A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Two nonfiction books on the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed the California town of Paradise and killed 86 people. It was caused by negligence by the power company PG&E, which failed to maintain power lines and poles that were almost 100 years old and overdue for maintenance by about 20 years.

The Camp Fire began when an ancient hook snapped, releasing a power line which set a fire in an extremely remote area in the California mountains. Fire crews were alerted almost immediately, but were unable to get to it due to narrow mountainous roads and high winds; by the time it started spreading, it went out of control almost immediately.

Paradise was one of the few California towns that had an actual evacuation plan. It was divided into evacuation zones so it could be evacuated in an orderly fashion, and had a system for warning residents via their cell phones. Unfortunately, none of this worked. The cell phone system was voluntary and very few residents signed up for it, and when alerts were sent out the system crashed and only about 10% of all residents got them. The evacuation zone system didn't work as no one got the alerts, and the fire was so huge that the entire town needed to be evacuated all at once. There was only one way out, and it got jammed almost immediately. All things considered, it was lucky more people didn't die.

The books are divided between the wider picture and accounts of some specific Paradise residents, including a woman who'd just given birth by Caesarean to a preemie and ended up being driven around and around in circles by a random hospital employee, a retired firefighter who jumps back into action, the town mayor who nearly stays behind, a man and his seven-year-old daughter, a woman whose father runs back into their burning house, and the dispatcher who makes a snap decision to evacuate the entire town without waiting for orders to do so.

I'm always fascinated by different accounts of the same event. My absolute favorite in that vein is the plethora of books on the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, as it was a very time-limited event involving a relatively small number of people of which a disproportionate number of them wrote books about it, and the books are extremely different from each other.

These books about the Paradise fire are pretty similar. Both are by journalists, both take similar approaches to the story, both have similar virtues (interesting and exciting story) and similar flaws (could have been better at explaining exactly how the fire spread; we didn't need to know what everyone's family did for the last three generations). I suspect that in a month or so, I won't be able to remember what was in which book. I liked Lizzie Johnson's better but it's marginal.

I knew PG&E was terrible but I hadn't realized that in addition to multiple fires caused by their extreme negligence followed by attempts at covering it up, they were also responsible for a pipeline explosion that killed eight people in 2010, AND the Erin Brockovich case in which they dumped toxic waste into a town's water supply. They were sued over the Paradise fire, fined a pittance which they passed on to their captive customers in increased costs, and went bankrupt, but still control a lot of California's power and show no signs of changing their ways.

To this day, most California towns have no evacuation plan and many of the ones that do have one refuse to disclose what it is, citing security concerns.

The county also did not provide the evacuation plan for the communities of Lake Arrowhead, Crestline [where I live] and Running Springs — three communities where at least 95% of residents live in very high hazard areas for wildfires.

El Dorado County officials also initially refused to release information about evacuation plans that would cover Pollock Pines, one of the 15 largest communities in the state where more than 95% of residents live in a very high hazard zone for wildfire.

"I confirmed with the [lieutenant] for our [emergency services] division that we do not release our emergency plan, for obvious security reasons," wrote El Dorado County Sheriff's Sgt. Anthony Prencipe, in an email response. He did not elaborate on those reasons.

Then, in response to a Public Records Act request, the county provided one page from its emergency operations plan that refers to evacuations. Three paragraphs on that page were blacked out.

So for supposedly for fear of some random bad actor waiting for a fire to start and then using their knowledge of the evacuation plan to try to sabotage it, the inhabitants of the towns are left with no idea whatsoever of what they're supposed to do in case of wildfire. More likely, the towns either have no plan or their plan is grossly inadequate, and the supposed security concerns are just an excuse.

Must-read article on Stockton Rush and the Titan.

A few excerpts:

Lochridge’s report was concise and technical, compiled by someone who clearly knew what he was talking about—the kind of document that in most companies would get a person promoted. Rush’s response was to fire Lochridge immediately, serve him and his wife with a lawsuit (although Carole Lochridge didn’t work at OceanGate or even in the submersible industry) for breach of contract, fraud, unjust enrichment, and misappropriation of trade secrets; threaten their immigration status; and seek to have them pay OceanGate’s legal fees.

...

As chief pilot and the person responsible for operational safety, Lochridge had created a dive plan that included protocols for how to approach the wreck. Any entanglement hazard demands caution and vigilance: touching down at least 50 meters away and surveying the site before coming any closer. Rush disregarded these safety instructions. He landed too close, got tangled in the current, managed to wedge the sub beneath the Andrea Doria’s crumbling bow, and descended into a full-blown panic. Lochridge tried to take the helm, but Rush had refused to let him, melting down for over an hour until finally one of the clients shrieked, “Give him the fucking controller!” At which point Rush hurled the controller, a video-game joystick, at Lochridge’s head. Lochridge freed the sub in 15 minutes.

So, that did not go as planned.

My plan: drive down to LA while meditating on appropriate topics, attend virtual services with Halle and her son, and go to the beach to do tashlich, which we'd both missed on Rosh Hashanah.

What actually happened:

I was about one hour into the drive-and-repent when I spotted a crying woman on the phone beside a broken-down car. The car was in a quite dangerous spot, on a sort of dirt median between a very busy freeway entrance and a very busy freeway. Cars and huge trucks were zooming past at high speeds. It was in an area with the general vibe that there was not much there and what there was, was sketchy. It was also about 90F, with very high winds.

I would have pulled over, but by the time I saw her, I was too many lanes away to get over, and there was no place to pull over but behind her and no exit coming up. As I drove on, I thought that probably she'd be fine, she did have a phone and could call roadside assistance, someone else would surely pull over, and it would be a big hassle to get to her.

On the other hand, on this day of all days it seemed like I ought to put in the effort.

So I got off the freeway, got back on the freeway in the other direction, got off the freeway, and got back on so I was now behind her. This took about fifteen minutes and I was expecting to see either someone else or roadside assistance there by then. But no. She was still there.

So I pulled over and asked if I could help. She said she'd been there for two hours and I was the first person to pull over!

She gave me a brief of her situation, which was that her tire had exploded so forcefully that many of the nuts were gone. She had a spare tire, but no way to change it as it needed the nuts. She'd called her insurance, which had promised to send someone. The someone no-showed, so she called back. They promised to send someone else, who also no-showed.

While I was listening, she called her insurance again. They said she had failed to respond to a text they'd sent, so they were starting the entire process all over again. New ETA: 90 minutes.

I suggested that she call a local tow-and-repair place. She did so, and while we were waiting, I took her to a gas station so I could gas up and she could get a cold drink. She returned with two large, water-beaded, iced sodas, one for her and one for me. I have never in my life seen anything so delicious looking. That was the point where I had to explain that it was Yom Kippur and I couldn't eat or drink till sundown. (She'd also bought me a tasty-looking little cake.)

We returned to her car, and soon the supposed tow-and-repair representative showed up. He was not driving a tow truck. He was in a tiny little car, and he took one look at her tire and said he didn't have the right size of nuts so there was nothing he could do.

I said, "Can you go back to the shop and bring them? Or bring a tow truck?"

He said, "Uhhh, there's actually no shop or tow truck, it's just me and what I have in my car."

I said, "Do you know of any ACTUAL mechanics here who have an ACTUAL shop and tow truck?"

He suggested a place. We called them. They assured us they'd dispatch a tow truck with the correct nuts and be there in 45 minutes. We waited. They did not show up.

Throughout this, I was texting Halle dispatches and updates. This was the point where she said "SORRY Rachel, I have to take my son to the beach." I texted back, "I will cast my sins into a mud puddle."

We called the tow place. They didn't answer.

The woman I was with had been on a trip and was returning to her home in the valley, and I was also going to the valley. I'd offered to give her a ride if she was willing to ditch her car, which she understandably hadn't wanted to do. At this point, she said, "FUCK IT DRIVE ME BACK TO SYLMAR PLEASE."

So we moved all her stuff into my car, which happened to be hugely overstuffed so that was a bit complicated. And hot.

Just as we'd finished and I was LITERALLY about to pull out, a roadside assistance guy pulled up behind us. He was technically a cop but one of the ones who just rescues people and tags abandoned cars. He tried and failed to get the spare tire on.

He advised us that he could get the car towed, but it would go to an impound lot and be expensive to get back. If we left it with the intent of coming back and retrieving it, he would note that down and not do anything else to it as long as he was on shift for the rest of the day. After that, it would be up to whoever took over. So if she could get back by 7:00 PM, she could take the car and go.

We thanked him, abandoned the car, and I drove her to Sylmar. I then returned to Halle's place, where I discovered that they had not gone to the beach after all. By then it was about two hours till sundown. We did tashlich in her pool, lit a yahrzeit candle and said the names of the dead, and watched some of the service on live video.

At one point, in the middle of prayers, a woman shrieked, "SOMETHING'S SMOKING!" and rushed off. I assume she put out whatever it was, because service continued and we later saw her passing out snacks afterward.

The horns blew, and we broke our fast with latkes, salad, bagels with lox, and sparkling cider as the kosher wine turned out to be undrinkable. After her son went to bed, we talked into the night.

From my neighbor:

"Were you perchance burning sage outside your door? There's some still lit out there."

I bolted out and discovered the landing (atop a flight of stairs) completely filled with smoke, and the neighbor apologetically explaining that he had to stamp it out because it had set the welcome mat on fire.

Needless to say, I had not been burning sage.

So, apparently someone walked up a flight of stairs, set a bunch of sage on fire, and took off. What the actual fuck.

I'm in Culver City, which is not in the evacuation zone or evacuation warning zone. Here's the fire department map. The LA Times has lifted its paywall for fire coverage, so you can follow it there.

I wonder if the Getty Museum is starting to consider relocating. It would be an absolutely insane expense and it's an incredibly beautiful structure, but it's full of irreplaceable works of art and it's looking inevitable that if it stays where it is, it will eventually burn down.

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.

Yes, it's been alarming/fascinating to see how apocalyptic my former commute has gotten: https://twitter.com/WLV_investor/status/938410022538682368

However, it's unlikely that my area will be evacuated. There's no brushy areas near me and a whole lot of city in between me and the fire. It would take an apocalypse event for the completely urban areas that aren't hill-adjacent to burn.

All the same, I have everything ready to jump in my car and go. Somewhere. Unfortunately my normal escape route is unavailable. That pic I posted is it.

I feel a little weird mentioning this, since it's so ME ME ME. But seeing so many Boston folks checking in made me think of it.

Should anything really big ever go down in LA, assuming I'm not already caught up in it, I will probably get called up to go help out, and so will be offline and incommunicado. Should that be the case, please don't assume I'm dead or call my cell phone; I'll check in eventually or get a message to someone.

Yesterday I drove up to Mariposa, south of Yosemite, to visit my parents. I was on Highway 41, about ten minutes south of Coarsegold, in central California. The area has been hit by a heat wave, and it was 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Fresno, and 95 or 98 in Coarsegold. (Good time for you to not come, Sherwood!)

Highway 41 is narrow in that area, one lane going in either direction hemmed in by steep slopes studded with boulders, bushes, and the occasional spindly tree, and carpeted with grass and weeds as dry and brittle as straw. There's not enough of a shoulder to pull over without blocking a lane, except for limited stretches.

I turned a corner and saw a plume of smoke going up on the slope across from me. The hillside was on fire. It must have just caught, because it hadn't spread very far: scattered patches of small flames, and one large patch maybe twenty feet square. No trees had caught yet.

I should explain at this point that forest fires are both common and extremely dangerous in this area. Fire is part of the natural ecology, and one reason forest fires are so destructive now is that we suppress fires that, in theory, we ought to let burn, destroying the undergrowth and allowing the larger trees to flourish. (According to Walking Where We Lived: Memoirs of a Mono Indian Family, which I highly recommend, the Indians of the area understood this and selected which fires to fight and which to leave be.) However, at this point there are so many people living all over the place that any forest fire has the potential of spreading rapidly and uncontrollably, burning homes and sometimes killing people.

I pulled over at the first shoulder, where another woman had already pulled over and was calling 911. She said she couldn't get through. I got through on my cell phone and reported it. The dispatcher said fire trucks were on their way. I listened, but I didn't hear sirens. The fire was fairly small at that point, but I have seen how fires can go from tiny to gigantic in a flash. I waited a moment, but no trucks appeared.

I got my fire extinguisher out of the trunk of my car, but a glance across the highway told me the fire was already too big for one extinguisher. So I got out my emergency blanket (a queen-sized flannel sheet) and emergency water, and soaked the sheet in the water. I would have liked to soak my hair and clothes too, but I didn't have enough water.

I grabbed the extinguisher and sheet, stopped traffic, and started to run across the highway. This was where I hit the first snag: a queen-sized flannel sheet soaked in a gallon of water is really heavy and awkward, especially when you're carrying something else in your other hand. It tripped me up, and I had to drop it or drop the extinguisher. I dropped the sheet in the middle of the highway, glanced to make sure all the cars were still stopped, then managed to scoop it up and get across the road.

I stood on the narrow strip of blacktop between the burning slope and the highway. The fire, of course, had already spread quite a bit in the two minutes or so I had taken to make my preparations and get there. Smoke was billowing up and blowing across me, and flakes of gray ash floated all around in the air. I dropped the sheet, yanked the safety pin out of the fire extinguisher, and aimed it at the main area of the fire. Suppressant shot out and billowed like smoke itself. I put out an area about ten or fifteen feet square, and then the extinguisher ran out. Its range was only about six feet, and the spreading edge of the fire was far past that, upslope where I couldn't get to it. But there were a bunch of isolated patches burning on different parts of the slope, within reach.

I put down the extinguisher, picked up the sheet, and started smothering those patches. The sheet, as I mentioned, was very heavy and hard to use. If I'd had time and scissors, I would have been better off cutting it in half or even in quarters. Also, I couldn't slap it down, or I'd send up a flurry of sparks, which might catch other areas or my clothes. I smothered a couple patches, working for no more than five minutes, when the heat dried the sheet and the sheet caught fire. I ditched it on the slope and surveyed the scene.

Since I'd arrived, a 15 or 20 foot tree had caught fire. It was upslope, far out of reach and partially blocked by boulders, so I hadn't even seen that it had been at risk. But in the few minutes I'd been there, it had become completely engulfed in flames. The heat became much more intense, and the acrid smoke had thickened. I could still breathe easily, but I could feel that that wouldn't be the case if I stuck around.

There was obviously nothing more I could do, so I stopped traffic again and ran back to my car. Standing at the shoulder, I saw that the fire had jumped the highway, and a plume of smoke was going up from the slope on the same side as my car, across from the larger fire. I waited a couple more minutes, just to make sure that the fire department showed up, and then three fire trucks pulled up. There wasn't much room on the road and I didn't want to get in their way, so I got in my car and left.

I was soaked in sweat - my hair drenched an inch out from the scalp, and my shirt soaked through. That was from the heat, and probably some from exertion; I don't sweat a lot just from adrenaline when I'm awake. I'd inhaled some smoke, and my lungs felt sodden for a few hours, as if I was getting over a bad chest cold. I worried about heat exhaustion, so I cranked the air conditioning all the way, drank the bottled water I had in my car, went to a gas station, drank a big bottle of gatorade, and then hung out in an air-conditioned shop for an hour before continuing on my way. (I'm fine! No burns, no anything.)

I searched the net for fire reports, but found nothing. I assume that means the fire department got it. I'd like to think that my small contribution was helpful - I may well have stopped it from spreading laterally, though I couldn't stop it from spreading uphill. I'm satisfied with what I did, and I do not feel traumatized. In fact, after my last emergency, in which I felt that I could have done better, I feel that I redeemed myself. My medical emergency skills may have been shaky, but my fire skills - honed by an absurd amount of practice for a civilian - are still intact.

If you live in a fire hazard area, it would be wise to put a fire extinguisher in your car. I'm taking my parents today to buy one. I'm getting two for myself.

Kidde FA110 Multi Purpose Fire Extinguisher 1A10BC

Literally. This year's Hanukkah party was livened up when I smelled something burning. A search of the house (not my house) revealed that a decorative peacock feather wreath had fallen on to a sturdy metal candelabra and was merrily flaming away. I smothered it with a wet dishcloth.

A few Christmases ago (my step-family is Christian) I was at their place when a candle on a mantelpiece fell against a huge oil painting hung over the mantelpiece, setting that on fire. I smothered that one with a cloth napkin.

And then there was the incident which can be found by clicking the "naked and dripping wet" tag. There is a reason why I have a fire extinguisher in my car!