How did the Northern California fire start?
The answer has not yet been determined. You might, however, note that the fire area has not had rain in 212 days. The rainy season normally would have begun before the start of the Camp Fire, but this year, it not only hasn’t, but there has been no rain since the start of the fire either. This would have greatly helped bring it under full control instead of the less than half (35%) containment that it has as today - here is the most recent report from CALFIRE Incident Management Team #4 -http://fire.ca.gov/current_incid...
Does northern California make fire breaks?
Firebreaks are built in the wooded, brushy, and grassy wildlands of all parts of California, though widths of fire breaks, and methods of construction, vary depending upon terrain and whether they’re constructed by federal, state, or local agencies, or by private owners.However, it’s impractical to maintain breaks more than one or two bulldozers wide everywhere. Where possible, well-maintained roads, lakes, streams, and green areas are used as firebreaks.However, the sort of wildfires that are currently making news in Northern California are what wildland firefighters call, “major ragers”. To successfully protect communities from such fires, firebreaks need to be several ‘dozers wide.Fire agencies can’t afford to maintain breaks like that all the time, so they build them as needed – if there’s enough time. In 1994 I watched from my fire lookout on Dixie Mountain, as flames a quarter-mile tall threatened Loyalton, California. Four days in a row, the fire reburned the same forest during the heat of each day.The firebreak, built just for that purpose, was six ‘dozers wide. It held, because firenadoes pull flames inward and upward, instead of pushing outward.Part of the purpose of the firebreak was to prevent more fire being lit by radiated heat. Another part was to catch burning materials falling from the edges of the firenado.
The Northern California Camp Fire has been deemed the most destructive wildfire in California history and it may have started with downed power lines. Is there any way power transmission can be made safer?
The Camp Fire, as with countless other fires and the San Bruno gas line explosion, could have been avoided had PG&E not placed profits before safety. In both cases PG&E failed to properly and fully maintain its infrastructures to cut costs and the end result was countless dead and tens of billions of dollars in property damage.Keep in mind the PG&E is an IOU (investor owned utility) and as such it’s profit and not service driven as the latter doesn’t benefit its investors. They have deliberately withheld funding to fix problems before they became catastrophes. Quite frankly the culture of greed at the expense of life and property will not change until the state and counties start prosecuting those responsible, directly or indirectly, criminally.
What is used to curb Northern California fires (Nov. 2018) i.e., what budget, firefighting planes, etc.?
Not a whole Hell of a lot, obviously. Sorry. I am not trying to sound snarky. I live 180 miles away and the smoke in our area looks like fog. I’ve heard that PGE reported a downed transformer around Paradise, California 15 minutes before the fire started……..that’s a natural monopoly and they don’t maintain their equipment at all. They lost a lawsuit due to the San Bruno gas explosion a year or so ago and just jacked up the rates to cover the cost. How much of this is due to dry timberland owned by the great USA federal government and how much of it is due to the damn power company not maintaining their equipment. IDK, your guess is as good as mine.
How do I become a firefighter in Northern California?
Hey T.Doug, Depends on which part of Northern Cali you are talking. If you are speaking North of Sacramento. The first thing you should do is find a community college that offers a fire program. Take the FF 1 academy first. With that you will get your State FF 1, EMT-1 and Hazmat FRO. As soon as you get that, you will be eligible to start testing at various city departments. OR you can apply for Cal Fire or the U.S. Forest Service and normally get hired without any training at all. With them you will be a seasonal firefighter during the summer and laid off for the winter. During the winter months, you can go to school and work on your degree in Fire Science. If you are talking Sacramento and south, the best thing would be to go through paramedic school, and then go through the fire program. This way you can work on an ambulance while going to school getting your needed paramedic experience. The fire service is a very competitive but rewarding career. It would be a good choice!!!!
California Fire?
Its horrible man im only an hour away from malibu. The sky where i live turned orange around noon. And smelled like burning wood. Ashes started falling not alot, kind of like a drizzle of it. I was at school and it was lunch when it happened. Everyone started going into buildings because of people coughing. My lungs were burning. Then they ended lunch early and canceled all sports after school. Im passing time by sating in my house watching t.v., going online. Dont want to go out smells bad outside. Im just praying the fire dosent come close by. Well maybe to burn down my school lol jk. But yea they have told us if we want to evacuate not mandatory but its if we feel like.
How bad is the California fire?
A2A:in fact, there are a couple of large fires here in California; in Southern California, fires have been burning around Malibu (which is just north of Los Angeles) and in a horse-shoe in Ventura County near Thousand Oaks/Simi Valley. A huge fire is also burning in Northern California near Chico, and it’s gotten the lion’s share of attention as it is far larger. This is the so-called “Camp Fire”.I live in San Francisco, which is about 150 miles south/south west of Chico. For more than a week, we have, in the Bay Area, experienced among the worst air quality in the world, varying between “unhealthy” to “dangerous.” Here is a snapshot from Friday:Here also is an image from my neighbourhood, also taken last Friday:The houses enshrouded in smoke at the top of the hill are about a quarter mile away.As bad as the air quality is in San Francisco, it is nothing compared to the damage in the actual fire zone. The Camp Fire has scorched hundreds of thousands of acres, has thus far killed nearly 80, with hundreds more still missing. Many of them are surely dead as well.The fires are the most destructive in recorded history.
How did the California fires start?
How did the California wildfires start?Well, Chris Cavallucci ,a few things are becoming a little clearer.There were extreme high winds the first night (and several thereafter, fighting these fires has been a nightmare). There were a number of downed power poles. Live wires that are torn from poles often spark. We had a lovely wet winter, and the usual dry summer. There is a high fire load of dry brush and weeds.There are quite a few illegal pot grows in several areas, they use propane to cook and heat. One spark from one of those fires, and whoosh, there goes the pot. And a lot more. (There were a lot of illegal and legal pot farms burnt.)The fires started late at night and had a chance to spread before anyone knew they had started.At this time, there is no word of arson. I hope not. Any arsonist is liable to be flayed alive if they catch him. (Or her.) There has been so much tragedy and it is nowhere close to being over.A brief commercial — the Red Cross is operating shelters for many thousands. Please send a donation if you can. This is one thing the Red Cross does well, and they could use the help. Thank you.
Could the Northern California fire really have killed 1,000 people that are missing?
No way to know until they finish their searches, but if you look at the Oakland Fire 1991 as an example, it went through a very highly populated area in a very short period of time. When all was said and done, 36 people were killed. I don’t know what the missing numbers were.Anyone can file a missing report, and until that person is confirmed alive or dead, they stay on the missing report. A large portion of Paradise was destroyed. There was a population of 26,000+ people. There were probably more people in Paradise at the time, i.e. friends, relatives, tourists, workers, transients, etc. It could be that many of these people just haven’t been located because they are too busy trying to find a place to sleep, eat, and figure out what they are going to do about clothes, their jobs, finances, etc.Give it a few more weeks, and I think you will see that number drop significantly. At least I hope so, it is already an unspeakable tragedy with the current death toll of 79 as of 18 Nov 2018. If there were 1000 killed in this fire, it would be one of the worst disasters in US History.