Posted on 09/04/2011 5:46:33 PM PDT by grey_whiskers
UPDATE 7:30 P.M.: Mark Stanford, the fire chief for the Texas Forest Service , said subdivisions have been evacuated there but they have no estimate on what structures have been lost.
People are being told to evacuate to the First Baptist Church in Smithville and Bastrop Middle School, Stanford said.
In addition, State Highways 71 and 21 in Bastrop County have been closed, Stanford said.
Update, 6:48 p.m.: Wildfires have consumed more than 6,000 acres in Bastrop County, and firefighters are still working to get the blazes under control.
According to Bastrop Police Department Spokesman Michal Hubbard, hundreds of homes have been evacuated, including those at the Colony, west of the city of Bastrop, and Tahitian Village to the east. Several structures have been lost, he said
(Excerpt) Read more at statesman.com ...
Just went up to the HEB on 685 in Pflugerville. I could see the smoke from the Bastrop fire and I could smell smoke coming from the north.
Oh God, I know that area, it’s beautiful. Prayers for these people. We just can’t get a break.
new fire now just wets of Bastrop...reports are structures are are burning and explosions heard in the area
The ceder creek high school is on fire as well as a church
Dude... do us a favor and learn to use TinyURL to shorten links like that... they wreak havoc on tablet browsers as they cause a display to shrink it to fit one line. CN you say microprint?
Great news....maybe the detractors will calm down a bit......or not.....LOL!
Picture from above site. We can see the smoke from another fire just across the lake from us.
I just hate this! Such beauty..so much destruction..so many lives affected..
Prayers continue
Stay safe my FRiends.
I am getting ready to head outside and spray down all the dry areas in the yard in a few. This is some bad stuff.
God be with you!
By all accounts we are at a low in sunspot activity. In fact so low that articles are about “where did all the sunspots go?” The solar maximum is expected in 2013. If that means it gets hotter we are in for some really tough times. It is hard to directly correlate the drought.
In spite of a huge amount of information nobody that I can find has simple graphs that tie rain, temperature and sunspots... none I have found so far that are simple direct comparisons.
And I thought we had it bad, back in June.
They do say y’all in Texas do things bigger.
Why does that have to be true for these fires?
Stay safe, Arrowhead.
PLEASE do your utmost best to stay safe...AND to report in from time to time!!
We’re all still praying for a break in this, for rain...
Do you, btw, have any ubber-elderly neighbors who need immediate help? That just popped in my head outta no-where....
(((((Hugs)))))
Thanks for the info.
I wonder if there is any report of containment of any of these fires or can they even guess? I suppose it’s still a fluid situation and will be for awhile.
Just praying things improve quickly.
Thanks again.
Prayers up for you and yours. God speed.
Here is an interesting site with a lot of solar related charts. Unfortunately most stop before the year 2000. Also, they did not have records of the El Nino/La Nina cycles very far back. Have to go to work now, but will look some more tonignt. Meanwhile, look and learn. ;-)
http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html
My family and I just got back from Texas a week ago. My mom-and-dad-in-law live smack in the middle of the Sam Houston National Forest...and yes, it IS a forest with real trees. In fact, one of my wife’s uncles is a logger (got injured last week when a big branch fell on him, too). It’s green, but tinder-dry. If a fire started there OR burned in from outside, it’d be a mess.
That fire near Huntsville had better not go anywhere east.
My friend whose house was destroyed in Bastrop said she and her husband are staying with their son west of Bastrop. Said they saw the fire jump the highway and a river last night and that it was getting closer to them.
So glad to hear blackhawks are coming in to help.
That is so frightening and I hope it doesn’t come any closer to you! Prayers that it is contained as soon as possible!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.