Lahaina

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I sure hope you get some of this rain up there in Canada. These fires are awful. I'm terribly sorry for all the inconvenience and suffering of the people in Yellowknife.

It looks like the fires burned their way across the continent. Now they're west of where they were a month ago. And the smoke isn't blowing this way, a nice reprieve for us. The smoke is just terrible to live with. I had a pack a day cough after just a few days of relentless smoke. It was even indoors with the windows closed and AC running. You could have convinced me that all that smoke from thousands of miles away was in fact from a fire just a couple blocks from my house - amazing and horrible.
 
On the radio, heard someone defending decision not to sound the alarm system
They said its a tsunami warning system, and people are trained to head for higher ground when they hear it.
So they didn't want people to head towards the fire if the alarm was sounded.

So I guess I understand in the heat of the moment not sounding the alarm. But to stand by the decision now seems wrong IMHO.
Basically saying people are too stupid to figure out not to head into a fire, again IMHO.

Randy
 
Canada has been on fire for so many months. Fast Eddie, when you say moving west, the reality is the west has been on fire for months, before the east even. Not only has Canada set a record as a country, BC has also set a record for most hectares burned in a season and that happened over a month ago. Very little rain in sight and another month or two of fire season.
 
It's intended to alert persons to Tsunamis and other disasters. Problem is, when it rings, people think of it as a Tsunami or storm surge warning.

Yeah... we got evacuated once from Pearl Harbor up to Aiea - pesky quakes up in Alaska. It is considered a "tsunami" alert but I can see how it could be used for other uses.... perhaps they ought to rethink that and retrain.... like different horn patterns.
 
I am watching the news.
22k population asked to leave by noon tomorrow. 5 hours to drive 100km in a heavy smoke, delays due to heavy equipment building fire breaks etc.
One road out of Yellowknife NWT, hwy #3, fires surrounding the highway. A guy being interviewed is saying the fibreglass poles are melting which carry the fibre-optic cable for comm.
Sad news, which them all luck, it’s a mess.

Driving on the highway surrounded by smoke and flames.... done that. Rather stressful to say the least. Biggest issue is the fools that freak out or slow down to "look".

We drove through the fires on the SB 5 coming down the Siskiyou pass... surrounded by BIG planes dumping water and Fostex on both sides... you ought to see a DC-10 doing a Fostex run coming straight at you. At least we didn't get covered with stuff. Light traffic, NB closed, some fools were stopping at the view point to look at the scene... admittedly it was interesting.. fires, smokes, planes, helicopters... but, dang it... GET THE HELL OUT of here... fools everywhere.

When we hit the California Agricultural Inspection they waved us through. The staff was still there, outdoors... meanwhile on the East side of the freeway, the hill was on fire with helicopters dropping water.... WTH, go home!

Oh.... San Marcos fire.. that was a wild one,.. fire came within a half a mile of our work, Rancho Bernardo, but it was downwind ( 30 mph sustained, gusts to 60 ). On the way home, SR78, the traffic, moderate to heavy during rush hour, was coming to a halt, damn lookies loos, to watch a chain of water dropping helicopters covering Cal State San Marcos.... then the fires on Camp Pendleton, just East of the 5, heavy duty aircraft action taking water from the ocean... that was one hell of a week. I think it was like 2011 or so.

(EDIT Yellowstone ) Yellowknife is way out there. I googled it. There are more people living in my neighborhood than in that entire city... a completely different way of life... but fires are fires are fires. And it looks like they got on one highway? Dang. Good luck to them... nearest place to go is a looooong way off.
 
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowknife

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_National_Park

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Bear's_Jellystone_Park_Camp-Resorts

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Edmonton, Alberta and anywhere else they can find a place to stay such as relatives and friends.

The Hiway from Yellowknife to Alberta runs thru Hay River. Gonna be hard to get thru by road i’d guess.

I spent a summer working in the territories (Fort Resolution, Rae-edzo, Fort Norman). That was 50 yrd slo snd er were slert fot fires (w eactually stopped one day and put out a small one)… now-a-days…

dave
 
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Yet, they have high rise buildings in their downtown... that's kind of weird.. build high rise for people to live in in the middle of the wilderness.

I guess that must be an after effect of the British... in Western Australia the cities are packed... yet the continent is empty. Why not spread out when the land is so plentiful?

It's sort of discombobulating to see urban design in the wilderness... even places like Vancouver BC are strange in the sense that you have a large urban center but 40 miles north you are in true wilderness... the edge is so abrupt. Sure, it could be argued that Blythe is a wilderness in its own way...

For example, here in SoCal... the edge between the metropolis and the wilderness is subtle. Heck, along the 10 corridor it's never a wilderness from the Coast to the Colorado. And the "edge cities" are hardly urban... they may have a couple of five story buildings (usually city hall) but everything else is low to the ground. The lots just get bigger as you go into the desert. But then... we do have 40M people in the state... we gotta put them somewhere I guess and the Mohave might as well take a million or two.

It's a strange urban planning tradition the British left behind.

And I suppose that building the Interstates was a stroke of brilliance... I mean, in the West... have you ever driven the 70 West of Denver, crossing Utah to the 15? I mean, there is NOTHING in there.... well, there's Green River, I guess. But, build it they did. The tax base didn't come from Colorado or Utah.. it came from the combined tax base of the entire nation. IMHO, that was simply brilliant.

Lahaina is sort of different, the geography there dictates it... just like Laguna Beach and Malibu... a narrow strip of land nestled between the hills and the ocean.. not much you can do about that. O'ahu solved that by building houses up the hill sides.
 
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(Jack Pine) are a blaze fueled by its terps, flash point 35C
I sure you already know this but it might be confusing to some so let's clarify. The 35º flash point is the temperature at which the terpene exudes sufficient vapour for it to be ignited by an external source and cause a 'flash'.
For reference alcohol is 13º
The fire point is the temperature at which the item will remain on fire when the external source is removed. For the terpene found in pine trees it's 155º
 
When I was a kid (1971) I moved to Inuvik, ( dropped pin on map). Yellowknife is the "X" southeast.

The year before I moved to Inuvik there was a huge forest fire that burned all of the trees on the hills to the northeast of town. It was referred to a Old Baldy when I moved there. I am sure the fire was nothing compared to Yellowknife/Hay River today since there weren't that many trees up there at the time because it's a desert. There was no highway in or out. Not sure how big a panic that was back then.

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What's worse I fear is all that stuff under the delta/muskeg if it ever gets stirred up.

I am hoping for rain for everyone who needs it; Canada, USA, Greece, Spain...
 
in Western Australia the cities are packed... yet the continent is empty. Why not spread out when the land is so plentiful?
even places like Vancouver BC are strange in the sense that you have a large urban center but 40 miles north you are in true wilderness...
Excuse me while I scrape my jaw off the floor.
Are you just sitting there p*****g yourself laughing, waiting for an honest response?
I think I have spent enough time conversing with you to know this is not the Tony we know. You're a heck of a smart guy in so many ways that I am at a loss in understanding things like the quotes above.
 
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