There Aren’t Enough Firefighters to Stop America’s West From Burning

[marmar]

There Aren’t Enough Firefighters to Stop America’s West From Burning
An unprecedented 32,000 men and women are fighting blazes in what could be the most destructive fire season in history

By Kyle Dickman | August 26, 2015


(Bloomberg) “This thing’s going to burn until the snow flies,” Joe Flores, a Forest Service firefighter from Vernal, Utah, says to his partner, Todd Gregory, as they race ahead of yet another out-of-control wildfire. Flores, who’s fought fires for 21 years and is an expert on fire behavior, has never seen anything like this year, with so many superhot, superfast fires burning at once. He’s riding shotgun in Gregory’s pickup on U.S. Route 97, and they’re speeding along the Columbia River, trying to reach homes outside Chelan (population 4,000), a tourist and farm village four hours east of Seattle, before one head of the sprawling Reach Fire does. The two can only do so much to protect homes without an engine or a full crew, but they can try to make sure everybody has evacuated.

Embers lifted on 40-mile-per-hour gusts of wind clear the mile-wide Columbia and ignite parched grass on the opposite shore. There, beneath Wells Dam, the fire climbs the bank and lights another 8 square miles of dry grasslands. A second head of flame continues a run northwest toward the Cascade Mountains.

Gregory pulls up to a ranch house tucked in an orchard. There’s a well-watered lawn out front and a small wood shed next to it that’s already burning. A wave of 6-foot flames is advancing at about 7 miles per hour from Chelan and toward Pateros, a 600-person town that lost 300 homes to wildfire last year. Engine running, Flores gets out of the truck just as a tank explodes in the garage. A bolt of flame vents above the roof. The smell of sulfur wafts over them.

[font size="4"][font color="red"]“100 million people in the West can no longer expect to just pick up the phone, dial 911, and have a Hotshot come and save them.”[/font][/font]

“We got to get out of here. I’ve no idea what we’re breathing in,” Gregory says. A panicked Labrador-mix rushes out from behind the garage and leaps on Flores.




“Do you mind?” Flores asks. Gregory shoots him a look: Dude, what kind of question is that?

Flores lifts the Lab into the truck’s cab. With flames now working through the garage roof, they pull out and head back to fire camp, a sprawling tent city that’s sprung up to house firefighters on break from the fire lines. Although the house survives, the garage is toast, one of 38 structures incinerated in the Chelan area over the next 10 hours. A fruit storage warehouse will get reduced to neat squares of ash and charcoal. Fresh apples in crates melt into globs of sticky black sludge. Parked cars become metal skeletons. Some 1,600 residents, who began the morning believing they were protected by almost 1,000 firefighters, leave in a hurry. Some escape through areas that have already burned, passing smoking telephone poles and downed power lines whipping the ground. ....................(more)

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-wildfires-in-the-american-west/

[Tsiyu]

1. Kick

there are fires in the SE as well. Lots of fires out west. Hope none of the "smaller gubbmint types" won't have to eat their words or buy new homes for refusing to help fund their community's emergency resources.

The "smaller gubbmint" types live in La-la land when it comes to things like this. They think firefighters magically descend from heaven, never have to get paid, and they will always be ready and willing to save their homes.

It's delusional and ignorant.

[KamaAina]

2. You nailed it.

The "smaller gubbmint" types live in La-la land when it comes to things like this. They think firefighters magically descend from heaven, never have to get paid, and they will always be ready and willing to save their homes.

Worth a thousand words.

[Tsiyu]

3. Now there's an appropriate picture

I suppose this guy is a special snowflake who gets his home saved for free because he's a true 'murican? Wonder how much FREEDUMB you get when your house is gone....

Thanks for your kind words.

[cherokeeprogressive]

4. Imagine what it must have been like 150 years ago. n/t