Posts from — August 2009

The fire in the Angeles National Forest has now burned over 105,000 acres and at least 74 structures. It is 5% contained.

The Station Fire started off Angeles Crest Highway (SR 2) about one mile above Angeles Crest Fire Station around 3:30pm [PDT]Wednesday August 26, 2009.

Two Los Angeles County firefighters have died in a motor vehicle accident. In addition there have been 3 civilians burned, and one firefighter treated for heat exhaustion.

Currently there are 44 hand crews, 399 engines, 43 water tenders, 48 dozers, 8 air tankers, 13 helicopters, and 3,655 total personnel assigned to the fire.

Among the aircraft is at least one DC-10, capable of 12,000 gallon drops.

The Whittier Daily News has a short explainer on the fire creating its own weather, including winds.

The facilities on Mount Wilson are safe for the moment, but there are no guarantees.

Links: InciWeb, LA Times, KTLA, and Pasadena Star-News [Note that the InciWeb is extremely slow to respond, and you will probably get a reset message]

Maps: LA Times fire map and the Enplan Wildfire Viewer

[For more information go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Fires” for all of the posts related to wildfires on this site.]

Position: 19.4 N 109.6 W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [320°] near 9 mph [15 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 155 mph [250 kph].
Wind Gusts: 190 mph [305 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 140 miles [220 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 45 miles [95 km].
Minimum central pressure: 931 mb.

It is 245 miles [390 km] South of Cabo San Lucas Mexico.

The government of Mexico has issued a Hurricane Warning for the southern portion of the Baja California peninsula. The watch extends southward from Bahia Magdalena on the West Coast around the southern tip of the peninsula and northward to San Evaristo on the East Coast.

This a small, intense storm in the Pacific, that might produce some rain for Southern California, but will be a major problem for the people of Baja. It is more of a huge tornado that this point.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Via Atrios, a New York Times business piece: Owner of Orange County Register May File for Bankruptcy

Freedom Communications, owner of The Orange County Register and 30 other daily newspapers, is expected to file for bankruptcy this week under a plan that will hand its publications to its lenders, people briefed on the matter said on Sunday.
…

The majority of Freedom is still owned by the Hoiles family, whose patriarch, R. C. Hoiles, founded the company seven decades ago as an outlet for his libertarian philosophy…

Among the papers published by Freedom Communications are: the Santa Rosa Press Gazette, the Crestview News Bulletin, the Northwest Florida Daily News [AKA Local Puppy Trainer], the Destin Log, the Walton Sun, the Washington County News, the Holmes County Times Advertiser, the Panama City News Herald, the Port St. Joe Star, and the Apalachicola Times. With the exception of the Gannett-owned Pensacola News Journal, that is pretty much every newspaper on the Panhandle in the Central Time Zone. If you look at a map of Florida, it is the western section South of Alabama.

And people wonder why people in this part of the state seem so “uniformly uninformed”.

Update: They filed today 9/01/09.

Update from the KTLA link:

“Two Los Angeles County firefighters were killed Sunday fighting the “Station Fire” in a car accident near Mt. Gleason, just south of Acton.”

The Station Fire in the Angeles National Forest has now burned about 42,500 acres, destroyed at least 18 structures, and is 5% contained.

The fire started off Angeles Crest Highway (SR 2) about one mile above Angeles Crest Fire Station around 3:30pm [PDT], Wednesday August 26, 2009.

There have been 3 civilians burned in the fire so far, and one firefighter treated for heat exhaustion.

Currently there are 124 engines, 20 bulldozers, 8 air tankers, 12 helicopters, and 2,200 total personnel assigned to the fire.

Among the aircraft is at least one DC-10, capable of 12,000 gallon drops.

InciWeb notes:

Very heavy fuels of ceanothus, chamise, scrub oak and manzanita across the entire fire area, 15 to 20 feet in height with Big Cone Douglas Fir in the drainage bottoms. Fuels have not experienced any significant large fire activity in the past 40 years.
…

Fire behavior was extremely active with rapid rates of spread and flame lengths up to 80 feet.
…

Mandatory Evacuations are in effect for over 10,000 homes. The fire is threatening the Mount Wilson Communications Facilities and Observatory and may reach these locations this burning period.

Links: InciWeb, LA Times, KTLA, and Pasadena Star-News

Maps: LA Times fire map and the Enplan Wildfire Viewer

[For more information go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Fires” for all of the posts related to wildfires on this site.]

Position: 17.0 N 107.2 W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [305°] near 7 mph [11 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 145 mph [230 kph].
Wind Gusts: 180 mph [290 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 70 miles [110 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 25 miles [40 km].
Minimum central pressure: 940 mb ↓.

It is 445 miles [715 km] South-Southeast of Cabo San Lucas Mexico.

The government of Mexico has issued a Hurricane Watch for the southern portion of the Baja California peninsula. The watch extends southward from Bahia Magdalena on the West Coast around the southern tip of the peninsula and northward to San Evaristo on the East Coast.

This a small, intense storm in the Pacific, that might produce some rain for Southern California, but will be a major problem for the people of Baja.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

CBS posted an AP story on California wildfires. They are popping up everywhere since the temperatures went up and the humidity dropped.

CalFire Incident Information and the Enplan Wildfire Viewer show them popping up the length of the state.

The fire conditions are so extreme at the moment that almost anything, a hot catalytic converter in the grass, sparks from a string trimmer, the exhaust from an off-road vehicle, as well as lightning and human stupidity can cause a wildfire to erupt.  The brush is like a lake of gasoline, waiting for anything to become an inferno.

Update: Here’s the InciWeb on the Station Fire in the Angeles National Forest that is causing the most current concern as it just exploded today and is a possible threat to thousands of structures at the edge of the Forest.

This is the latest LA Times reporting on the fire which they identify as the La Cañada-Flintridge fire.

[For more information go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Fires” for all of the posts related to wildfires on this site.]

The BBC reports on the competition: Murdoch attack on ‘dominant’ BBC

News Corporation’s James Murdoch has said that a “dominant” BBC threatens independent journalism in the UK.

The chairman of the media giant in Europe, which owns the Times and Sun, also blamed the UK government for regulating the media “with relish”.

“The expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision,” he told the Edinburgh Television Festival.

The scope of the BBC’s activities and ambitions was “chilling”, he added.

Organisations like the BBC, funded by the licence fee, as well as Channel 4 and Ofcom, made it harder for other broadcasters to survive, he argued.
…

[Read more →]

It wasn’t the storm, it was the levees.

It wasn’t Nature, it was man.

The Weather Underground’s Hurricane Katrina tracking map.

An animation of the National Hurricane Center’s tracking maps.

The track on Google map from the Central Florida Hurricane Center so you can see exactly where the storm struck, and it wasn’t New Orleans.

Katrina did have top sustained winds of 175 mph with a pressure of 902 millibars, a Category 5 storm, but that was in the central Gulf of Mexico. It came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane to the East of New Orleans. There was minimal wind damage in the city from the hurricane.

Wikipedia has a nice article on Katrina, without going totally technical on the science behind hurricanes.

[Read more →]

The Miami Herald reports that Charlie Crist names ex-chief of staff George LeMieux to Senate seat

Gov. Charlie Crist chose his political shadow and former chief of staff, George LeMieux, to stand in as Florida’s U.S. senator until Crist can seek the seat himself in the 2010 election.

Crist has said that he wanted his appointment to have some time to get ready before Congress reconvenes on Sept. 8.

Mr. LeMieux has never been elected to office. He operates a ‘consulting” business assisting the Seminoles with their gaming interests, you know, like Jack Abramoff, among other things, I’m sure.

It’s so insightful of “Chuckles” to decide there was no need to appoint someone who has experience as a legislator to the Senate. George is a lobbyist, so he has passed a lot of legislation, and he’s wealthy, so he’ll be right at home in the Senate.

Position: 31.4 N 74.9 W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North-Northeast [020°] near 12 mph [19 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph [65 kph].
Wind Gusts: 50 mph [80 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 175 miles [280 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1006 mb ↓.

It is 265 miles [425 km] South of Cape Hatteras North Carolina.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for the North Carolina coast from Cape Lookout northward to Duck including the Ablemarle and Pamlico sounds.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

The Pump House Gang

Food, Mom, we need food!

[Editor: Two tuxedos and a silver tabby, that their mother wishes would take the hint and start eating cat food. These are the last of the kittens and this was taken well away from them as they would scatter like leaves in a gale if I tried to approach close enough to get a good picture.]

Friday Ark

CNN reports that Health-care bill could mandate insurance for illegal immigrants, report says

(CNN) — Immigrants living illegally in the United States could be mandated to have health insurance under the proposed health-care reform bill, but would be ineligible to receive subsidies to afford such coverage, a report released Tuesday by the Congressional Research Service says.

And how are they supposed to buy this insurance? They already pay FICA withholding taxes that they can’t benefit from because they aren’t legal residents, so now they are going to be required to pay for insurance they can’t use, or afford, because of this current illogical mishmash of a bill.

I haven’t seen a mess this bad since MS-DOS 6.0. Someone should have told Congress that if you’re going to make sausage, you shouldn’t throw the casing in the grinder.

the Water Department is one of those wasteful, inefficient government agencies. 😈

Four hours, folks, four hours from when I called to when they left, after verifying there was a leak; calling the other utilities to locate their lines in the area because digging was going to be necessary; digging down to the water main through the tree roots; fixing the pipe; filling the hole; and heading back to the barn.

Earlier this week a circuit breaker popped on a transformer on the next block. People were without power from 8AM, until 3PM. Resetting the circuit breaker requires one guy with a long, non-conductive pole that has a hook on top, to use the hook and grab a ring and pull down, but it took the private utility company 7 hours to make that happen.

The public utilities still have people to do this kind of work. The private utilities have cut their work force to increase profits, and people have to wait… in the heat… and humidity… while the ice cream melts.

Sorry, I forgot, the government is wasteful and inefficient, right?