenario can apply to the entire western U.S.


Thirdly, we don't hardly ever get floods. There simply isn't enough water here. Your region of the country is far more prone to flooding than we are.

When I used the phrase "deluge-prone", I meant "downpour-prone" versus "flood-prone". I agree, the Midwest is much more prone for floods (more along the Mississippi than where I live, anyway).


Even when we do receive some government aid, with the high cost of everything out here we produce plenty of tax revenue out here to see the government throw some of it back our way once in a while.

And I suppose that a tidy sum more per month for home owner's insurance is a great deal for coverage on a burnt-down $500,000 home? I sure as heck would. ;) But like I said at the top of this page, I cannot and won't go further into this subject.


Now for your attitude.

My attitude? You're speaking to me as if you are lecturing me.


You came into this thread and made a post that was clearly designed to provoke a responce.

In truth, the original reason I posted that is that I wanted to get that off my chest. I read it and figured that someone would be upset by it, but I was too lazy to revise it. One philosophy I follow is one set by AtmaWeapon: Do not take the Internet so seriously.


In fact, you directly stated that you were trying to hurt people with your first post.

A direct statement would be "I am trying to hurt you." But who cares.


Considering the situation, that was a downright shameful act and you shouldn't've been the least bit surprised to get the responce that you did.

And you should be downright surprised that I didn't retaliate via reputation. You too, Breaker. You're lucky I was/am in a superior mood. And it was not at all a shameful act considering the situation. Many people (in general) expect the nation to sympathize for them when something has happened to them, but they just can't take it when just one person doesn't. Same goes for Katrina, 9/11, etc. (BTW, I am not implying any of my personal views/beliefs on the aforementioned disasters.)


Also, you implied that people shouldn't live here, but then denied that you are telling people where they should live.

Quote me when I implied you shouldn't live there.

Soooo...... yeah. Despite this debate, I am interested in knowing the details back over there about you guys.

[Lilith]

---

[Pineconn]

Because yes, I want the vast majority of the world should move to northeast Ohio and not be poor. Yes, that's what I implied. :sweat:

EDIT after an hour later of Curveballing: Uh-huh. I'm continuing with the train of logic in Cloral's first post of the page:


What, so you decided that the discussion is over, so it's over?

Yes, it is. I no longer have anything to add to the discussion/flame-Pineconn-because-he's-expressing-his-opinion-fest. Any of you can take it to the PM if you wish. I'm bailing out of this thread (since it isn't leading anywhere good for me) and will simply read any future discussion if it exists. I do not feel bad about/regret what I have posted to this point. Trust me, my intent, like I've stated, was to simply let a community know about my opinions, which are obviously not shared with the latter generation, if you may (but are generally shared with my school -- even someone who was born in and has relatives in the San Diego area).

However, I do apologize if any of you have taken offense. You could say I got carried away, others that share my views could say I didn't. Never did I mean to cause any distress (which I couldn't previously have fathomed to have done).

Perhaps you're not open-minded, perhaps I'm not open-minded. Perhaps we both hold on to our values strongly, or even too strongly. Who knows. Whatever the case, things have escalated to a level that shouldn't have happened. Having said that, I shall take my opinions and be on my way. See ya in "So..." or whatever. Because I'm done here.

[mikeron]

OK. First of all, fires don't happen here every single year.
Actually they do, but they usually aren't this bad. In most cases, they don't get nearly as much attention, which is understandable. There's also been a lot of arson lately.