About Us
Mission Statement
Rules of Conduct
 
Name:
Pswd:
Remember Me
Register
 

I can haz blog?
Author: TriSec    Date: 11/17/2018 13:28:09

http://www.animalspot.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Pictures-of-Guinea-Pig-Memes.png



So, my new schedule includes a Saturday off for the forseeable future. (Ah, the perks of management - a weekend day!) So I'm hoping to get back to my previous Saturday standards. I've long been able to bang out Ask a Vet in about 20 minutes or so every Tuesday, so...

Today, we'll talk about fire. Specifically, the "Camp" fire in California. While I may have joked about it earlier on Facebook (you could look it up), it's no laughing matter.

I've worked with folks from California over the years, and we in the East simply have no concept of how massive these fires can be. Here's an example. In Boston, this would be considered a big brush fire:

https://media.necn.com/images/652*367/fire202.jpg


It's circa 2016, at was burning in the Back Bay Fens (near Fenway Park) for a few hours one fine April morn.

Now consider this.

The city of Boston is not that big. Overall, we have approximately 90 square miles that fall within city limits, but only 48 square miles of that is land; the rest is ocean. Doing some math, that translates into roughly 30,720 acres.

Here are some older maps, dating back to November 11, showing the extent of the major fires in California.

Camp Fire:
https://cdn.abcotvs.com/dip/images/4704234_CAMP_FIRE_SIZE_INFO_MAP_1116.jpg


Woolsey Fire:
https://cdn.abcotvs.com/dip/images/4704231_HIILL_WOOLSEY_SIZE_INFO_MAP_1116.jpg


The Camp Fire today is 142,000 acres...or roughly 4.6 Cities of Boston. You can check this yourself, there is an interactive graphic.

Climate Change is likely a great contributor to these fires; California has been in an extensive drought since 2011, and in the midst of the fires of course shows no signs of abating.

Going back to that math, the Camp Fire can also be interpreted as 221 square miles, almost exactly the same land area as the Cities of Chicago or Tuscon. Chicago has experienced a major fire event in its history, but the entire city was not burnt to the ground.

Try to imagine your local fire department trying to deal with a fire of this magnitude and I'm sure your mind will boggle.

And then we have our President, trying to be helpful.


Donald Trump has again blamed California’s wildfires on mismanagement of forests, reiterating the criticism on the eve of a visit to the most devastated area of the state.

Fox News asked Trump if he thought climate change had contributed to California’s wildfires. Trump said: “Maybe it contributes a little bit. The big problem we have is management.”

In an interview scheduled to air Sunday, Trump added: “You need management,” and then said: “I’m not saying that in a negative way, a positive I’m just saying the facts.”

It echoes Trump’s tweet a week ago, in which he threatened to withhold federal payments to California and claimed its forest management is “so poor”.

Trump is scheduled to visit the devastated northern California town of Paradise on Saturday. A fire there has killed at least 63 people in the country’s deadliest wildfire in a century, and more than 600 people are missing or unaccounted for.

Trump had previously said via Twitter that there was “no reason for these massive deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”








 
 

5 comments (Latest Comment: 11/19/2018 14:44:34 by Scoopster)
   Perma Link

Share This!

Furl it!
Spurl
NewsVine
Reddit
Technorati