US Wild Fires why not use the Military to help ?

[Yazata]

Another much smaller (only 150 acres as of 9 AM) fire has broken out inside the city limits of LA. (This isn't the one RU posted about. I think that one is NE of the San Fernando Valley.)

Despite the new fire's relatively diminutive size (they say it's destroyed maybe 6 homes) it's generating intense media coverage because of the exceeding posh area where it is and the fire's potential to grow, given the conditions. It's already closed the 405 freeway (the main route between the San Fernando Valley and West LA) and they are evacuating Mandeville Canyon, an area of showplace homes populated by entertainment celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford. (The media are swarming all over that. It's driven Ventura from the headlines.)

Returning to the Thomas fire, it's grown to about 100 square miles. Most of that is mountainside though, and I'm not aware that it's penetrated much deeper into Ventura than it did last night. Firefighters are pouring in from all over the state, including many from the Bay Area where I live. They are going down the freeways in long military-style convoys of firetrucks.

The unevacuated parts of the entire city of Ventura (population about 110,000) have been ordered to boil water, because the water treatment is out. The entire city has been placed under a 10PM-5AM curfew to head-off looting. (It's mostly middle class, but there are plenty of low-lifes.)

[FluidSpaceMan]

Video from KTLA's (an LA TV station) news helicopter showing the fire's uncontrollable spread into the city of Ventura this afternoon.

Like a scene from an end-of-the-world apocalypse movie.

http://video.dailymail.co.uk/video/mol/2...485784.mp4

That video is so sad.  It is a real tragedy.  Are there no, low cost, fireproof building materials for regions like this which are prone to fire?  It seems like we should start building smarter, or rebuild smarter.

[Yazata]

California Air National Guard 146th Airlift Wing is launching C-130's equipped with MAFFS (Modular Airborne Firefighting System) on missions to fight the Thomas and other fires starting this morning. They started prepping yesterday when the fires flared up and it takes about 24hours to pull the planes off other duties and to prep them with the MAFFS system (it's a big tank thing that rolls into the plane's cargo compartment). The photo below shows a US Forest Service logo on the MAFFS that's going into the National Guard plane. (Photos from the ANG Twitter page)

https://twitter.com/146AirliftWing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_Ai...ing_System

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Prepping the plane includes painting big high visibility identifying numbers (no doubt easily removed) on the planes and replacing the plane's side doors with red panels designed to accept water/retardant nozzles, seen here:

[Image: DQTi2ubUIAEAOGw.jpg]

Calfire has requested the contractor-owned Boeing 747 that was so active over the Wine Country in October. It's based in Arizona on a when-needed contract and is headed for McClellan field in Sacramento, a Cold War era air force base that serves as Calfire's main air base now. McLellan has the facilities to service the 747, which has the range to operate over Southern California from there. Report on aviation operations over the current fires here:

http://fireaviation.com/tag/maffs/

[Yazata]

If you want your faith in humanity restored, check this out:

http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/califor...17549.html

More stories on aviation response to the Southern California fires:

http://fireaviation.com/

They estimate the total fleet to be: "14 S-2's, 2 very large air tankers, 8 large air tankers, two maffs c-130's, and four scooping air tankers --- plus we're guessing 15 to 25 helicopters". (45-55 aircraft, more than some countries' total air forces.) All gathered in a couple of days, in December which isn't really fire season and many aircraft are in maintenance. They say that one contractor C-130 was all ready to leave for Australia with a contract to assist in Australia's fire season when Calfire put in an emergency request for its services. Australia agreed that it could come later and freed it up to respond.

[Yazata]

Things seemed to have quieted down for a couple of days, but the Thomas fire is stirring again. While older parts seemed to be burning themselves out, the fire has continued growing to the northwest into the mountains, and to the west along the coast.

A couple of days ago it surrounded the city of Ojai which was under mandatory evacuation. But firefighters succeeded in saving the town. (It's rather scenic, it played Shangri-La in the 1937 move Lost Horizon, is the former home of Krishnamurti and features a whole collection of yoga resorts. It's covered by ash now, but it's still there.)

The new news is the fire moving westwards along the coast across the county line into Santa Barbara county. Some outlying areas in the SE of the county are under mandatory evacuation, while the entire city of Carpinteria is under voluntary evacuation orders. Fire has apparently reached the edge of that city, according to Santa Barbara County Fire. Photos of homes burning on the Santa Barbara Fire twitter page. The fire seems to be flanking the coastal communities, burning westwards in the mountains so that it's threatening to be to the north as well as the east of Santa Barbara. Lots of rapid evacuations.    

https://www.google.org/publicalerts/aler...source=web

https://twitter.com/EliasonMike?ref_src=...a-42303203

The evacuation areas are spreading west towards Santa Barbara. The University of California Santa Barbara has postponed final exams, scheduled for next week and are passing out smoke masks. While they say the campus isn't threatened, they are advising students to leave. Evacuations in Montecito. Westmont College in the hills in northeast Santa Barbara has been placed under a mandatory evacuation order.  

https://www.countyofsb.org/thomasfire.sbc

http://westmont.edu/a/index.html

[RainbowUnicorn]

Video from KTLA's (an LA TV station) news helicopter showing the fire's uncontrollable spread into the city of Ventura this afternoon.

Like a scene from an end-of-the-world apocalypse movie.

http://video.dailymail.co.uk/video/mol/2...485784.mp4

wow !
it makes me think of all the familys now with no place to stay and no possesion, no clothes... nothing left, and what the rich government leaders getting free hotel accomadation anywhere any time are doing for these tax payers who pay their wages.

housing 250,000 people (guessing) 50,000 who have no clothes posessions or houses to go back to.... (houses though standing and not burnt may be soo badly smoke damaged that it is poisonous to live in until it has been properly re-furbished and aired)

i can almost hear them say "we are letting their insurer look after them" while it is highly probable there are no hotels availible and the insurers wont pay hotel bills to house them anyway.


meanwhile the firebrigade cant fight this type of fire spread(crowing) on multple fronts on dozens of different houses.

observation it is interesting to see the blow-torch(pre-spark-super-heating-via high-wind-and-smoke) like effect with the massive quantitity's of smoke(active-blow-torch-zones) making the down wind side a death zone while it heats up and then sparks more houses and structures to burn.
its like a perfect storm.
you cant put personal down wind, any vehicles are likely to be ignighted and would need to have their own internal air supply with hermetic fire proof seals etc...

imagining the family asking their 5 to 15 year old kids which they want to choose
to have a plane full of water smash their house into pieces and destroy everything with chemicals and water, or let it burn to the ground...

meanwhile on the other side of the country... life goes on as if nothing is happening...

---

The new news is the fire moving westwards along the coast across the county line into Santa Barbara county. Some outlying areas in the SE of the county are under mandatory evacuation, while the entire city of Carpinteria is under voluntary evacuation orders. Fire has apparently reached the edge of that city, according to Santa Barbara County Fire. Photos of homes burning on the Santa Barbara Fire twitter page. The fire seems to be flanking the coastal communities, burning westwards in the mountains so that it's threatening to be to the north as well as the east of Santa Barbara. Lots of rapid evacuations.   

i wonder if the moisture from the sea hydrating the plant life makes a difference to form a mild line at the relative fire conditions.
pondering computer modeling making basic outlines of combustability relative to green belts/misture content type/etc....fire temps and wind temp & speed etc...

[RainbowUnicorn]

[Image: 171211101846-05-california-wildfires-120...ge-169.jpg]

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/11/us/cal...index.html

now 4,400 firefighters.

pondering
health risks for firefighters prolonged exposure
and
all the ash settling into water supplys/catchment areas...

[Yazata]

The Thomas Fire is still spreading into the Santa Barbara area, though more slowly than before. The Northeastern parts of the city of Santa Barbara (very posh view homes on the mountainside overlooking the Pacific and the Channel Islands) are under Mandatory Evaculation Orders or Voluntary Evaculation Orders/Warnings. (Meaning the mandatory order may come at any time so have all your valuables collected and be ready to go.) In this map, the actual fire boundary is the red line. Wind is pushing the fire west (to the left). The pink areas are mandatory evacuations, the brown areas voluntary. All of Montecito has been added to the voluntary orders. University of California Santa Barbara is to the west of the city of Santa Barbara, where the map says 'Isla Vista'. The green area is the Los Padres National Forest (more brushy Mediterranean-style chaparral than actual trees).

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid...21096&z=11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaparral

Part of the problem is that chaparral evolved in nature to burn periodically. When it doesn't, it gets very dry and becomes thick, overgrown and almost impenetrable. Unfortunately, wildland management has stressed preventing fires. So the semi-arid vegetation turns into a waiting bomb, ready to go off.

[Yazata]

The winds have changed again and all of Montecito is now under mandatory evacuation orders. Voluntary evacuation orders/warnings have been issued for most of downtown Santa Barbara. (Lots of upscale shopping, restaurants and boutiques.) Many businesses depend on the Christmas season to get out of the red and into the black, so many had remained open there despite the smoke and uncertainty, but word is that it's like a ghost town there now. The Santa Barbara zoo is evacuating its animals.

Right now it's all precautionary. The fire doesn't seem to have grown much in the last few days. But winds are picking up again and they don't seem to think they can hold it if it moves west, and winds can easily drive it out of the mountains into the narrow populated coastal strip.

In the map below, the red line is where the fire currently is. The pink areas are mandatory evacuation areas where there's  fear the fire will go, and the brown areas are warning areas where people should be prepared to leave when ordered. Notice how that extends into the middle of the city. So there's fear that the city could go up in a worst-case.

[Image: 121617-evac-map-1_1.jpg]

[Yazata]

Today's situation map. Comparing the red line fire boundary between this map and yesterday's shows how the fire has expanded westwards. The fire is now all over the mountain just above Montecito. The evacuation zones haven't changed in Santa Barbara, though some evacuation zones have been reopened to residents in Carpinteria (the blue areas). As the fire has blown west, it's apparently pretty much burning out in areas it's already burned further east. They seem to have pretty good containment in Ventura county to the east and no more communities seem to be threatened there. But Montecito is definitely threatened if downhill winds develop off the mountains.    

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