The smoke is so thick you can cut it will a knife. Makes it hard to breath and literally to catch a breath. If you don’t have air conditioning and you can’t get out of the smoke, wet a rag and tie it around your face, it will allow you to breath without getting the ash particles in your lungs. Drink lots of water.
Rim Fire
Reports are that 179,000 have burned, I’m still waiting for the news sites online to catch up. It’s so frustrating that the search engines are filtering out information about the fire. In fact, channel 10 reported they are having trouble getting access. Just our transparent government at work again.
I live right here and I’m having trouble getting news on the Rim Fire. They have called in the feds and FEMA is at the helm, so you can be sure to get less news, not more. Why don’t they have regular updates on channel 8? After all this is community news. My Motherlode is doing an admirable job of trying to keep people informed but depending on the writer, you have to read between the lines. One of their writers had me so upset after read one story, I was scared stiff. It’s important to consider the source and I take everything I read at My Motherlode with a grain of salt.
I don’t know about you, but fire terrifies me. This has been one of my worst nightmares. The Rim Fire is a case of all sorts of things going wrong all at once. The humidity was terribly low, with low precipitation for the entire year and to be frank, a horrible job of managing our forests.
Fire retardant drop (Photo credit: Coconino National Forest)
I’m sitting here at home in downtown Twain Harte and I’m worried about my chickens and my neighbors chickens, our pets, the deer and the butterflies. Don’t get me wrong – I want the firefighters to put out the fire as it grows closer and closer to threatening loved ones, but at what cost? They are dumping thousands of pounds of this bright red flame retardant out in front of the fire. It’s purpose is to slow down the fire, so that the firemen can get a handle on it.
After a fire, when all the ground cover has been burned, the forest comes alive again and renews itself. All it takes is time. It is truly amazing. However, by using this fire retardant on the fire we don’t know what the long-term effects will be. Will it get in the groundwater? Almost certainly. What are the chemicals in this stuff? Will it cause cancer? We simply don’t know.
Will this finish off the bees? I would never in a million years have described myself as an environmentalist. But there have been so many things done to us over the years without our knowledge, without any form of public discussion or acknowledgement and I think we had better have some talks before we destroy the earth entirely.
Ask questions. Get involved. Know the answers. Tell a friend.
Yes, I pray they stop the fire but if my house burns down, I will find another. We can’t buy another earth for any amount of money. Let’s be smart about things. I love Twain Harte, it’s my home. I don’t want to see it change, either because of a fire or because of fire retardant.
And what’s more is this fire retardant is designed to cling onto vegetation for years and will work to stop flames until washed away.
The retardant is also made up of a fertilizer to help vegetation grow again after a wildfire.
What could they do differently? First and foremost, those tending our forests need to actively pursue controlled burns. The native Americans knew all about how important it was to manage the risk of a forest fire with controlled burns to prevent nature from doing it herself.
Nature won’t be stingy about where to draw the line. What gets me is that we have these rules about “defensible space” around our homes up here, but that does us no good when a fire can spread over a hundred thousand acres in less than a week. At the very most, the 100′ barrier around my home will slow the fire by an hour – it surely won’t prevent a blaze like this from taking my home or my possessions. It’s far better to preventively reduce combustive material with controlled burns on a regular basis.
The environmentalists are at it again, now they want to take away all sorts of things that make no sense at all, unless your in it for the money, which they are.
In the name of restoring the park’s natural setting, a new proposal by the National Park Service would ban bicycle and horse rentals in Yosemite Valley and remove the ice rink at Curry Village. Swimming pools at the Yosemite Lodge and Ahwahnee Hotel would be torn out. Rafting rentals on the Merced River would end. The longest stone bridge in Yosemite Valley would be demolished. Even the Yosemite Art Activity Center, where families learn water colors, would go.
The changes — which will be discussed by park officials at a public meeting Thursday in San Francisco — are part of a new set of principles for the park known as the Merced River Plan. The 2,500-page document, released in January, comes after years of lawsuits over what should be allowed in Yosemite Valley and the Merced River that flows through it.
If they really wanted to make changes that made sense they close down all the shops on the valley floor. Don’t kid yourself, it’s all about the money. Why not tear down the Ahwahnee Hotel? Because they charge upward of $400 a night! Outrageous.
I say keep the environmentalists out and the investors and stop fooling around. Every year, their is construction and they make a mess of the parking and the roads. I think they do it just to make people miserable.
If you care about Yosemite, you need to speak up or all that will be allowed to use it are the rich and famous and the bear. I’m sure the construction or deconstruction bills will add up and keep them busy for the next ten years. Leave Yosemite alone.
