I suspect it will pick up again tonight or tomorrow (I heard reference to it on the local radio station here today). We’re supposed to get anywhere between 1/4" and 2" of rain starting tomorrow night and into Thursday (so mudslides are a real threat)… which will suck for us because we’re scheduled to have our new house tented Thursday morning for termite treatment.
Our friends are still housing two couples who escaped the Camp Fire
I live in the Bay Area. I’m still seeing lots of news about the fires, but the stories are mostly about what’s happening to the displaced residents that have been living in tents and cars now that the rainy season has started; the slowly climbing death count; and whether the local utility, PG&E, has some responsibility for what happened.
They were responsible for last year’s fire somewhere. It probably will take a year to finish investigation. The timing is curious, malfunction of their equipment and start of fire.
The Camp Fire is still getting TV coverage on the local news in the Bay Area… mostly stories like ‘generous donor gives $1000 to every high school student in Paradise’ and ‘how the rain is impacting the search for victims’. I stopped getting the Chronicle a couple of years ago so I’m not sure how much they are covering.
That generous donor made the national news!
I saw the donor on the news last night. He is from the Rancho Santa Fe area here in San Diego. He wanted each of the high school students to do something fun with the money. One of the girls that was interviewed said she would use the money to help her family get into more permanent lodging.
New construction standards helped some homes survive. And people like this:
And now the mudslides… https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/live-updates-evacuations-ordered-roads-closed-in-california-as-flooding-rain-arrives/70006754
We had about 3/4" of rain Thursday, not including the tiny bit we had before midnight Wednesday. I don’t understand this (not that I don’t believe it, it’s just we weren’t here for the Holy Hill fire, so I didn’t pay attention to it), but the mudslide warnings were more dangerous for that area than they were for the Woosley fire area.
I went out Thursday morning in the rain, and traffic was absolutely awful. There were several major accidents on the 101 and 134 that shut them down, and people were forced to take surface streets. Ventura Blvd, which is a major east/west street was a parking lot for the over three miles I traveled west on to get to a store I needed to get to. I’m sure it was longer than that, but I only saw it from Studio City, heading west toward Sherman Oaks. Taking Waze back (I typically don’t use Waze anymore, but did that morning) along much smaller surface streets that took me into the Hollywood Hills, I got behind a car on a street with a stop sign that didn’t leave enough room for breaking at stop sign on a street that was covered with a very thin layer of mud, the car skidded before stopping, and barely avoided an accident with another car. I guess this will be my equivalent of learning to drive in the snow when we first moved to the Midwest 30+ years ago. I also saw the Los Angeles River full of rushing water, which I’d never seen before. By late afternoon, though, it was back down to a recognizable flow. I guess people in the Woosley fire area just didn’t get the same amount of rain as those in the Holy Hill fire area in Riverside and Orange Counties, although I know they did have some mud and rock debris in areas.
It sounds like sandbags can stop devastation by fire after all.
Also,
The problem is, most municipalities have tree ordinances that prohibit trimming or cutting down certain varieties of trees. In many places it is illegal to prune or cut down trees. For instance, we have quite a few mature trees at our new house. I told H when we were looking at houses, I wanted to plant an avocado tree if there weren’t any, but our new house has plenty of mature trees. So we’d be wise not to prune or cut any down (or do anything purposely to kill it) without consulting with an arborist. Evidently they’re quite in demand here because of these ordinances - they know the laws for different municipalities like the back of their hands.
Our good news is that our new next door neighbors we met yesterday told us they have an orange, grapefruit, tangerine and avocado tree that produce more fruit than they can ever give away, so we are welcome to their harvest whenever we want.
My point is, you can’t just decide to replace your trees with those that are fire-retardant. Now if you’re starting out on a vacant lot and want to put some in, those guidelines are great. But for the majority of already established yards, it can get tricky.
https://legalbeagle.com/7454514-tree-maintenance-law-california.html
BunsenBurner… have you ever read about the1994 case of Booska v. Patel?
The Half that was canceled:
https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a25916816/monterey-bay-half-marathon-camp-fire-donation/
Just saw your post, @teriwtt ! Somehow, it never registered on my CC “radar.”
Hope all is well with your move!!
Speaking of trees, we were removing dead brush and blackberries in the ravine next to our house, and one woman passing by had the nerve to yell that she would report us to the city for illegal tree cutting. Say wa???
Meanwhile, California continues to approve building new homes in high fire risk areas.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-burns-for-better-leaders-11547596344
LA County just approved a massive new development called Tejon Ranch. It is about halfway between Los Angeles and Bakersfield and in a high risk fire zone. Nevertheless, developers have deep pockets to pay off politicians and the approval went through last month.
Not only will this new development require massive fire protection and lead to very long commutes to those who live there causing more traffic nightmares, but we in California are being told we need to conserve water. If there isn’t enough water in California for the current population, why oh why are we building more housing for more people? It doesn’t make sense. The new governor wants to tax drinking water, FTLOG!
At some point, we just have to put up a ‘no vacancy’ sign here. The environment can only take so much.