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Butte County is being hammered some more. My number one, hands down, top secret agent in training, the incomparable Agent BB2 put me on to today's winner in the California cataclysms department. Personally, I'm not sure if I mean the fire or Newscum acting as governor already — black humor, black humor, I'm sure — but Butte County is taking it yet again, this time in an area where there's actual forest left from the checkerboard of clearcuts in the foothills, but currently blowing into populated areas.
I keep thinking of stuff and then within a day something happens to bring me my answer. I'd been thinking about if anything would improve in the matter of management of the Oroville Dam — so there are no more catastrophes — once we get a new governor. I don't know much about him because he did something that offended me grievously when he was Mayor of San Francisco and I have studiously ignored his existence ever since... so, of course, I'm going to guess not. I wonder sometimes if I should better try not to think at all and just know stuff so this split between self and knowledge goes away.
I have scanned all up and down this puppy, this frequently updating and scrupulous reporting by YubaNet, and don't see where any air support was called for until the afternoon. Again, we are talking California. Northern California foothills at the top of the Sierra and the bottom of the Cascades. Mixed conifer, mostly pine and shit like manzanita and scrub oak. All dry as a bone and lots dying from prolonged drought.
It's a red flag day. Strong winds out of the east. They could have been dropping buckets of water from the reservoir on it — like this — within minutes of it starting. I thought EVERYBODY had that nailed down already. But, noooo.
Paradise is burning down.
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8pm
Humboldt/Del Norte Strike Team assisting... 20,000 acres and jumped highway 99... Paradise lost?
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11pm
Paradise lost.
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Friday
The situation is much worse than just watching the fire specs can express.
Dead bang on, point blank aim at Paradise.
pipe up any time....
