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Wanted: Your fire 411
Food for Thought has some fire information sources for you:
We’ve posted this Cal Fire web site in our announcement box. Because it’s a California-wide site, it’s a bit circuitous to navigate. But it’s a good start.
Also, we offer this Google Earth Map with dots that represent area fires. (This requires high-speed Internet access and a download of Google Earth.) Once on Google Earth, you can type in your address and see fire locations in your area.
One more site that has helpful fire information is yubanet.com
If you have additional fire-information sources, feel free to post those in the comments section below. Or e-mail them to us at attndoni@gmail.com.
As important as data resources, we have each other. We have the human ability to tell what we’ve observed and/or heard regarding the fires.
In real time.
I invite you to post your fire updates, alerts and even questions in Food for Thought’s comment section below.
I also invite you to post tips or suggestions regarding packing and safety for those who might be in harm’s way.
In short, if you have anything to add that’s remotely related to the surrounding fires that you believe can do some good and/or help keep people safe, please, share.
Note: With this invitation comes a plea: Only provide information you know to be accurate, first-hand accounts. Unsubstantiated rumors can cause more harm and angst than assistance and comfort. Please include as many specific details as possible. (Who, what, where, why, when and how are always good basic guidelines.)
Meanwhile, at our place, smoke chokes, cloaks and tightly envelopes our property.
I step outside and strain my eyes to see familiar hillsides, oaks and mazanitas. They’re gone. For three days now they’ve remained invisable behind a ghostly, smoke-screened white-out.
It’s as if our home, and everything except our most foreshortened groundscape, is an island. Beyond that, the rest of world has slipped into a milky, charred-stenched abyss.
It stings to breathe. We open and close doors quickly to prevent yet more smoke from entering the house than what’s already seeped inside.
Although we can’t actually see the heavy planes that rumble overhead, we can hear them. We have no idea where they’re going.
Kind people call and e-mail us. Are we OK? Do we need a place to stay, or a place to stash important belongings? We’re so fortunate for such concern, but we’re fine. Thank you for asking.
The last we heard the Igo fire in the Zogg Mine area is considered contained. That’s more than five miles north-west of our place. Also, at last check, the Platina fire has grown to more than 2,000 acres, but that’s about 30 miles west of us.
We feel such gratitude for our current state of safety.
Now I worry most about the scores of north state people, homes and thousands of acres in and around the current fire locations: Whiskeytown, Democrat, Pine Fire, Venture, Donkey Mine Road, Bullskin Ridge, Kirkman, Shingletown, Platina and Igo/Ono Zogg Mine Road.
I feel compassion and hope for those people and their homes. I feel concern and pride for the maxed-out firefighter warriors and chiefs.
May they all be safe and sound.
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While this wouldn’t help everyone, I thought this was a good tip if one’s house is in fire danger … if the item can withstand water, place it in the pool. Of course that wouldn’t apply to photographs or documents, but one might be able to save a few things.
During the fire a few years back in Palo Cedro we grabbed the Kids,pets and photoalbums..Today I would grab the computer and any CDS that contain precious Family Photos…Now is the time to make a good backup of your hardrive and save a copy away from your home (bank vault,or family member)
and don’t forget to thank a fireman….
Excellent idea about putting water tolerable items into the pool. However, if your neighborhood goes up in flames, looters will soon find that stuff in the pool and be gone with it.
doni thank you for your great coverage of the fires. without your site, we wouldn’t have up to date info and the photos that we do have. your concern, caring and ability to pull this together (bruce, too) is so appreciated. thank you again and my family’s prayers go out to you and the hundreds of others who are in the midst of the smoke and fire.
Doni, Thank you, too, for all the great links! I couldn’t find this information anywhere else. Thank goodness for you and Bruce - offering us great tips and great resources!
Finally got through to the incident command for the local fires yesterday 225-2510 after the newspaper introduced the 600 acre Barley Fire west of Grave’s Ranch into the mix on their updates. The wonderful fire person told me exactly where and what the activity was: 2.25 miles up the ridge from the Grave’s ranch house, burning slowly in the chemise on Anderson Spring Ridge. He also told me that you can go to their office on Cypress (they’re on the left side of the building) and look at their maps to see where what’s burning. The Barley Fire’s been burning for several days.. This is the closest for us, about 4 miles northwest as the crow flies.