Another Wildfire

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GeddyWrox
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Re: Another Wildfire

Post by GeddyWrox »

Good God. I'm glad you're in NH now Rad, but very sorry for your neighbors. UGH

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Radbird
There's someone in my head but it's not me
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Re: Another Wildfire

Post by Radbird »

Radbird wrote:
December 31 21, 7:45 am
Radbird wrote:
October 29 10, 3:50 pm
This is why I'm glad live by, but not in, the mountains. The Dome Fire broke out in the Boulder foothills this morning - some people are being evacuated for the second time in 2 months. We have friends who are just outside the evac zone, so if it expands much at all, we could have some overnight company tonight.
This post from 2010 really stands out today as one of those youneverknow moments.

First, I need to caveat this to say that we no longer live in Colorado and are safely tucked away in New Hampshire.

It’s possible that the home we lived in Superior is gone. If you look at the map, you’ll see a Starbucks at the bottom, then a Safeway above it and our house above that. On the picture, the green line shows where the Starbucks is, with Safeway in the background and the homes burning behind it - right where our house is (or was). All of our old neighbors got out safely, once it’s light out they’ll be able to see what’s left. Snow coming today which should help knock the fire down. Unbelievable devastation.

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UPDATE: We heard from 2 of our old neighbors yesterday. No cars allowed back in yet so they had to walk in. Their homes were spared, in fact the entire block is intact. This video in the tweet shows just how close it came. All of the homes you see on the map on Eldorado that border the park are gone. If it weren’t for those firefighters keeping it from jumping the street many more homes could’ve succumbed.
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Here’s some drone video from another neighborhood:

https://www.reddit.com/r/[expletive] ... &context=3

Not sure the link will get past the profanity filters…if not, replace /[expletive]/ with /nextf***inglevel/

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G. Keenan
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Re: Another Wildfire

Post by G. Keenan »

Totally crazy that a grassfire in the suburbs in December can be so devastating.

For all of its faults, two things I appreciate about living in Chicago are 1) a climate that can only get better with global warming ( :P ) and 2) a supply of fresh water that I will be long dead and gone before scarcity becomes a problem.

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Joe Shlabotnik
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Re: Another Wildfire

Post by Joe Shlabotnik »

The Old Normal is Gone: This isn't the California I married.

Not Colorado but I bet most of the things mentioned in this article pertain to Colorado as well as California.
The threat is not just in the woods. California is 33 percent forest, 7 percent grassland and 8 percent chaparral (bushes and shrubs). Those grasses and shrubs are “flashier,” meaning they burn easier and faster. This brings fire into communities, and once fire is in a community, the houses are the fuel. Worst of all (I’m only sort of kidding), plants grow back. This makes “fuels management” a maintenance problem, a Sisyphean chore. We can’t just balance the fire debt and call ourselves good. If we do, we’ll be right back in jeopardy soon...

When I called around to fire experts this fall for an update on the situation, the response was grim. People started talking to me about zombie towns in the Sierra Nevada foothills — towns almost guaranteed to incinerate. The darkest statements came from the most knowledgeable people. “I do think that we’re going to have significant community destruction,” one retired senior official told me. “We are going to be playing just a completely defensive game. I don’t know that we will ever get ahead of it until we have so much destruction that we kind of eliminated the problem.”

Eliminated the problem. Whole towns burned off the map.

I asked Zeke Lunder, the best wildfire analyst that I knew, who should be worried. He rejected the whole premise of the question. Worried? Ha. We’ve passed that stage. We exist in a world of knowing that not everywhere nor everyone will be spared. “We need to accept that there’s going to be a fire,” he said. “It’s going to burn the whole town down. When that happens, let’s have identified a pot of money to buy these 5,000 lots that are in the worst places and we know are never going to be safe. So, let’s buy them and rebuild in a footprint that’s defensible.”

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