Another devastating fire here in northern California.
I went to town a couple of hours ago and it was beautiful outside. It’s like dusk here now. I guess there’s a huge fire in Butte County. It’s so dark outside that I had to turn my lights on. This place is about three hours from me. A friend of mine lives in Sonoma County and she said that the smoke has darkened her skies, too.
YazataNov 9, 2018 12:35 AM (This post was last modified: Nov 9, 2018 12:56 AM by Yazata.)
(Nov 8, 2018 09:22 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Another devastating fire here in northern California.
I went to town a couple of hours ago and it was beautiful outside. It’s like dusk here now. I guess there’s a huge fire in Butte County. It’s so dark outside that I had to turn my lights on. This place is about three hours from me. A friend of mine lives in Sonoma County and she said that the smoke has darkened her skies, too.
How about you, Yazata? Can you see it?
Yes, it isn't nearly thick enough to make things dark, it's just a brown haze. Visibility is down to a few miles and I can smell it too. It's a little surprising, since Butte county is a couple of hundred miles away. I guess it depends on which direction the wind is blowing. Outside my front window it looks like this TV news photo, shot earlier somewhere in the Bay Area (it looks like the hills east of Berkeley).
This fire seems to have erupted out of nowhere in just a few hours. The Cal Fire Incident page doesn't have much on it. The Butte Sheriff's twitter page has updates. The first SO mention of the fire was only eight hours ago. Calfire mentions it nine hours ago when it was only 10 acres. (Now it's 18,000!) I've been trying to find a good evacuation map, since I hear that the fire is near the town of Paradise (26,000 people) east of Chico. So evacuations are underway as we speak and everything is apparently kind of frantic. They are reportedly calling up local Bay Area firefighters to head up there in mutual aid.
Apparently Butte county is well prepared for fire emergencies and the whole county is divided up into 'zones'. All day today the Butte sheriff has been announcing more and more zones being evacuated. They say that the CHP has closed highway 99 to northbound traffic and both sides of the highway are southbound to facilitate evacuations.
"The fast-moving Camp Fire jumped to 18,000 acres in eight hours Thursday, ripping across the Concow Valley and into and across Paradise."
"It's bad," said Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea. "We're trying to get as many people out as quickly as possible and save as many lives as we can."
"The fire was reported burning in town all the way to the Skyway, from Wagstaff Road to Buschman Road. Information was sparse, but witnesses and reporters on the ground described a chaotic scene as people tried to leave town. Structures were reported burning and, according to scanner traffic, two burn victims were flown to Chico. A pregnant woman stuck in traffic went into labor."
"The fire moved so fast that people were not able to get out of town and sheltered in large asphalt parking areas. Radio traffic Thursday afternoon indicated 300 people were at the Kmart lot on Clark Road, with fire in all directions. Another 100 were at a storage business at Clark and Skyway. Still another group gathered at the Holiday Market parking lot on Skyway... "
"There has been significant structure loss within Paradise, Carhart said. Radio traffic indicates Paradise Town Hall caught fire about 2:30 PM."
From the sound of it, thousands of structures may be gone and there may be many casualties.
Contrasting menaces in Butte County: Water forcing a massive evacuation during the Oroville Dam Crisis last year. Fire causing massive evacuation this year.
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Earthquake Information for Butte County: Butte County, CA has a high earthquake risk, with a total of 95 earthquakes since 1931. The USGS database shows that there is a 50.67% chance of a major earthquake within 50km of Butte County, CA within the next 50 years. The largest earthquake within 30 miles of Butte County, CA was a 5.7 Magnitude in 1975. (Oroville Remembers 35 Year Old Quake)
(2014) "The other [tornadoes] hit in Glenn County on Wednesday (60 almond trees uprooted), and Butte County on Tuesday (a few dead trees knocked over). Amazingly, this is more tornadoes than any other state has experienced so far this year, according to the National Weather Service." --Tornadoes in California? More than you think
YazataNov 9, 2018 07:32 AM (This post was last modified: Nov 9, 2018 07:49 AM by Yazata.)
The big city in the area is Chico, a very attractive college town of about 92,000 people though not as rustic and woodsy as nearby Paradise (which was mostly wiped out today).
Just the last few minutes, local Chico news is reporting that evacuation orders have gone out for southeast Chico neighborhoods. They say that police are going through those neighborhoods telling people to leave. There's still nothing about Chico evacuations on the official sites, so I'm not 100% sure I believe it. (Edit: The Butte Sheriff's is now verifying the Chico evacuations. This is a troubling development.)
Cal Fire has come out with this first incident report. It's very preliminary, with 'NA' for number of structures destroyed. They won't know that number until they can get into Paradise, where it's still dangerous right now. A local fire official said unofficially he thinks that there are upwards of a thousand structures lost. (This is a community of 26,000 that's now mostly gone.) The Paradise Police station reportedly burned down but the cops are still on the job, working out of a parking lot. Cal Fire says zero fatalities, but that's probably 'zero confirmed' at this early stage. It will probably go up as searchers see what's inside many of the burned out houses and burnt shells of cars on the roads.
YazataNov 9, 2018 06:06 PM (This post was last modified: Nov 9, 2018 06:12 PM by Yazata.)
(Nov 9, 2018 07:32 AM)Yazata Wrote: The reports, especially from Paradise (!) sound like the apocalypse. No zombies, but plenty of fire and darkness at noon.
Speaking of which, check out this TV station's video of a fire-tornado:
Somebody was definitely conjuring up the wrong demons.
Here's a satellite photograph showing the smoke situation yesterday. The wind seems to be blowing out of the east, blowing smoke west, where it collides with ocean air and... stops. So more and more smoke collects over Mendocino and Sonoma.
I'm down near San Jose under that fainter arc near the bottom. It's still very hazy here this morning, but that's often the case due to marine air, so I'm not sure how much of it is still smoke. The marine haze typically burns off by mid-day, so whatever smoke is around should be more obvious then.
YazataNov 9, 2018 10:24 PM (This post was last modified: Nov 9, 2018 10:26 PM by Yazata.)
The Butte Sheriff reports that five fatalities have been found in burnt vehicles caught in a traffic jam trying to escape from Paradise. My guess is that more will be found as the search continues.
The National Guard has dispatched MPs to conduct searches and guard what's left of the town. The military is also assisting in evacuating people in remote parts of the mountains whose only access roads might have become impassable.
It's 1 pm here where I live and the funky brown haze is still all around, worse than yesterday. It's definitely smoke, the smell is pretty strong, They say that our local air quality is currently worse than Beijing! I've noticed people on the street wearing masks over their noses and mouths. I bet people are really doing that up where SS is.
Reports are coming in the southern California fires are growing there and the city of Malibu has been ordered evacuated. That's celebrity country. So all of the media attention is shifting down there.
C CNov 9, 2018 11:10 PM (This post was last modified: Nov 9, 2018 11:14 PM by C C.)
(Nov 9, 2018 10:24 PM)Yazata Wrote: Reports are coming in the southern California fires are growing there and the city of Malibu has been ordered evacuated. That's celebrity country. So all of the media attention is shifting down there.
Yep, poor Kim Kardashian had to evacuate her estate; but still plenty of time to pose for a "fleeing" snapshot and ensure everyone looked properly photogenic in it. The new mansion was only completed this year (too big a temptation for fate to pass up, apparently). The flames were literally licking their way into the property less than two hours ago according to one report.
The smoke from Butte County is probably so thick in some neighboring areas that it's blocking both satellite and terrestrial antenna internet (as well as other services like TV).
The announced fatalities are up to nine. This includes the five who died in cars reported above and four more found subsequently. Three of these were in front of burnt houses and one was inside a destroyed house. But they have only begun to poke through the ashes and they expect this number to rise. They've put together a team to address identifying badly burnt bodies. (Chico State has a high-profile forensic anthropology thing, so maybe they can help.)
Today's count is 6,453 residential structures destroyed, plus 260 commercial buildings destroyed. They say that they performed a number of rescues today of people in remote areas, by helicopter and otherwise. Weather has been very windy and dry, which drove the flames into Paradise. Tomorrow should be a lot less windy. But forecasts are for the winds to pick up again, so it's a narrow window of opportunity. All K-12 public schools in Butte County will be closed for the next two weeks (at least, it's hard to know what will happen in Paradise since those schools are down for the count).
The fire doesn't seem to be heading towards Chico any longer and they have put in pretty good fire lines to defend the city. So they are lifting some of the evacuation orders in east Chico. They say that when they issue an evacuation order as opposed to a warning, that means that they expect the fire to move to the areas covered by the order. Right now, the fire is still spreading, but further back into the mountains. So you can know where they expect the fire to move by looking at where the evacuation orders are.
80% of the buildings in the town of Paradise are destroyed. But some structures remain. The news earlier showed local residents including the Mayor who lost everything wandering around the rubble vowing to rebuild and not let the town die.
I really hope that Paradise survives. (We all want to believe that Paradise exists, somewhere.)
C CNov 10, 2018 07:17 AM (This post was last modified: Nov 10, 2018 07:17 AM by C C.)
(Nov 10, 2018 04:31 AM)Yazata Wrote: I really hope that Paradise survives. (We all want to believe that Paradise exists, somewhere.)
Speaking of paradise being remodeled into hell, on the Woolsey Fire and Hill Fire fronts...
The Agoura Hills set used by HBO's "Westworld" has burned down. The population of Malibu evacuated. Mobile home park for seniors engulfed, etc. First a mass shooting, now flames encroaching upon Thousands Oaks. Is that one of the Four Horsemen riding over the California horizon?
Kim Kardashian terrified that her jewelry that was left behind might be destroyed or stolen (still has her priorities straight). Cher worried about her Malibu home. Lady Gaga posting videos of dark smoke billowing overhead. Charlie Sheen alarmed about his parents, can't find or contact them. James Woods dropped politics to try to help out Alyssa Milano's endangered horses via twitter. Guillermo del Toro may lose his "Bleak House" museum collection of fantasy and horror memorabilia, but tweets "the gift of life remains". (Wow, what oddballs in the bunch those last 3 are.)
Nov 8, 2018 09:22 PM
(This post was last modified: Nov 8, 2018 09:30 PM by Secular Sanity.)
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