CA fire in Subdividsion NOT in brush covered hills

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AStravelers

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Joined
Nov 14, 2016
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Location
San Antonio, TX
I have always thought about the CA fires as burning homes built in the brush covered hills, probably where they shouldn't have built in the first place. However this time some of the fires are in a neighborhood on flat land, away from brush covered hills.

Take a look at the photo attached, then find the swimming pool in the lower central part of the photo. That pool is at GPS: 38.481756 -122.744164. Copy the GPS and paste it into your smart phone map, Google Maps on your computer, or Google Earth application, select the satellite view and take a look at the subdivision from the sky before the fire. Then zoom out and look at the area. This is a subdivision just like many of us live(d) in.

I guess the fire got started somewhere and jumped from house to house.

The photo was copied from today AP News feed.

 

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The intensity of these fires is incredible. One would have thought the days of a city burning down was something you?d only read about in history books.
 
goodness.  A lot of people there in shock.  My prayers out to them.

That's not your house or neighborhood is it???

The neighborhood I live in has lots of wooded preserve land....every lot backs to a wooded buffer.  A few years ago, we had a fire that roared through, got close to several homes but we were lucky enough to have several fire departments there responding whenever the fire got close to a house...and the forest service was there cutting fire breaks.  As it was it still burned many acres.  Scary and traumatic.... but NOTHING like what the folks have dealt with in the OP's picture.

Here's a pic from in my neighborhood, right across the street from me.
Not fun
 

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That's what happens in these big subdivisions when they're packed in like sardines 20 or so feet from the next guy. I'm glad I live in the country.
 
My old house is on St Helena Rd a couple miles east of Calistoga Rd. A couple acres in rolling hills (not steep) with trees, the type of area one might think would be prone to fire. Fortunately for the people in that area, so far they appear to have been spared
 
This is in many subdivisions. 22 fires covering 170,000 acres.

I guess the fire got started somewhere and jumped from house to house.

The combination of high winds, low humidity, and extremely dry ground conditions from a hot/dry summer made a 'perfect storm'. Winds carried hot embers to other areas. Yesterday there was a reported (unconfirmed) 'anonymous' claim by a PG&E linesman that it was all started by downed power lines and exploding transformers. Forensics will eventually point to the actual cause(s).
 
blw2 said:
goodness.  A lot of people there in shock.  My prayers out to them.

That's not your house or neighborhood is it???............
Nope, not my neighborhood.  I just saw the picture and got to thinking that it looked like a neighborhood you find all over the place.  Then went to Google Earth to see if I could find the satellite view of the exact streets and found it. 

I really feel for the people in this neighborhood.  It seems like a place no one would expect fires like this. 

I have a lot less sympathy for people who build in forests, or along the coasts exposed to hurricanes.  When you do build in these places you should realize you are exposed to danger and there for accept the risks. 
 
When I lived in northern CA - many years ago - one thing I could never figure out is why so many of the houses in the nicer subdivisions all were built with cedar shake roofs. Especially since when the summers were alway so hot and dry. These roofs just invite the spread of fires with sparks jumping from roof to roof.

 
Aye Chet, the shake roofs had me scratching my head when we first moved to California. Our last home here had concrete tiles on the roof, but they had their own (non fire) issues. Our current home originally had shake, but I eventually quit worrying about it when we re-roofed with a different material.
 
If you've never experienced a fire of this magnitude, I'm here to tell you, they're scary. Our home was in the middle of the 2003 Cedar fire, the largest California fire in recorded history (300,000 acres) and then again during the Witch Creek fire in 2007 (197,000 acres.) All but one of the 17 deaths in the Cedar Fire were in the neghborhoods around us. Our home was spared, only because of a shift in the wind. Hundreds of thousands were evacuated and thousands of homes and buildings were destroyed. Both fires occurred during Santa Ana wind events, like the fires near Sonoma.

The Cedar Fire was started when an idiot, who was hunting in the mountains east of us, and stoned on marijuana, got lost and set a signal fire. The 50 mph winds from the desert (gusting to 70) immediately caused the fire to get out of control, and the rest is history. A grand Jury did not indict him for anything, because they believed he was in fear for his life when he set the fire.

The Witch Creek fire was started by power lines that were blown down during another Santa Ana wind event, which occurred almost 4 years to the day after the Cedar Fire. (Santa Anas are very common in October.) SDG&E has since implemented a practice of shutting off the power to rural east county homes (us) if the winds get too strong.

After the Cedar Fire, I realized that we were totally unprepared to fight "fightable" fires that would otherwise burn our house down. During major fires, we've learned that no fire department is going to respond to rural areas like where we live. A fire dispatcher literally told us that, and said all of their resources are going to be sent to densely populated areas.

So now we have a propane fueled 20 KW automatic standby generator, a rooftop sprinkler system and a dual hose, gas powered fire fighting system (water and foam.) With 33,000 gallons of water in our pool, we have plenty of water. Shake roofs have long since been banned in the east county, and no insurance company will insure homes with them.

Kev
 
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