Dr. Pournelle has posted: "Niven has made it back to his house. It's intact. Everything around them is black and burned, and the house smells of smoke, but it's intact. Out to the east, Tim Powers place is safe..."

- I suspect mental images of "major urban area" vary - by LA standards there aren't any in Idaho, but an Idaho high schooler might likely name some? - Nasty to remember a really big fire has the energy of a Hiroshima bomb maybe every 20 minutes.

I think I'll just sit down somewhere quiet.

"It is the business of the future to be dangerous, and it is amoung the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties." - A N W

Still waiting to hear from Nancy Holder. Her house is in the Scripps Ranch area, but isn't listed among the blocks burned. I'm guessing she's evacuated and still waiting for an all clear before she goes back.

Also unfriendly to modem users is the Forest Service's historical fire map (2 MB) - indicating both the active fires, and every previous fire in this calendar year. There have been many more small fires than I realized.

MKK

One firefighter described the fire as "an incandescent hurricane."

Stefan, I actually have already found it, and have a week scheduled there in February, which is much to far off. (They had fires there too, in 1998.)

Clicking through the series of photos Teresa linked, I found the caption on the third photo interesting: "A firefighting prison inmate takes cover from flames threatening homes in Devore, Calif." Are prisoners on the fireline new, or simply something I hadn't heard about before now?

http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=1032

which is an article by Mike Davis (of City of Quartz fame) about the demographics of whose houses are being hit.

There's a truly striking photo here at Eschaton, which I found via Calpundit.

I also started a new emergency newsgroup on SFF Net for people to touch bases, etc.:

http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=xover&group=sff.discuss.emergency

or

sff.discuss.emergency

Those of you who read SFF Net, be sure to refresh your newsreader's list of newsgroups to see it.

A decade ago was the great Malibu and Altadena fire, which killed several and did $1 Billion property damage.

We were 2 blocks from the mandatory evacuation line. I sent my wife and son several miles down from the foothills where we live, with boxes of tax records and all our writing on diskettes.

As I was the local elected Town Councilman, I stayed behind to help my neighborhood. A fire marshall deputized me. I delegated dub-tasks to other neighbors, including closing off West Altadena to car traffic except for one street, which I monitored, demanding proof that drivers either lived here, or were pre-arranged to assist evacuation.

I turned away several hundred carloads of people who just wanted the enetertainment value of watching my neighbors' homes burn down.

Many cars I turned away went a block downhill, and then the passengers walked uphill to watch, often with bottles of beer or joints in hand.

I was most shocked when I had to send away two women pushing baby carriages with infants in them -- rolling their babies TOWARDS the fire. I explained that the infants' lungs were more sensitive to smoke.

"Think of it as evolution in action."

This is a great tragedy for California. But a fine backdrop for Governor-elect Arnold to grandstand with his buddy Emperor Bush II. *sigh*

-- Jonathan Vos Post

The allegedly mentally ill man was caught when his fire was just four feet across. That fire was doused, and the man is held on $50,000 bail.

The 1993 fire, by the way, was started by an allegedly mentally ill illegal immigrant Chinese man, who (in that same Eaton Canyon) strated a fire about 3 a.m. to keep warm. He could not read the English signs for severe fire hazard.

He did, to his credit, try to put it out as it spread, and was burned. Hence he was not tried for murder.

This puts our transit strike (all commuter trains and busses), now in its 3rd week, and our supermarket union workers strike (3rd week) into perspective.

I can't grumble about the extra 2 hours to 3 hours a day I spend driving my 14-year-old to and from University, because the busses are out. Or that many of my college students miss classes and exams because of bus trouble. I just create and give makeup exams in my unpaid nonclassroom time, and am thankful that I have a chance to teach at all.

Bye for now...

Oh, in my pre-coffee morning bleariness I forgot the mention the Fantasy aspect of the arrest of the arsonist in Altadena.

He says that he was told to start a fire by two people. "My dead father, and Mother Nature."

M. Night Shmayalan would ask "what if he were telling the truth..." and get a big budget... Critics would complain that it was Stephen King territory.

The flames aren't actually visible in the satellite photos. In the higher-resolution versions, you can see that the locations of the fires are plotted on top of the photographs in red.

Thanks, I stand corrected. It's still quite a sight. I'm just very grateful that everyone I know out there appears to be okay. Thanks Teresa for the link to those status reports.

Thus, the Southern Californian mind. :)

But it wasn't until I saw the Big Map that I saw how we were situated wrt the LA and Mexican fires.

Inside an Arsonist's Mind:
Anger the Likely Motivation Behind California Fires