The Southwest Lights Up Early
CNN covers the ever earlier start of the Western wildfire season:
(CNN) — A wind-whipped fire expanded to 450 acres early Wednesday in the hills above Santa Barbara, California, causing residents of 1,000 homes to flee and putting 2,000 other houses in peril, emergency officials said
The flames were burning within a mile of several homes, said Pat Wheatley with the Santa Barbara County Emergency Operations Center.
Ten businesses also were under an evacuation advisory.
…Also Wednesday, firefighters battled a human-caused brush fire in southern Arizona that authorities said had destroyed a handful of homes and injured one person.
The blaze has burned through 1,500 acres and destroyed three houses since it began Tuesday afternoon on private land west of Fort Huachuca, the U.S. Forest Service said in a statement Wednesday.
MSNBC has a more recent story on the fires.
Jill of Cookies in Heaven and skippy the bush kangaroo has had to evacuate – again.
Fort Huachuca was/is the home of the military interrogation school.
Meanwhile, in South Florida they keep having to close Alligator Alley because of smoke from a long burning swamp fire as drought conditions continue while the Panhandle keeps setting new rainfall records.
6 comments
Try moving a reluctant tortoise in order to evacuate. Ha!
cookie jill´s last blog post..Jesusita Fire
Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods is about just such a tortoise, who thinks he’s a god.
Stay safe and wear a mask.
Well…the Humane Society actually came and picked up my friend’s tortoise, Judy. Slapped with a duck tape ID, she readily came out of her “home” underneath the bush when she thought I had strawberries in store for her. The Humane Society even took the chickens.
cookie jill´s last blog post..Jesusita Fire
I noticed the Sundowners kicked in, and it sprang back to life. I’m having a hard time believing that after last year, people haven’t been clearing brush.
That’s good news on the critters, though.
Actually LOTS of people have been clearing brush, but there are these large chunks of mountainous land that haven’t been cleared and when burning embers start flying, they land where they may.
I think we should hire a fleet of brush clearing goats to go back into hiking country and get to work…I also think that they should have an even stricter building code for these foothill areas. You want to build there…well, you’ll be required to use only certain fire retardant materials AND have a moratorium on the freakin’ size. 7,000+ square feet up in the winding hillls is a b****h to protect.
cookie jill´s last blog post..Saint Barbara
They might want to look at the new codes down in San Diego county. They refused to give a guy an occupancy permit for his new house because he had two potted cedars by his front door. Nothing built under the new codes burned in the last fire, although their neighbors did.
Goats are good. They are easy to raise, but you’ll need a good herder to deal with the hills, or you’ll end up with a goat problem.