Posted on 11/22/2018 8:40:56 AM PST by jerod
Christina Taft couldn't persuade her mother to flee the California fire, and she died
As Christina Taft walks through the chalky rubble and blackened ash strewn on her property in Paradise, Calif., she winces as she tries to make sense of the destruction around her.
"This is just completely levelled," she says.
"There is nothing here."
In the corner of what was once her living room, yellow caution tape ropes off a rectangle on the ground. It looks as if someone was digging in the area, and right away Taft knows why.
"This is where they must have found her."
This is the first time the 25-year-old has returned since she fled her home nearly two weeks ago when the Camp Fire destroyed nearly 13,000 structures, leaving entire neighbourhoods in the northern California community of about 27,000 unrecognizable.
More than 80 people are confirmed to have died in the fire, but hundreds of others are still unaccounted for.
This spot in Paradise is the final place where Taft saw her mother, 66-year-old Victoria Taft.
On the morning of Nov. 8, the neighbour with whom they shared their rental duplex knocked on their door, warning that a large fire burning to the east was spreading rapidly, and they should pack up and go.
Taft began loading the trunk of her car with photos, clothes and food, but her mother didn't think there was any need to panic.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
In fires like this venue and driven by high winds, 30' means zip nothing.
Red hot embers were being blown horizontally downwind in gusts up to and exceeding 40mph. The fire could barley be outrun and the wind simply starts spot fires far beyond the fire lines. One spark or tiny ember blown under an eve or into a roof vent leading to the attic, and that's it, it's over! And 30', 100' and sometimes "miles" of clearance does no good at all.
Anyone who's experienced a high wind driven wild fires fully understands this. Bottom line, the wind is the #1 enemy in these events.
Only one thing left to do...buy a nice urn.
How about cutting the trees down?
Don’t live in a brush pile is also sound advice.
It is.
Shout it out, long and loud.
Look at thre videos. Healthy evergreen trees standing up all over.
It is ground cover, pine needles and brush that largely burned.
All of that should be required by law to be kept 100 feet away from any structure.
Look at the houses, covered with combustible wood shingles and siding.
Wood shingles and combustible roofs ought to be illegal.
You don’t see stucco exteriors and tile roofs burning down.
The State Building Code Council and State Fire Marshall ought to be charged with endangering the public.
What good are they when building practices are killing so many?
Too true, but it is a bit like not wearing a seatbelt because a 100 mile an hour head on crash will kill you anyway.
I used to hang out with the Pomona Valley Civil Defense Coordinator.
He used to say that if we had a Santa Ana wind last for 5 days and a fire started north of the LA basin, it would burn all the way to the Pacific, and there was absolutely nothing that could be done to stop it.
I understand that—and I understand there are differences in the geography of the US. But no clearance? That just doesn’t make sense to me.
But, we have other problems here.
In the past I saw warnings in California that all dry leaves needed to be removed from thirty feet radius around a campfire.
I would say 100 yards of clearance should be minimum and 200 better along with fire breaks all over. Grass cut and removed in the areas in between.
Clearance means little or nothing in high wind driven wild fires. Can it help, maybe. Are their any guarantees? None, zero zip. It only takes one home goes up in a neighborhood, and then it spreads to the others within seconds.
Wind driven wild fires are a whole different animal.
Location is everything
This whole city was a fire trap
This could never happen in Marin county
It did happen in Sonoma. Last year. Due to proximity to large tracts of unmanaged forests
In our county it’s mostky redwoods which don’t burn and there’s no underbrush
I feel for those folks. Been to paradise. Now Milton’s. Paradise lost
That.
Yes. It looks like they carved out just enough forest to build a house so it’s still wall to wall trees.
Salt and poison works.
“This could never happen in Marin county”.
Until it does, and someday it will.
(from an old hand firefighter).
See post 23 from me explaining how the democrats helped cause the delay in evacuation.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3707757/posts
#21 Here are some photos to illustrate.
https://thepointsguy.com/2017/12/southern-california-wildfires-nearing-la-airports-close-down-405-freeway/
That kills it off, but I’m not sure if having dead trees and brush you can’t legally remove is an improvement...
“Wood shingles and combustible roofs ought to be illegal.”
When I was involved in home building back in the late 80’s, the high end homes had restrictions that required shake shingle roofs. Yep, kindling was on top of 500-750K homes. Bottle rockets or any type of ignition and the house burned down. Stupidest thing ever....
You are exactly right. They figured Gov. Grandma was too weak to defend -- remember that deer-in-the-headlights interview she did with that NOLA station who had been flooded out in their studios and interviewed her in their makeshift station hq up the road?
If I had the time, I would scrape all those Katrina threads that NautiNurse labored over and write a book. There is so much that the MSM covered up about Katrina: the Democrat grift that weakened the floodwalls and the pumping stations; the local Democrat sheriff and his posse shooting at tourists trying to escape NOLA on the big bridge; Swamp Dems leaning hard into Grandma with a failed strategy to trap Bush into violating posse comitatus; I could go on and on.
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