Two more SoCal fires ...

My oldest niece lives in Ross in Marin County. She called today (she's family information officer) to check in on us and told Alice that they haven't been able to go outside for the smoke except to run basic errands. Says her kids' clothes smell like they've been in front of a fireplace when they get home from school. The big fire is 150 miles away.

 

Since we don't have a separate topic for the NorCal fire, I'll put this here. Good on the 49ers.

49ers try to douse pain for fire-ravaged Paradise High football team – Chico Enterprise-Record

 

Smoke is so bad in the Bay Area from the fire up in Butte County (4 hours away), just received notice the state universities are canceling classes the next two days. The haze is real bad and air quality in some areas are hitting hazardous levels. Were not close to the fire and it's this bad! Can you guys back east send us precipitation? Please?

 

Gosh. I wish I could send you ours.

 

Kyle Dickman, formerly an editor at Outside, worked as a hotshot. He wrote a really good book about the Yarnell Hill fire as well.

 

I went to Missoula to cover a football game back in 2012 when there was a really bad wildfire in the area. They almost canceled it because of the smoke. I hiked up to the M the day before the game and it was really hard to breathe. Can't imagine what it's like in Cali now.

(Also ended up befriending several Canadian hotshots who were in town and they damn near drank me under the table. Don't fuck with firefighters, man.)

 

Great read about SoCal fire history:

Revisiting Mike Davis' case for letting Malibu burn

And the story that's referenced within:

Let Malibu Burn

 

Been hearing of horrendously high air quality index figures from friends in the Bay area today as a result of the fires. Quite a few schools are closing tomorrow. Central Coast Section has last weekend's postponed football playoff games to five high schools in the Monterey Bay area. Each school will host a tripleheader on Saturday and the cross country finals have been moved from Belmont to Salinas on Sunday, which is highly unusual.

Also hear UC Davis and Sacramento State may shift their rivalry game to Rabobank Stadium in Salinas.

 

We are still open tomorrow but I wonder how many students are going to be there. We have next week off and the air giving everyone headaches. I'm praying they cancel school. Just no point in going through that. The air was so bad we couldn't see the hills just two or three miles away.

 

Several fires have been started in homeless encampments, where cooking fires have gotten out of control and lit up the brushy areas around them. The City of Los Angeles -- the same city that happily enforces hundreds of mind-numbingly dumb ordinances to pad its coffers on a daily basis -- says it's powerless to clear the homeless out of high-risk fire danger zones because it can't afford the No Trespassing signs that would make it illegal for them to camp on public property.

Fire Dangers and the Homeless: What Prevention is Being Done?

 

My son goes to Cal and after they cancelled classes for today, but not yet for Monday and Tuesday, he decided to fly home to SoCal this morning because the air is so bad. He messaged his professors and said he couldn't take it any more.

We were going to drive up to see him for Thanksgiving, but this is better for all.