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Oregon fires
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zorroloco
09-Sep-20, 13:41

Oregon fires
and northern Cali. No joke. Washington too...

bad shit
chaz-
09-Sep-20, 14:21

...is there much very near to where you live? I've been receiving so pretty scary-awesome photos from my son in Salem.
zorroloco
09-Sep-20, 15:07

Chaz
It's within a dozen miles in one case. others are further away. the atmosphere is apocalyptic with smoke... we haven't gotten ash yet, but my friend's a few miles away in Lake Oswego are.

My mom's old town of Talent Ore down south by Medford is basically wiped out.
zorroloco
09-Sep-20, 17:54

m.youtube.com
brigadecommander
09-Sep-20, 19:03

scary video
That's a scary video Z. Be safe please. Not that much different then Science fiction it seems. Only in the Sci fi version, Humanity gets rescued in a peculiar way. We have no such help coming to our rescue. We're on our own.

play loud;www.youtube.com.


ps; That's why i get so mad at the right wing base..They deny Global warming. They call the Virus a hoax.They deny systemic racism. They deny the problem with assault weapons.The would deny health-care to Millions. And the very people they follow could care less about them.They just want money and power. And yet we allow these liars into our clubs I say Kick em out on their asses. Start fighting back before it's too late. We cannot give them any forums to spread fake, false news and propaganda. We are experiencing just the beginning of the climate crises. The Next generation will get hit hard. And the next......who knows.
zorroloco
13-Sep-20, 06:06

aqicn.org
stalhandske
13-Sep-20, 07:13

<And yet we allow these liars into our clubs I say Kick em out on their asses.>
That won't help a yota, only make things worse. Much better to meet up with them and talk!
zorroloco
13-Sep-20, 07:14

Stal
Why talk with liars?
stalhandske
13-Sep-20, 08:06

Zorro
<Why talk with liars? >

Many of them turn out not to be. It even happens some time that the other party is wrong. (Did I say that?  ). Most often, however, there is no real lie but a profound misunderstanding. Which is why discussion issues should be clearly defined and backed up by fact.
zorroloco
13-Sep-20, 09:41

Stal
That’s fine.

But you didn’t answer the question.

Why talk with liars?
stalhandske
13-Sep-20, 22:24

Zorro
<But you didn’t answer the question.
Why talk with liars?>

One of these issues that are typically impossible to answer in any way that would make progress.
-How do you define these liars?
-Who are these liars that I may talk to?
-I can still talk to liars if they don't lie about what we talk about

See what I mean?

zorroloco
14-Sep-20, 04:45

Stal
“-How do you define these liars?”

People who lie a lot about important things.

“-Who are these liars that I may talk to?”

trump and his zealot supporters like Ihs and Isaac

“-I can still talk to liars if they don't lie about what we talk about”

Yes. But how can you trust someone who lies consistently?


See what I mean?
hogfysshe
15-Sep-20, 20:13

smoke from the west coast fires has reached the east coast. the sun looked a little like jupiter the past two evenings, here. bands in shades of orange and orange/grey/red/brown. easy to look at. not bright at all. I watched it set over atlantic saltwater through the smoke filter.
zorroloco
17-Sep-20, 05:40

A Desperate Bid for Survival as Fire Closed In on an Oregon Mountain Town

After wildfires left them trapped on the shores of a reservoir near Detroit, Ore., dozens of people and nine firefighters mounted a last stand, hoping for a miracle.

By Jack Healy and Mike Baker
Sept. 17, 2020, 3:00 a.m. ET
People gathered at a boat dock in Detroit, Ore., in hopes of escaping by helicopter.
SALEM, Ore. — They were trapped. As walls of fire and smoke encircled their town and blocked the roads, the last people in Detroit, Ore., trickled onto a boat launch beside a half-drained reservoir — residents and vacationers, barefoot children in pajamas, exhausted firefighters. There were two people on bikes. One man rode up on a powerboat.

Seven miles to the west, one path to safety out of the mountains along Highway 22 was blocked by flaming trees and boulders as the largest of 30 wildfires consuming Oregon raced through the canyons. Thirteen miles to the east, the other way out of town was covered with the wreckage of another seething blaze.

So as a black dawn broke one morning last week, the 80 people trapped in the lakeside vacation town on the evergreen slopes of the Cascades huddled together in a blizzard of ash, waiting for a rescue by air.

Jane James sprawled out on the pavement with her two dogs. Greg Sheppard, a former wildland firefighter, borrowed a phone to call his wife. Some people prayed. Others cried. The children, brushing off the threat, ate Oreos and played in the parking lot.

kencko
Firefighters assigned each person a number that would determine who would get on the first helicopter dispatched by the National Guard. They spoke with a matter-of-fact calm, even as some privately began to fear the worst and tried to get messages of love to their families.

Roberto DelaMontaigne, a 25-year-old volunteer firefighter, shoved his personal worries aside as he cleared away bushes to create a fire break. Laura Harris, a volunteer firefighter working alongside her husband, wondered to herself: If the helicopters cannot get in, what would their daughter’s life be as an orphan?

Through the din of wind and rattling trees, the crews could occasionally hear the whirring blades of a helicopter above. On the edge of a makeshift landing circle, with strobe lights to guide choppers in, they continued working by hacking down trees. Then the news arrived over their radios: The helicopters could not land.

Nobody was coming to their rescue.

As walls of fire and smoke blocked the roads out of town, the last people in Detroit trickled onto a boat launch.
As walls of fire and smoke blocked the roads out of town, the last people in Detroit trickled onto a boat launch.Cindy Neblett
Among the hopeful evacuees to the area beside a half-drained reservoir were two people who arrived on bicycles.
Among the hopeful evacuees to the area beside a half-drained reservoir were two people who arrived on bicycles.Cindy Neblett
A frantic effort to escape

Solitude and self-reliance are embedded in the DNA of the tiny neighboring towns of Detroit and Idanha.

The communities were once logging towns with three sawmills, where longtime residents said it was common to see locals walk into the post office or country store slinging a chain saw on their backs. But the decline of the timber industry turned Detroit and Idanha into tourist towns and bedroom communities for the state capital, Salem, about an hour’s drive down the hill.

Life there was full of mountain-town contradictions: Expansive second homes, squat cottages and people in trailers on the edge of poverty. Neighbors who put their pickups into park to chat when they drove past each other and recluses who shunned society.

Residents cherished the mountains and lake as an Edenic mini-Yellowstone, but there also was the time a few years back when Idanha considered dissolving itself; nobody wanted to run for office and a previous mayor had been charged with meth possession.

Gout
Summers brought a blur of boaters, bikers and vacation rentals. In the fall, Detroit Lake was drained and the 400 or so full-time residents spent winters embracing the quiet and trying to hang on economically even when weeks of blizzards buried them in 12 feet of snow.

As far as firefighters were concerned, the autumn rains and snow could not arrive too soon this year. Smoke and small fires were billowing through the summer, and the Douglas firs that mark Oregon’s license plates had become a carpet of tinder, ready to light the Willamette National Forest ablaze. Making it worse was the climate change that had intensified the drought and heat raking the West.

On Sept. 6, the day before their world exploded, the volunteers at the Idanha-Detroit Rural Fire Protection District were worried. The Beachie Creek Fire had been smoldering for a couple of weeks about 10 miles away in remote terrain so treacherous that crews had not been able to fully subdue the blaze. They met to discuss their wildfire attack plans.

When winds started to pick up the next night, some went out to do patrols to look for spot fires and downed trees. The power at the station blinked out.

Blinkist
Then a call came in: Fire was coming over the mountain.

As the Beachie Creek Fire clambered up canyons and sprinted across ridgelines, another huge wildfire farther east, the Lionshead Fire, began pressing toward the Highway 22 canyon.

The authorities decided: They had to evacuate the towns. Now.

After midnight, Don Tesdal, a volunteer firefighter, strapped his four children into his Suburban and drove through his Detroit neighborhood yelling: “Everybody wake up! Fire! Fire!” Bedroom lights winked on between the trees. Neighbors in their underwear started pounding on doors.

At around 4:30 a.m., Cindy and Larry Neblett of Pinckney, Mich., were sleeping in their R.V. outside Detroit when they were jolted awake by thumping on the side of the vehicle.

“You have to evacuate immediately … fires all around you … you have to leave now!” the person shouted.

kencko
The couple was in the Northwest for their first major R.V. road trip since Mr. Neblett retired six years ago. They had spent time exploring the territory around Portland and were headed south to see places like Crater Lake and the Redwoods when they settled for the night in the Detroit area.

The first waves of evacuees managed to navigate the two-lane highway as their cars were pelted with burning branches and pine cone fireballs. They crawled under tilting tree trunks and climbed out of their cars to try to push fallen trees out of their way.

By the time Mr. Sheppard, the former firefighter, left the open field in Detroit where he had spent the night, plumes of flame were rocketing hundreds of feet into the air. He and a friend caravanned west toward Salem before boulders and trees closed their path. He prayed: Don’t pop a tire.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Mr. Sheppard said to himself.

Travis and Jane James were rushing down with their two dogs when their Jetta station wagon slammed into a boulder and ruined a front tire. Mr. James grabbed the spare out of the trunk, but the wrench to pry off the lug nuts was missing.

Gout
Kristy McMorlan and her husband also encountered the treacherous rockslides, crashing into a 15-inch boulder. They changed a tire on the roadside as fire crackled in the swaying trees around them.

One by one, the evacuees realized there was no choice. They had to seek refuge in Detroit.

Flames on Friday in the aftermath of the Beachie Creek Fire near Detroit.
Flames on Friday in the aftermath of the Beachie Creek Fire near Detroit.Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
A tricycle was among the debris in a small park along Detroit Avenue on Friday.
A tricycle was among the debris in a small park along Detroit Avenue on Friday.Mark Ylen/Albany Democrat-Herald, via Associated Press
Preparing a last stand

Directed by firefighters to gather at the Mongold boat launch on the reservoir, people kept arriving, waiting under the glow of orange smoke and falling debris.

AARP
Firefighters initially held out hope that highway crews would be able to clear the blocked roadways to provide a path out, but that option was deemed too dangerous. With the prospect of helicopters arriving, firefighters were so eager to seize the opportunity that they had people lie on the pavement to avoid flying debris, their faces away from the landing zone, protecting their heads but ready to run into the helicopter at a moment’s notice. The fire kept getting closer.

“It’s all around us,” said Ms. Harris, one of the volunteer firefighters, as one of her colleagues swung an ax to knock down the tree next to her. “There’s nowhere here that doesn’t have fire. Wind of about 60 miles per hour is pushing it toward us.”

Then, as reality sank in that the helicopters were not coming, the firefighters prepared a last stand.

They decided to line up their fire trucks as a makeshift barrier between the people and the encroaching flames and blast out their water supply like an encircled army firing its last shots.

One of the rigs carried about 1,000 gallons of water. Another had maybe 750 gallons. A third had 300 gallons. It was not nearly enough to beat back flames stoked by winds as high as 60 miles per hour, let alone the deadly thicket of smoke they would bring. They determined that trying to draw water from the drained reservoir, filled with debris, would not work.

But the reservoir also offered the best chance of survival. If the flames got too close, firefighters planned to move everyone onto the wooden docks or, if necessary, into the choppy waters.

The crews also began preparations for longer-term survival. A firefighter rushed to his threatened home to clear cupboards of supplies. Ms. McMorlan returned to her abandoned camping trailer, grabbing all the food she could.

At around 4:30 a.m., Cindy and Larry Neblett of Pinckney, Mich., were sleeping in their R.V. outside Detroit when they were jolted awake by thumping on the side of the vehicle.
At around 4:30 a.m., Cindy and Larry Neblett of Pinckney, Mich., were sleeping in their R.V. outside Detroit when they were jolted awake by thumping on the side of the vehicle.Cindy Neblett
kencko
‘It’s go time’

At the boat docks, someone from the U.S. Forest Service arrived with a map and began talking with the fire crew. There was a chance of escape. Firefighters had “punched a hole” by clearing debris from a Forest Service road threaded through the Lionshead Fire, farther northeast toward Mount Hood. They had opened a trap door.

“It’s go time,” the firefighters at Mongold told one another.

The route was probably clear enough to pass, they believed, but if they did not go now, the window could close.

Mr. DelaMontaigne sprang into action. He had dreamed about becoming a firefighter since he was a boy, and had moved to Idanha to try to put a turbulent part of his life behind him. He lived at the fire station, where he spent his days cleaning fire rigs and going on calls. Now he put on his “fire voice” — confident and loud — to rouse the crowd.

“Guys, pack up your stuff!” he yelled. “Let’s get out of here.”

The firefighters mobilized the caravan of vehicles and headed back into Detroit before turning left on Forest Road 46. The road was thick with smoke and covered in small branches.

Blinkist
During a one-mile stretch, there were flames on both sides of the road, with the heat penetrating the vehicles of the convoy.

Then, the worst of the smoke began to clear, and blue skies emerged.

“Oh praise the Lord, we’re going to make it,” Ms. McMorlan said. Mr. DelaMontaigne allowed himself a puff on his vape. Ms. James could not stop crying.

Jane James, right, and her husband, Travis James, sheltered in a hotel in Salem, Ore., on Sunday. During their escape from Detroit, they drove 12 miles on a wheel rim.
Jane James, right, and her husband, Travis James, sheltered in a hotel in Salem, Ore., on Sunday. During their escape from Detroit, they drove 12 miles on a wheel rim.Kristina Barker for The New York Times
The Red Cross has placed some of the evacuees from the wildfires in Marion County at a hotel in Salem. Evacuees have set up their own donation table for extra items including food, drinks and clothing.
The Red Cross has placed some of the evacuees from the wildfires in Marion County at a hotel in Salem. Evacuees have set up their own donation table for extra items including food, drinks and clothing.Kristina Barker for The New York Times
Gout
Later, they would learn that Idanha had survived but almost all of Detroit had burned. City Hall and the fire station, marinas, the motel and the community church, the house where Mr. Sheppard had lived for 41 years, and all but 20 or 30 homes — all gone. No one had died, but eight people from nearby towns and elsewhere across Oregon were killed.

As the convoy split up and people headed for motels, shelters and relatives’ homes, Ms. Harris and her husband prepared to return to Detroit to get their truck and all the personal belongings they had collected.

But by then the fire chief had emerged with a warning: The road was now too dangerous to pass. There was no going back.
zorroloco
18-Sep-20, 07:03

Raining
Blessed blessed rain...

Ahhhhhhh....the sound of raindrops on the roof at 2am was so comforting
vocihc
18-Sep-20, 07:07

stories
you shared, ty...



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