Posted on 10/15/2017 3:40:38 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
NOTICE: If you hate California and have nothing good to say, move on. You are NOT wanted on this thread. Get lost.
If you have a heart, please watch the video of the Berkeley Engine 6 firefighting team helping out in Santa Rosa. This is heart-wrenching. There are links to contribute to those who have lost everything.
A group of Berkeley firefighters was called out to help fight the Tubbs Fire early Monday morning. They thought it was a "large grass fire," but arrived in Santa Rosa to find hundreds of homes and businesses burned. This video was taken and produced by a Berkeley firefighter.
Berkeley Fire Department received the call for help early Monday morning. They sent an engine north to Santa Rosa to help with what they thought was a "large grass fire." When the strike team, made up of both Berkeley and San Francisco firefighters, arrived in Santa Rosa before sunrise, they were stunned to see the scope of the already massive Tubbs Fire.
A video shot and edited by a Berkeley firefighter (above) shows the crew's reaction when they realized just how large the destructive fire had grown overnight. As the engine headed toward the Santa Rosa Kmart store where they were told to assemble, the firefighters could see flames in the hills. "Wow, those are coming out of the structures," one firefighter says. "Oh my god." A few seconds later, someone says, "It's starting to smell like houses burning."
The Tubbs Fire destroyed more than 2,800 homes, 400,000 square feet of commercial space, and took the lives of at least 19 people.
The fire was 60 percent contained Sunday morning.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Thank you for posting, POF. It’s like hell on earth. The amount of destruction is just overwhelming.
Reminded me of this joke.
Before anyone decides I’m being insensitive, I’ve been a firefighter and been is some tough situations.
A fire started on some grassland near a farm. The county fire department was called to put out the fire. The fire was more than the county fire department could handle. Someone suggested that a nearby volunteer bunch be called.
Despite some doubt that the volunteer outfit would be of any assistance, the call was made.
The volunteers arrived in a dilapidated old fire truck. They rumbled straight towards the fire, drove right into the middle of the flames and stopped! The firemen jumped off the truck and frantically started spraying water in all directions. Soon they had snuffed out the center of the fire, breaking the blaze into two easily controlled parts.
Watching all this, the farmer was so impressed with the volunteer fire department’s work and was so grateful that his farm had been spared, that right there on the spot he presented the volunteers with a check for $1,000. A local news reporter asked the volunteer fire captain what the department planned to do with the funds.
‘That ought to be obvious,’ he responded, wiping ashes off his coat. ‘The first thing we’re gonna do is get the brakes fixed on our fire truck!’
That is brutal.
All of that destruction must have happened within six hours- the fires started around midnight and considering how dark it was when Berkeley FD arrived it had to be before 6.
The wind doesn’t seem to be gusting hard like in a Santa Ana but that much widespread destruction has to be the result of embers jumping from house to house.
I’ve watched this video a couple of times and am just amazed by it.
The suffering in northern California is horrible and I continue to pray for the people.
Just heartbreaking!
They overbuild in areas historically prone to these events. They welfare state will never have enough resources to fight these type of fires. The environmentalist/left are also a cause and are pretty happy to see such crisis because it should not go to waste. I am sure President Trump will ultimately be blamed.
“Because California, as a state, has been so good to him, so willing to get in step with his agenda.”
We gave Trump his third largest number of votes. If the Bush No Borders wing of the GOP hadn’t done their damnedest over the years to flood California with future Democrats maybe we wouldn’t be outvoted.
Help California?
Sure.
But California has to finally clear out their underbrush and build and start maintaining adequate firebreaks first. If that means a quarter mile wide strip of livestock maintained grazing land running through what has become astronomically expensive real estate the California still has to do that, just as if they were only Kansas or Nebraska instead of being made of money.
This is called a pre-requisite. It isn’t negotiable.
California has continued to pull this crap for four decades. I lived out there, and I was bright enough to leave.
Enough is enough.
Unlike the hurricanes, these fires are covered by insurance companies. Insurance companies will be on the hook for $2 to $5 billion dollars. But fire insurance only covers structures, not the charcoal covered land. So the payouts won’t cover the full cost of people’s loss, unless they are willing to rebuild on the same property. I expect some will walk away from their remaining mortages.
Wow
I have lived in fire prone areas for years. You have to keep the brush clear. You have to have a roof designed for it, tile is best. The bushes under the eves have to be kept down. This could have been prevented. Very sad.
Can you imagine going to Santa Rosa, not being told why, and arriving to that armageddon? You can’t get to the rendezvous point, you just keep driving down the road trying to figure out where to stop and do something. Incredible.
Those crews haven’t slept much in a week...they are indeed earning their paychecks (which aren’t very big to begin with).
So no discussion how California Leftists, The DemoRat Party, GOPee RINOs PG&E, the Public Utilities Commission, environmentalist wackos and all sorts of Liberal scum have ignored infrastructure maintenance, timber management, brush removal, fire roads, power line maintenance and tree trimming, natural gas line maintenance and inspection, and public complaints about these issues for decades?
Or how two thirds of the citizens and illegals in the three severely affected counties voted for Hillary and one party Rat government that did this?
All of us Californians are really sick of the California-bashing here on FR. We don’t bash other states.
It wasn’t like this before. The hard-heartedness is all from the nasty, hate-California crowd. That’s the reality.
That would be fine but neighborhoods like Coffey Park weren’t built near chaparral or the canyons. And that’s a neighborhood that burnt to the ground. This appears to have started with power lines blown to the ground. Once a fire starts embers can jump from house to house or even for a mile or more.
LOL...that’s funny and, unfortunately, all too true (my son is working on becoming a FF. Passed FF-1 and half-way through EMT now).
I think the burning embers must have literally flooded the sky and dropped down across a wide area all at once, setting simultaneous fires. That’s the big problem with the uplifting winds across the mountain ridges. What’s amazing is that these Diablo Winds don’t die down at night. They can continue throughout the night.
Houses burn so hot that the radiation sets the interior of adjoining houses on fire!
The last big fire in the Napa, Santa Rosa area was over 40 years ago when it was much more rural. And that fire was nowhere near this big.
This is, unfortunately, a common pattern - a record-setting wet winter followed by a hot, dry summer (as they all area here). By the fifth month of the six-month dry season, things are really ready to let go.
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