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The small town of Paradise was completely destroyed. Many of the survivors are senior citizens with disabilities or illnesses, and didn't have much money to begin with. Here are some links for helping them.
I'm only linking to local efforts, not large national organizations. I used to do disaster relief for the American Red Cross and while they did a lot of genuinely good work, there was also a lot of financial mismanagement, waste, and poor use of resources. I find that local organizations, while they may have the same problems, tend to have a better sense of what's actually needed and get it to people faster.
North Valley Evacuation Relief Fund.
Butte Humane Society Amazon Wishlist. People in Paradise mostly had only minutes to flee, and some either couldn't catch their pets in time or weren't home. People have been going around and catching loose animals, which are then taken to various animal rescues and held to be released to their owners. There's a number of places doing this; warning if you search for it, there are often photos of injured pets.
The current death toll for the wildfires is 50 and climbing. A third body was discovered at the Woolsey fire, but the rest are from Paradise. There are about 100 people still missing from Paradise, and given what happened there, most of them are probably dead. That fire was moving at a pace of one football field per second.
I've lived in Southern California for almost thirty years and I've seen lots of fires. The light turns an eerie, over-saturated orange, and ash falls from the sky. I've been caught on the freeway when the hills were burning on either side of me, and I've watched the blackened hills turn green again the next spring. My parents have been evacuated repeatedly, and I've sat at the table listening to the radio or poring over a paper map to see where I need to go if I have to go.
I once was driving in the country, alone on a two-lane road, when I saw a wildfire that had just caught on the side of the road. It was very small. I pulled over, called 911, got my fire extinguisher from the trunk, and ran to put it out. In the minute that took, it had grown too big for my extinguisher; I put out a little patch of it, no more. I ran back to my car, grabbed my water jugs and a sheet, doused myself and the sheet, and ran back to try to beat it out with the sheet. The water on my skin dried instantly. I tried for maybe another minute. Then the heat drove me back. I was drenched in sweat from head to toe. My hair was soaking wet.
I stepped back to take in the larger view. The entire hillside was on fire, a nearby tree was a pillar of flame, and sparks were drifting across the road and setting hundreds of fires on the hillside on the other side, beside my car. I dropped my stuff, bolted back to my car, and peeled out just as a fire truck arrived. I know they put out that fire, or I would have heard. But it gave me a visceral understanding of just how fast a fire can blow up. If I'd arrived thirty seconds earlier, I might have had a chance.
We live in a fire ecology. But what's been happening over the last couple years is completely unprecedented. It's not normal.
There are a lot of things that could be done to abate the fires and their damage. The Paradise warning system was a disaster; people had to individually opt in for it, and these were largely very elderly people who were independent and didn't like being bothered, and also were not all very tech savvy. Additionally, it didn't even work for all the people who did opt in. I think CA needs a statewide system of fire alerts that can be sent to everyone, with no opting in or out, and blast an alarm even if your phone is silenced. (Or turned off, if this is possible.)
Possibly the most significant fire reduction action would be burying power lines rather than having them overhead. Controlled burns are obviously very risky but it's looking like they're better than the alternative. That being said, all this is happening because of global warming. Vote.
I'm only linking to local efforts, not large national organizations. I used to do disaster relief for the American Red Cross and while they did a lot of genuinely good work, there was also a lot of financial mismanagement, waste, and poor use of resources. I find that local organizations, while they may have the same problems, tend to have a better sense of what's actually needed and get it to people faster.
North Valley Evacuation Relief Fund.
Butte Humane Society Amazon Wishlist. People in Paradise mostly had only minutes to flee, and some either couldn't catch their pets in time or weren't home. People have been going around and catching loose animals, which are then taken to various animal rescues and held to be released to their owners. There's a number of places doing this; warning if you search for it, there are often photos of injured pets.
The current death toll for the wildfires is 50 and climbing. A third body was discovered at the Woolsey fire, but the rest are from Paradise. There are about 100 people still missing from Paradise, and given what happened there, most of them are probably dead. That fire was moving at a pace of one football field per second.
I've lived in Southern California for almost thirty years and I've seen lots of fires. The light turns an eerie, over-saturated orange, and ash falls from the sky. I've been caught on the freeway when the hills were burning on either side of me, and I've watched the blackened hills turn green again the next spring. My parents have been evacuated repeatedly, and I've sat at the table listening to the radio or poring over a paper map to see where I need to go if I have to go.
I once was driving in the country, alone on a two-lane road, when I saw a wildfire that had just caught on the side of the road. It was very small. I pulled over, called 911, got my fire extinguisher from the trunk, and ran to put it out. In the minute that took, it had grown too big for my extinguisher; I put out a little patch of it, no more. I ran back to my car, grabbed my water jugs and a sheet, doused myself and the sheet, and ran back to try to beat it out with the sheet. The water on my skin dried instantly. I tried for maybe another minute. Then the heat drove me back. I was drenched in sweat from head to toe. My hair was soaking wet.
I stepped back to take in the larger view. The entire hillside was on fire, a nearby tree was a pillar of flame, and sparks were drifting across the road and setting hundreds of fires on the hillside on the other side, beside my car. I dropped my stuff, bolted back to my car, and peeled out just as a fire truck arrived. I know they put out that fire, or I would have heard. But it gave me a visceral understanding of just how fast a fire can blow up. If I'd arrived thirty seconds earlier, I might have had a chance.
We live in a fire ecology. But what's been happening over the last couple years is completely unprecedented. It's not normal.
There are a lot of things that could be done to abate the fires and their damage. The Paradise warning system was a disaster; people had to individually opt in for it, and these were largely very elderly people who were independent and didn't like being bothered, and also were not all very tech savvy. Additionally, it didn't even work for all the people who did opt in. I think CA needs a statewide system of fire alerts that can be sent to everyone, with no opting in or out, and blast an alarm even if your phone is silenced. (Or turned off, if this is possible.)
Possibly the most significant fire reduction action would be burying power lines rather than having them overhead. Controlled burns are obviously very risky but it's looking like they're better than the alternative. That being said, all this is happening because of global warming. Vote.
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I wonder if they could establish a warning siren system like they have for tornadoes (and for tsunamis in some tsunami-prone areas - after most of south-coastal Alaska was devastated by a tsunami in 1964, the rebuilt communities now have warning sirens like for tornadoes and evacuation-route signs, since you're likely to only have minutes in a situation like that to run). I mean, it is obviously just a finger in a leaking dike - not addressing the causes, just trying to abate the symptoms. But I wonder if measures like that have been considered.
(I hope this nattering isn't bothersome with this currently going on - feel free to tell me to shut up. I'm not trying to Monday-morning quarterback, just thinking through some of the options, in part with an eye towards seeing if they can be deployed here too.)
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There still would be flames moving through, though. People who have gone through a house-saving thing are always stunned by how big fire is.
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