...
But the fires aren't out and the reports about the power are just flat out weird. You find them telling people they're turning it back on today after 11am, but also that it will go back out tomorrow, but also that it will take many hours to get it back on, and the times and places keep shifting around... which is basically all code for go fuck your mother.
Go here and fool around with the map layers if you want an idea of the actually burning areas, though I'm not sure it's completely current — maybe is, though, because the map is refreshing about every five minutes. From all the maps I've seen and from the closure spots on 101 yesterday, it seems the heavy business area all around the Windsor main exit may have all burned, both sides of the road. The hottest burning is still north of 128.
It's less terrible near Healdsburg, but very near Healdsburg, and if the winds do start gusting hard again tomorrow, unless they make spectacular progress today, we're going to have to formally expect that Highway 101 has failed against another monster.
For any of you completely unfamiliar with the area, we are talking about the heavily built-up to accommodate San Francisco's lower end workers' homeownership aspirations, areas north of Santa Rosa... a stultifyingly miserable commute in the hope of someday either outworking the inexorable rise of inflation or finding gainful employment nearer or completely elsewhere.
Anyone who finds themselves on Highway 101 at the wrong times of day will learn the true meaning of compassion; marvel at the determination that yet powers society; perhaps get an epiphany on the matter of why NO ONE in the business world seems to give even a very low flying fuck about customers OR actual job performance; and experience homicidal and suicidal urges — road rage — by turns the whole agonizing way. This is now the leading edge of the Kincade conflagration.
It may be the thing that sets some of those poor bastards free.
pipe up any time....
