Week 7 of art school

It's hard to believe that I've through seven weeks of the first semester already.

I am already starting to plan my classes for the spring semester. Registration starts pretty soon, and I need to be ready.

In any case, here is what happened last week:

In ceramics, I decided that my project was too plain, so I added a vertical stripe to each piece. This was done with black slip applied over white slip. I hope it looks good after firing, but who knows. This is the pieces all disassembled and continuing to dry in preparation for bisque firing next week:

Nothing is perfect in this work. Things are all slightly askew, in particular, and there is some surface roughness that I am less than entirely happy with. But overall I have hope they will turn out well once they are glazed. The plan remains to glaze them all with a turquoise glaze over the white (and now black) slip. There is also a chance I will instead use different colours on some of the sections, but I am not all that thrilled with the other colour choices available to us in this project. There are seven glazes we can choose from, but two react badly with black slip (making a mess in the kiln and possibly damaging nearby pieces in the process) and one is the same clear we used last time. That leaves just four new glazes that will work in my case. Oh, and we're not allowed to overlap the glazes either, to avoid drips & runs in the firing process.

Art history - AKA Visual Culture I - was another lecture that will be included in the mid-term, which is next week. That will be my first college test in over three decades. The instructor tells me not to worry about it - she says I will do just fine - but no one does these things calmly. I will be fine, I know, but it does add stress.

Painting class this week was another round of life painting, at which I continue to stink - and a very amusing homework assignment. First, though, the best painting from the in class life painting session:

I told you it was pretty bad. That's on paper, as the canvas painting was even worse.

The painting homework this week is to paint something from a song. Any song. It could be what the song makes you see or feel, or it could be a narrative of the song itself. I've got several relatively obscure things running around in my head as a result, and I am not at all sure which I will choose. Or I might get crazy and do more than one. Dunno. Results of that effort will appear here next week assuming they don't stink too.

Design studio gave us a new project: we're building a model of a pavilion for a garden here in Vancouver, based on something to do with insects: their movement, life cycle, etc. We are not, however, supposed to have the pavilion be a giant insect. I've been toying with fireflies, but I am not happy with the things I have come up with so far. As a result, this weekend has me pondering this assignment again. We get a couple of hours in class to work on it this coming week, but it's due at the end of class, so I need this resolved and worked out. Also, he gave us back our grades on the wire model/movement work, and I got another A. Seems like things are going well in that class for me.

Finally we had drawing class yesterday, and we turned in our assignment from last week. That was a triptych in which we setup a still life and did some interesting things we positive vs. negative space. We were working on manila paper with charcoal and chalk or white pastel (or Conté). Here's what I turned in:

And here's what the still life setup for it looked like:

There are some interesting distortions in in, but I am reasonably happy with the results. Apparently the instructor was as well. A perfect score and a request that she be allowed to keep it for a while (along with several others) to put up on display somewhere. The drawing homework for this week is an interior drawing of a house in one point perspective, with something wacky added to it. I have ideas, but I am more worried about other homework due sooner, so it will wait a while.

I'd say that ended the week, but as dinner was ending I was starting to feel a sore throat come on, and it only got worse over night. I appear to have a cold. Not fun.

I did go out and buy an A/V receiver to replace the dead one, so we can once again drive real speakers when watching TV. I haven't completely set it up yet, but we used it last night and it sounded pretty good. Just a cheap Yamaha in this case - last year's model, even - but it will do the job.

In other news, the weather in Vancouver has continued cool and rainy. We keep hearing fairly apocalyptic weather predictions on the CBC radio in the morning: huge storms that will produce 22-50 mm of rain. You do the math, but it's nothing compared to what we experienced in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

And speaking of those, there was a pretty large fire something like seven miles from our old home last week. Called the Bear Fire, it's in really rugged terrain, and in a very odd area where there are a lot of transients and a fair amount of illegal activity. I was in there a few times when I was a member of the VFD, and it's the place where I was famously told by a local that we should not leave the fire engines unattended overnight or they would be stripped clean. Very weird. Anyway, it's currently listed at 391 acres and 50%  contained. CalFire seems to be getting a handle on it. I have stopped worrying about it. I think they finally got a little rain down there as well, which is good.

That ends this week's update, I think. With luck this cold will pass quickly, I'll get painting & design done this weekend, and the art history test will go well. Time will tell.

A Friday Night Interrupted

I just sent the following to a local email list... a list of residents of my mountain area.   Figured I'd post it here too, just because someone else might see it and think it over.

---

Just throwing this out there for others to think about...

Back on Friday night my wife and I were at home, watching a movie.  It was warm-ish, as you may recall, so we had a bunch of doors and windows open.  At about 10:15pm we both just about levitated out of our chairs because we were suddenly overwhelmed with the smell of smoke.  Fresh smoke, not stale, perhaps with some chemical overtones to it.

We checked all around the house, both inside and out.   It was definitely outside, and it was probably coming down the hill from somewhere above us.  We could see no visible column, and there was no wind, so whatever was burning probably wasn't all that close or that large, and it wasn't going anywhere quickly.  I dithered, but I have been explicitly told to call these things in by a Cal Fire captain I trust who used to work at Burrell station.  So after I was sure I had no more detailed information I could report, I did just that.  I hoped the dispatcher would just log the information and see if anyone else called in.  (That way they would have at least one additional data point before sending people out.)  But that isn't what happened, and on thinking about it, they probably aren't allowed to do that.  Get out and find it if you can is the rule, I'm sure.

So at 10:30pm they dispatched the volunteers and Burrell crew to do a smoke check, that is, to go looking for the source of smoke that someone reported.  When I was on the VFD these kinds of calls bugged me a lot.  Not because they were called in - that's fine and good - but because they are difficult to handle.  Even in daylight smoke can be a very hard thing to locate, when you can see it at all.  At night, though, it is much more difficult to find something that has only a smell and almost no way to pin down a visible source.  Still, I was doing what I was told back when I responded to these things, and so were the folks who went looking on Friday night when I caused their pagers to go off.

Burrell station and Loma Prieta both responded.  Two engines crawled the neighborhood for over 30 minutes each.  There was radio traffic saying they smelled it, but they never found the source, and it dissipated over time.  In the end, 5 people from LPVFR and the full Burrell crew both reported it UTL (Unable To Locate) and went back to their normal Friday evenings.  And I am really sorry I dragged them out of whatever they were doing at the time to go on a wild goose chase, but again, that's what I was explicitly told to do.

So why bring this up?  Because something, somewhere, was actually burning.  Someone was using a fireplace, or an outdoor fire pit.  Possibly that someone put something a bit odd on their fire that created the acrid odor.  Whatever the case, that smell caused my wife and I to wonder exactly what was happening, and to call it in.  It was a very strong smell in our house that night at 10pm.

What I would like to ask is to please be considerate of your neighbors in the summer months.  If you do not have to start a fire, please don't.  Smoke drops down to near the ground once it cools off, and it runs downhill, pooling in hollows and valleys.  It definitely doesn't disappear.  If you start a fire, someone below you will be wondering exactly what we were wondering: what is on fire and where is it?  And if there is any wind at all, the worry level only goes up.

Frankly, the same goes for fireworks.  Last night at around midnight I heard a bunch of firecrackers go off somewhere.  While our weather has (wonderfully) been a bit cooler than usual, we're still in high fire danger season, and fireworks of any sort are a serious risk.  Every year I am reminded just how much I hate the 4th of July as things go boom, or even worse, I see colored lights above the local trees.  I know this is obvious, but forest fires kill people and destroy property.  And I know people love fireworks, but this really isn't the place to be setting them off.  Common sense is required.

A quick google search indicates that something on the order of 75% of forest fires are started by people or their equipment in one way or another.  75%.

I'll keep calling these things in when I have to, but I would really like it if that didn't happen when things were dry and the weather is warm.

Thanks.

CSA 48 - County Fire Funding Around My Home

Today I attended a Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors Meeting. What fun. Not.

I did so to keep tabs on an issue near and dear to my heart... maintaining fire and EMS response service in my area during the non-fire season. I've mentioned that on Facebook and in a couple of other places, and people were curious, so I wrote up my thoughts on the meeting this evening and am posting them here.

I don't claim this is complete, correct, or consistent. It's the best I could do given the situation, the contents of the meeting, and my temperament. I hope it isn't entirely wrong, and I will try to correct it somehow if I find I am wrong about things.

With that disclaimer...

Board Of Supervisors Meeting - Partial Writeup - Dec 13, 2011
A somewhat inflammatory and editorialized document by Jeff Powell.
These are my impressions and opinions. Your mileage may vary.
Remember, though, that government is like making sausage, in a very big and slow factory.

8:15 am: park car in 3 hour free parking lot across the river from the county building.

In the meeting room I pick up a copy of the official agenda, which lists our item as #56. Seems like it will be forever before we discuss funding for County Fire, but that doesn't do justice to what really happened. In any case, for reference, here is what we were at the meeting to discuss, word-for-word from the agenda:

56. Consider report on the state budge and associated impacts on the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and further discussion of County Fire Service Area 48 (CSA 48) service delivery options for changing the contracted level of service with CAL FIRE commencing in the fiscal year 2013-2014, and taking related actions.

All clear now? Hope so. But I have NO idea what that really means.

8:30 am: meeting begins.

A sea of red shirted citizens (numbering 50 or so) concerned about CSA 48 is present, but that doesn't matter yet. First we get some technical preliminaries followed by open comments from the public about things not on the agenda. During the preliminaries at least one agenda item related to PG&E smart meters was removed from the "consent agenda" (things that are just "accepted" but not commented upon by the board or the public as far as I can tell) and moved to the "regular agenda", which allows for comment by anyone that can fog a mirror when they exhale. Despite that, quite a few members of the public wanted to discuss smart meter related issues during the comment period allotted to things not on the agenda, and wasted a lot of time as a result. In addition concerns were raised about Occupy Santa Cruz and the county's recent moves towards it, and there were many requests for a moratorium on foreclosures in the county. Oh, and some comments about a program that helped people working for the county make better choices about food and lifestyle.

Then we had 15 minutes or so of thanking a retiring county employee.

Then the Board of Supervisors recessed to run a second meeting - one related Zone 5 of the Santa Cruz Flood and Water Conservation district to happen. No, really... they stopped one meeting and changed it to another one, just like that. The BOS members are also members of this new group along with a few others, but there wasn't much happening here. Done in 15 minutes.

10:30 am, give or take: morning break. During this time I go move my car since it is clear that 11:15 is going to come and go before we're done. I put it in the 2 hour lot in front of the county building. After all, we should be done by 12:30, right? (Hint: not.)

10:45 am-ish: They start up again and immediately recess for a different flood control meeting: this one about zone 7 instead of zone 5. This one was much more contentious and went on for nearly an hour. However, in the end, I think nothing of great import happened - everything they voted on passed unanimously - and the project they want to do (to improve flood control down near Watsonville) wasn't impeded or slowed down as far as I can tell.

Editorial comment: by this point there are quite a few people I think should never be allowed to speak in public, and I am pondering how to make choking some of those people to death legal. But I digress.

It is important to note, however, that for over 3 hours the group of people that had come to speak and hear about the County Fire issue is dwindling. People have - gasp! - lives and jobs and commitments. Three hours after the meeting started we hadn't gotten to our issue despite being told we'd be "first" by someone. Go figure.

Approximately 11:45 am now, and we finally get to the County Fire related issue. Surprisingly I have not gnawed off any of my own limbs in a desperate attempt to keep myself awake.

Chief Ferriera and someone else (didn't catch her name) made some initial comments about the situation. As far as I can remember these were the high points (for me) of the discussion that ensued:

• County fire will run out of money sometime around the summer of 2013 - 18 months or so from now.
• Funding for County Fire comes from two primary sources, both tied to home values: 1.x million per year from property taxes directly; 2.x million per year from CSA 48 tax that is also paid via the property tax bill. I don't have exact numbers, sadly.
• The county has done polling and (surprise, surprise!) when they ask people something like "Are you willing to pay more for the fire service you already get?" the answer has only 60% of people saying yes, and we'd need 66% to pass a tax increase. Argh! I'm honestly surprised support is that high. Clearly a lot of education is needed, and not just of the voters. How about a poll question like: "The dedicated fund that pays for your County Fire service is running out of money and it will shut down completely during the off season in the fall of 2013 as a result. Would you support an increase in a dedicated tax or fee to keep it running instead of shutting down? And note that if you don't have fire service you probably can't sell your home and its value will be less than that of dog spit." Oddly I suspect that support would be a bit higher than just 60% if the question is phrased properly. I apologize if I have misrepresented the polling work, but in reality polling is just about as close to a black art as you are going to find, and the answers you get are inescapably related to the exact wording of the question you ask.
• Governor Jerry Brown is looking to impose an additional fee on home owners in SRA (state responsibility area) land of $180 per year to make up other lost funding sources. There may be a $30 reduction in that fee for those who are covered by another fire protection district like CSA 48. That fee, however, would probably not come back to County Fire in any way to support their activities as far as I can tell. Many of those living in CSA 48 will wind up paying that fee to the state, making many wonder about the public's willingness to stomach a tax increase in addition to that fee.
• There are a few ways to save some money other than shutting down county fire entirely. As with everything (except the agenda itself) I have nothing in writing, so I am doing my best from memory to remember these. They might move some people around from administrative jobs to fire fighting roles. They might offload the program to name driveways and renumber houses to some other department. They might shut down a single station. They might shut down all of County Fire. Remember, this is off-season only... during the summer the state picks up the tab for the entire thing. (Editorial comment: the program to name driveways and renumber houses is the least liked - and possibly most stupid - program in existence. Why it still gets any funding is beyond me entirely. It should have been killed years ago. Technically it should never have been started.)
• During discussion Chief Ferriera says something about costs vs. income. This was off the cuff, and so I wouldn't hold his feet to the fire, but what he indicated was that costs (for personnel and so on) have gone up about 3% over the last 3 years, but home values have gone down substantially during that same period thanks to the economy and housing crisis, dropping revenues. (I can confirm that last from deep, personal, and costly experience.) That may explain some or all of the reason that CSA 48 funds haven't kept up with the expenses of County Fire, though I would like a real accounting of that, and I may ask John Leopold for that information separately. We'll need it to justify any tax or fee increase to homeowners eventually in any case.
• There was no discussion of how (or if) the volunteer fire department would continue to operate with Cal Fire shut down.

Then the public was then allowed to speak. I think those that were still left present, alive, and in possession of their full faculties made comments were reasonable and on point, suggesting to the supervisors that shutting down County Fire during the off season was not something we wanted to see. (I, personally, expressed the hope that we could actually improve our situation and get 4 fire fighters back on each engine in the off season, not just 3. Then I fled to purchase a parking pass to avoid a ticket and returned to the meeting only when that was done.) On my return I heard one nearly incoherent comment about not building cell phone antennas on top of fire stations, but I don't think that person was with "us" per-se. The last comment was from Alex Leman. He thanked those of us that were still there - and those that had arrived earlier but had to leave - and indicated that we all knew there was a long road ahead. He also provided an order on some of the proposed cost saving measures from the FDAC (Fire Department Advisory Committee?).

With the public comments ended the supervisors made more comments themselves. John Leopold thanked us for showing up en-mass and indicated he would help champion the cause. Supervisor Pirie took pains to point out where the public comments were wrong or misleading in various ways, but she did also ask someone else (name unknown to me) to discuss where county funds come from and go to. That was interesting, at least to me. Summarizing that and a few other things that were said leads to this:

• Proposition 13 froze property tax revenues where they were when it was passed. So Santa Cruz County gets $0.13 per dollar of property taxes collected put into its general fund. Santa Clara county, by contrast, gets over $0.60 per dollar collected put into its general fund. This sort of inequity has never been addressed, and years later is causing all kinds of pain.
• Of the $400 million or so dollars that Santa Cruz County spends per year, something like 90% comes with strings, requiring it to be spent in certain ways. Thus the supervisors are left with 10% or less that they supposedly control.
• Of that 10%, though, there are all kinds of mandated spending that has to happen, which means there is substantially less flexibility in how they can spend money in general.
• In short, there isn't enough money in the general fund - or anywhere else the county supervisors can get at - to "fix" this funding problem for County Fire. We have to pay for this ourselves, somehow, and to do that we're going to have to pass a tax measure of some sort in the next 18 months.

Then we came the actual voting. On the original agenda item. That blob of text up top that didn't mean anything I could understand.

With one change - asking Chief Ferriera and/or others to tell the state folks that the County of Santa Cruz needs some of that $150/$180 annual fee back somehow, or at least mention the possibility - the supervisors voted "aye" on the agenda item.

I honestly don't know what that means. As I say, the agenda item almost isn't actually written in English, and I am not at all sure what was accomplished today in any formal sense.

Less formally, though, I think the supervisors saw a lot of people from the Loma Prieta area show up on their door step and say "this sucks". How (or if) that will translate into fixes and plans over the longer term I don't know. We will, however, have to do this again and again and again. We'll have to continue to show up at these meetings and telling them that shutting County Fire down during the off season is not an option.

We will also have to campaign for whatever tax or fee finally comes out of this. We'll have to lobby our friends and neighbors over this issue, trying to get 66% of those that live in the CSA 48 area to vote yes and pay a small tax instead of paying huge fire insurance premiums and finding our houses worth next to nothing.

I hope you're all ready for more work. It's coming, whether you want it to or not.

It's Fire Season Again...

Major fire - 2000+ acres, or so I read this morning - over near the Lockheed plant in the Santa Cruz Mountains, west of highway 17. Evacuations, big smoke column, etc.

I found out about this late last night. It's not good.

It's going to rain!

This may seem like a totally mundane thing to those of you living somewhere other than Northern California, but for us, it's not.

You have to understand that it doesn't rain here during the summer. At all. We generally get rain starting sometime in October and if we're lucky we get a steady stream of storms through sometime in April or May. If we're not lucky, we get infrequent storms that don't produce much precipitation.

Living in the Santa Cruz Mountains - where fires have been a problem since last May - we've all grown accustomed to the lack of rain. The native vegetation evolved to live without rain for five or so months in a row, but it still gets awfully dry. So, that first rain of the year is always a welcome relief, even if it isn't enough to end the fire season. Just the smell of rain is wonderful.

Last year our total rainfall was poor - the second lowest total we've recorded in 16 years of living here. The year before wasn't much better. That makes getting a good rainy season this year all that much more important.

I cannot claim that one early storm sets a precedent or establishes a trend, but I hope it does. I'd love to see 70 inches of rain fall this year, and for all the reservoirs to be full to the brim again.

For now, though, I'll take the first rain of the season - assuming it happens on Saturday as currently predicted - and revel in it.

Another Long Overdue Website Update

I know this isn't art related, but I've finally gotten around to organizing and uploading pictures at (or as a result of) some of the local fires in the past couple of years. These supplement the old Croy Fire photos I had on the website before. Anyone curious about them can click here.

Car Fire

12;20am on 7/10/08 saw the volunteer fire department pager go off for a car fire a mile from my home. Since the page said flames were seen under the vehicle, I paused to grab my fire extinguisher on the way out the door. As it happens, that was an optimistic action on my part.

There were bystanders and a sheriff on scene when I arrived, but they were well back from the car because it was fully involved. Flames were four feet or more above the roof of the vehicle. Interestingly, there was no driver or owner present.

I put on my structure turnouts, grabbed my McCloud (a fire fighting hand tool, kind of like a metal rake on sterioids) and briefly worked around the vehicle, keeping the fire from spreading into the surrounding grass & brush, and trying to stay out of the thick smoke vehicle fires always produce. A couple of minutes later our department's water tender arrived. I pulled a hose, the chief fired up the pump, and I put out the fire. Just about the time I had it out our primary response engine arrived on scene to back us up.

This is probably one of those cases where I'll never learn what happened, but if someone deliberately set this fire they deserve more than whatever penalty the law can throw their way. If we'd had any winds at all it could have spread quickly and caused serious loss of property and injury, or even death. Again, assuming it was deliberate, I've got more than a few choice words for whoever did this.

Thankfully we got this one out quickly and kept things from getting too exciting. At some point I'll go back to sleep.

Big Sur Fire Image 2

Once again Alan Seales has sent me an image of the Big Sur fire - technically called the Basin Complex - taken from his deck. This time it was on the evening of July 2nd. Containment on this fire still seems to be a long way off given what I read in the news. Let's hope that changes.

Maybe no lightning after all...

The NOAA weather site has dropped the chances of lightning over the weekend. We all know weather forecasts aren;t that great beyond what's happening right now or in the next hour or two, but I'll take this one. This morning we had a 20% chance of thunderstorms on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Given the vast number of fires started all over the northern half of California by lightning last weekend, I rejoice to see that vanish off my local forecast.

Highway 17 Fire Wasn't Arson Either

This link says that the fire along 17 on Monday afternoon wasn't arson either. The source isn't quite as solid (as far as I can tell) as the news on the Trabing fire, but I'll take it. We've got a nasty fire season ahead of us - with another chance at lightning this coming weekend - and don't need an arsonist running around.

Trabing Fire Cause Determined

The cause of the Trabing Fire has been determined and it wasn't arson. It was car exhaust. You can read the details in this article. I'm now on a CAL FIRE mailing list and got the news late last night but am only now getting the chance to share it with you.

This gives me the chance to reinforce some things I've said here and in person as well.

First off, I know I've commented on the potential inaccuracy of early news reports. In the case of the Trabing fire, I know I read early reports that indicated the fire was caused by someone, but they didn't necessarily indicate it was deliberate. The wording was actually rather vague. Over the next few days the news media fed on itself and the cause went from being uncertain to arson. This is a great example of the fact that early information - even a few days after an event - may be wrong.

Secondly, this reduces the likelihood that we have an arsonist running around. Sure, it's still possible, but now we know a major fire people thought might be arson caused wasn't, and that's something of a relief. I'll sleep a bit better.

And finally it's another example of how we unwittingly do things that cause risk to ourselves and others. Car maintenance is critical to avoiding fires, particularly in extremely dry conditions like we currently have.

Another day, another fire...

This routine is getting old. Fire after fire. Today we had another one. It was small, along the west side of highway 17, and messed up my afternoon, but fortunately it didn't spread quickly and was swamped with equipment rapidly.

The fallout from some conversations that followed, though, is more important. Some of you reading this blog may not have thought about this, so it's time I wrote it up.

The unfortunate fact is that fires happen. They happen with some frequency, year round, regardless of weather, holidays, or anything else.

Right now the entire Loma Prieta community is on edge thanks to the three big fires we've had in the area, and to the many other big fires burning in northern California. But we wouldn't be as edgy in the rainy season, for example, or even at this point in a "normal" fire season.

This is relevant because people who are worried go looking for data as quickly as they can. They hear helicopters or air tankers go overhead, or sirens going down the road, and they hit the web trying to find out where the fire is, for example. I know multiple people for whom this is true, so if you think I'm writing about you specifically, you're wrong.

In any event, the system doesn't always get news out that quickly. As I said, fires happen all the time, and not every house fire or small grass fire ever makes it to the paper or the web. Wildland fires have to get to some moderate size, use some significant resources, and/or threaten homes or businesses before they're going to appear on the CAL FIRE website with a name and maps. It simply wouldn't be practical to get that kind of data out about every fire that happens. There are simply too many of them.

Here's another example. When I was part of a crew covering Big Creek station the other day, we were told that we'd get relieved around midnight by an engine that was being made available. At 1am it hadn't arrived, but that's normal. Things always take longer than anticipated, and we were OK with that. But then we heard that several engines had been sent to a small fire up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. This was the middle of the night, and they held that fire to less than an acre if my memory for the radio traffic serves. That fire was put out so quickly that it's likely no one had a chance to get it into the news cycle, or post anything about it to the web.

And I'd like to point out that even when news does get out quickly, some early media reports can be inaccurate. Remember the Summit Fire was originally said to be at the corner of Summit and Loma Prieta? There are at least two such intersections, and they are miles apart. The TV announced road closures in the wrong place and even the wrong location for the fire for some time.

Today's fire along 17 had some chaos in it's initial dispatch. Multiple people called in fires in various locations, and that information was given to the responding engines over the radio. Anyone with a scanner could hear it. In that initial confusion, fire crews were searching for fires on 17 south of Summit, at the junction of 17 and Summit, and all along Summit back to the Summit Store - 4.5 miles down the road.

That initial confusion will happen some times. In this case there's a store on 17 - called "Casa del 17" - that commuters might think of as "the store at 17 and Summit" or "the store near Summit", and such descriptions can get muddled easily, particularly in stressful conditions, like calling 911 in a moving car to report a fire.

But it all got sorted out quickly, with multiple people and engines checking the various areas to be sure that nothing was missed. And the fire itself was out before any property was lost or injuries happened. I'm sure the drivers on southbound 17 weren't happy with the road closure, but it was kept to a minimum and people were moving again pretty quickly.

Anyway, the first thing to do when confronted with a fire - or any other event of a similar nature - is to step back and assess what is going on. Take a deep breath and think it through. What do you really need to know? What is the best way to get that information? Early on in the case of a fire, your own eyes and ears may be the best and most reliable source of data you have. Follow that with a scanner that announces your local fire dispatch frequency, and after that try the websites of your local newspapers. Live TV coverage comes after that in my experience, but your mileage may vary.

I've got a few other posts planned on related topics. Alas, with all the fires we're having and my other workload, it may be a while before I can get to them.

Fires in the Big Sur area

My post yesterday didn't mention the lightning started fires in the Big Sur area. Well, they are out there, they're big, and below is the proof. This view was photographed just up the hill, near midnight on 6/22/08, by my friend and neighbor Alan Seales.


He was looking nearly due south, across Monterey Bay. My thanks to Alan for permission to share this image with you. Click on it for a larger version that will let you see the details and read the annotations.

Everyone keep safe!

Don't Ask...

More fires. Yes, more fires.

When I started this blog it was to keep my thoughts about a single fire - the Summit fire - available to those interested in reading them. I hoped, though, that that blogging about fires wouldn't become a regular event.

Well, it has become a regular event, and we're only two days into the Summer.

Friday saw the appearance of the Trabing fire along highway 1 near Watsonville. My department wasn't dispatched to that fire, though we thought it might happen at one point when they asked for additional water tenders. Once again, however, everything else in the county and all kinds of mutual aid was sent to that fire leaving our department as the only emergency coverage in our area.

But it gets better. Because the Trabing fire pulled in so many resources, the county needed additional engines to cover in other places, and my department got tapped to provide one. I volunteered for a shift of unknown duration to cover a station in the deep south of Santa Cruz county - at Pajaro Dunes. Along with two other firefighters we packed up and headed down there. When we arrived we learned that the engine normally stationed there had been out of service due to a tire problem, but that it was being fixed and would be back in service - literally in just a few minutes.

That being the case we were then sent to cover a station in the far north of Santa Cruz county - Big Creek station, about ten miles north of Davenport. We spent the night there, and were relieved at about 9am on Saturday morning by an engine and crew normally stationed there. At that point our dispatchers had managed to gather up some additional engines via mutual aid and could let us go back home.

In our case that meant back to our station for training, where we did wildland hose lay practice in the scorching sun. Then, as we cleaned up, we watched some unusual clouds roll in and bring with them something we hate in the area: lightning. I'd seen this mentioned in various weather forecasts, but nothing made it's appearance until probably 1pm or so.

For a few hours the central CA coast was peppered with lightning strikes, some of which started fires. I helped staff our station all the rest of the day with the exception of a brief stint - of less than an hour - during which I raced home and tried to take care of some long delayed chores. It was during that interval that the department was paged out for three different, lightning related, fires: one way out on Loma Chiquita, another near our station, and a third near the Summit fire border. The first two weren't found, but the third was, and as of this (Sunday) morning we still have equipment working there.

Based purely on what I read in the news media, the rest of the lightning sparked fires in Santa Cruz county are out now, though a couple burn nearby in Santa Clara county, and I've read that over 400 fires were started in the state as a result of that set of storm cells.

Changing topics - if only slightly - it's time for all of us to consider our fire safety in various ways. For example, parts of Santa Cruz county still allow the sales of fireworks. In this tinder dry year that is a very stupid thing to do. Personally, I'd like to see a state law passed prohibiting firework sales, but starting locally seems fine. Anyone interested in helping and who lives in Santa Cruz county can contact your county supervisor and ask for such a law. To make that easier, here's a link to the board of supervisors website. Just figure out who your supervisor is and call, write, or email them asking for a permanent ban on the sales of all fireworks in the county.

Another thing to consider is our own behaviors. Do you park a hot car over grass when you come home from work? That's a big risk right there. Years ago I saw an old VW minibus whose muffler actually glowed orange as it drove along Summit road. It turned off on some side street and ever since I've regretted I didn't flag down the driver and point out the problem. But it doesn't take something that obviously broken with your car to start a fire. If you tow a trailer and the safety chains drag on the ground they can throw sparks, and a normally functioning catalytic converter or muffler might ignite dry grass it comes in contact with when you park.

Another pet peeve of mine is cigarette butts tossed out car windows. I can't count the number of times I see them on the road as I walk my dogs, and I don't live on a busy street. A cigarette thrown out a window could easily kill people by starting a raging wildfire. If you do this, or know of someone who does - perhaps a child, other relative, or even someone you hire to work on your home - please ask them to stop it. You may be uncomfortable asking, but in doing so you're showing that you care about where you live. You don't have to be confrontational, but make it clear that the risk of fire is very significant and that it matters to you. The Summit, Martin, and Trabing fires should be more than enough supporting evidence.

Lastly I'll mention the thing that is probably least popular. Remember that this opinion - like everything else I write in this blog - is purely my own. I speak for no one else.

It is long past time to ban backyard burning in all of Santa Cruz county. While it is true that most people burn their tree trimmings safely, a few always screw it up and the results are dramatic for everyone. Houses and possessions are lost, people are injured or killed, and the cost of fire suppression goes up for all of us. We all pay for those escaped burns in various ways.

Thus I believe it is in the public's self interest to end the backyard burn season and replace it with other programs that help residents mitigate their fire hazards. Chipping programs, perhaps, or allow brush and tree trimmings into the local recycling centers free instead of for a fee. Whatever is changed, the most important point is that the backyard burning of brush & tree trimmings needs to end. The risks have simply become too high. If you agree, talking with your county supervisor is probably the place to start.

I must point out that I don't usually favor government regulation of individual behavior. But I do recognize there are times when the costs associated with some particular behavior are too high, even if only a few individuals cause the problems, and even those problems are only accidental in nature, rather than deliberate. In my opinion the risks associated with backyard burns are too high now, and thus they need to be stopped.

If you can suggest other behaviors, actions, or activities that might cause wildfires, please let me know with a comment here. The more we talk about these things the more likely we all are to avoid them.

Ashfall

In last night's post I said we had ash falling from the drift smoke from the Indians Fire. Here's the proof:



That's the ash that got through the screen of an open window and landed full two feet away on a piece of paper on my desk. The object casting the shadow is a pen.

I know this isn't all that exciting to most of you, but it's interesting to me. The Indians Fire is a long way from here. My best guess - given the lack of detailed maps I can find on this incident - is that it is about 100 miles from our home. And yet the smoke is dropping ash that thick through a screen at my house.

Amazing.

More Fires

Sorry to me MIA for a day or two, but fire season continues to be unusually bad this year for northern California and I was diverted as a result.

The Martin Fire broke out in Bonny Doon on the afternoon of June 11. While my department wasn't sent to work the fire itself, just about everyone else was, and we were the only emergency personnel in our area for quite a while. We had to hard-cover our station for a long time, and I did a 12 hour shift on Thursday, plus our regularly scheduled training session on Thursday night, which kept me out just about the entire day. Thankfully we had only one call during my cover shift - an uneventful smoke check.

This evening, drift smoke from the Indians Fire in the Los Padres National Forest moved north and spread out over our area. It was ugly and thick, but pretty high up. We couldn't smell it at all, but it did drop some very fine ash on us at one point.

It made for some interesting photographic possibilities. The accompanying image shows the sun through the smoke. Sadly my ancient digital camera doesn't do justice to the colors involved. The sun actually looked orange to the naked eye when I took that photo, as did the smoke itself. As the evening went on, the sky went from orange to a greenish gray, to almost black sometime before sunset. Having lived in the midwest, there was a point where it looked like tornado weather.

Beneath that smoke the fog is rolling back into the Monterey Bay, and that's great news. Temperatures are dropping nicely - it's 57 degrees at my home as I write this - and that'll a big help to the people still working the remains of the Summit Fire, the Martin Fire, and the Indians Fire too.

Let's all hope the fire season calms down a bit now.

Another Big Fire In The Area

It's going to be a long fire season.

This afternoon the Bonny Doon fire started up. It's many miles from my home, and our volunteer fire department hasn't been asked to send equipment to it since if we did there'd be no one to work any new events in our area, but it's still a big incident and I've already had a couple of calls and emails asking if we are OK, etc.

So, once again, I thank everyone for thinking of us. We're fine, and it's hard to imagine that this fire could even get near us. But there are evacuations as a result of this fire. People are definitely affected.

At the current rate I can't imagine what August and September are going to be like.

Wind, Wind, Go Away...

For those of you living in Northern CA, things are pretty ugly right now. We have a large batch of wild fires burning from Monterey all the way up through Sacramento. And we have wind to drive them along with tinder dry brush and trees to burn thanks to an extremely dry spring.

Last night I slept only in fits because the wind was blowing so steadily. I expected my pager to go off for a tree down, wires down, or a fire. The recent Summit Fire was wind driven and it's left me wondering just what we're going to be dealing with this Summer.

In the end we got through the night without incident, and things are calmer now, but we still have some wind. And according to the NOAA weather site it's predicted to continue through Thursday evening. That's a very long time from now.

In addition, I've learned that Doug's home is threatened by a flood, so now I have to worry about him too.. I hope he has a home to go back to when his current trip ends.