Friends in Need When Nature Hiccups, Natural Disasters forum Options

[belleraphon1]

Sincerely hope all you UMSFers on the West Coast are OK! Read Emily's blog....
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001576/

Widfires and now an earthquake... scary...

Concern from an Ohioan who only worries about getting snowed in once or twice a winter season.

Craig

p.s. With global climate change this forum may get a few posts or two in this century!

[djellison]

Youch
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets...ERONET_La_Jolla

(and good luck with the Hernia np - you might come out bionic with the weave matting they use to hold them in place!)

Doug

[elakdawalla]

Youch
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets...ERONET_La_Jolla

*cough cough cough* The fire's a bad one, but fortunately it's keeping several miles away from me. There are even blue skies overhead today. But everything smells like smoke. I have friends who live in one of the canyon communities to the west of me, who were evacuated yesterday and are now inhabiting my guest room indefinitely.

Every year there are fires somewhere in the Southland (that's what they call southern California in the local media), and every year I'm amazed and impressed with the preparedness and performance of the firefighters and all the other organizations who support them, from the police to animal control (the latter sends out armies of trailers to go into evacuated communities and grab horses and other large animals and take them to shelters -- the same canyon communities that are prone to wildfire are usually ones with lots of horse owners). These fires have the potential to be a huge and costly disaster, burning hundreds or thousands of homes. But because of year-round preparedness, enforcement of brush clearance ordinances, rules about roof materials and the proximity of large trees, even what species of trees, and the readiness of more than a thousand firefighters, they can let the fire do what it wants with the brushland while protecting nearly every home and outbuilding from being burned. In the areas that are actively burning right now, the TV helicopters reveal that nearly every driveway has a police car parked in it, and a fire truck on the street; tactical teams of firefighters march into the backyard of each house, one by one, defending it as the fire burns past. Spotters on the ground call in the aerial troops, skycranes and super scoopers dumping water on hot spots. If you drive through burned areas in the days after a fire you'll see acre after blackened acre, abruptly bordering lush green backyards and untouched Mission-style homes with bright red clay tile roofs. It's amazing.

--Emily