Caldor Fire explodes

[Cali-Glock]

Was this a PG&E power pole spark event? Lightning? Hard to watch the coverage on this... looks like a Volcano erupting....

Unknown.

Lots of stupid rumors, but that is all they are - speculation and rumors. I am 99.999% sure there are no power lines anywhere near where fire originated. Speculation focuses on campers, tweaker-"campers", lightning strike, but I have not seen nor heard anything to substantiate any of it.

It started in the El Dorado National Forest south-east of Grizzly Flats. It started small and the powers to be kept telling everyone not to worry about it. It stayed in the 30-45 acre range for a couple days.

It then started down the canyon of the Middle Fork of the Consumnes - mostly on the southern side, then jumped to the north side and ran along the canyon below Grizzly Flats and the neighboring area growing to some 700 odd acres.

Then it blew up in the we hours Monday night and blew through the community.

Just saw they are saying the fire is 50,000+ acres... thus far the estimates have been behind the curve and conservative (low).

I also saw there was a flare up this morning on Consumnes Mine Road which is **just** outside Grizzly Flats proper - like on the zip code line - it is the same community but legally no longer Grizzly Flats but rather Somerset. Hopefully they snuffed that out quickly.

On a positive note - some homes did survive. Someone just told me there were only 12 building standing in Grizzly Flats proper but my impression and hope is that the number is not that low.

Here is a friends house that survived inside Grizzly Flats proper - praise God!!! You can see one or two other buildings in the background which gives me hope that we have a fair number of houses on the west end of Grizzly that survived.

[RNE228]

https://yubanet.com/fires/ is a good resource.

Added up all the personnel numbers; there are 10,120 on northern California fires right now.

I know El Dorado County Fire has people and engines on Strike teams at the Dixie fire; no idea if they are recalling them. This fire is burning thru their district(I'm on east end of district). Spent a lot of years on volunteer engines in the area.

There are enough fires going that air support and ground personnel is overly taxed.

[Deadon]

Is it winter yet? This summer has been a complete wasteland.
Feel for all of those that are in harms way. Stay safe guys.

[not-fishing]

Look at the history of Wildfires in California then look at the largest fires ever.
You'll notice that damn near all of them are in the last 20 years (and PG & E has been at it since 1905).
One guess what happened in the 1970's................

[RNE228]

I work in Folsom Prairie City/H50. Watching the C130/MAFF's go over regularly right now.

T914 10Tanker, Neptune Avro, and Erricson T102 have been coming over too.

Flightradar24 showing a bunch of planes working right now, on the southern side of the fire.

Conditions have since changed and they have a few planes in the air, and more coming in from Sac. Hope everyone stays safe.

[inthemountains]

A similarly distanced fire, close to Sacramento and the McClellan air attack base, but near the 80 corridor instead of the 50, started a week or so ago near Colfax, called the River Fire, and there were air assets on it almost immediately and it was knocked down quick. That's what doesn't make sense, they're right on top of it and the weather was conducive to attack.

That fire started small and with in an hour or so was getting real big. I was at the airport watching planes and it was maybe a 10 minutes from take off to drop to landing again, I think the fire was 6 miles from the airport as the crow flies.

They did such a good job with air attack that the nighttime dozer crews made a lot of progress, still burned a 100 or so houses.

[Cali-Glock]

This is my understanding. At least its what Ive been hearing from the media and my fire fighter friends.

There was so much smoke that the tankers couldnt get anywhere near it untill it calmed down. And they couldn't get much boots on the ground because of the terrain so they have been concentrating on evacuation rather than fighting.

Conditions have since changed and they have a few planes in the air, and more coming in from Sac. Hope everyone stays safe.

Helicopters were running all day on Sunday and Monday as I recall. I forget, but I think planes could not go up Sunday but did go up on Monday? My memory is hazy and I am far too tired.

The area where the fire originated and certainly down inside the canyon is very inhospitable.

From what I witnessed and what I have heard, fire crews did a remarkable job Monday night/Tuesday morning given the circumstances.

[RNE228]

I work in Folsom Prairie City/H50. Watching the C130/MAFF's go over regularly right now.

T914 10Tanker, Neptune Avro, and Erricson T102 have been coming over too.

Flightradar24 showing a bunch of planes working right now, on the southern side of the fire.

Conditions have since changed and they have a few planes in the air, and more coming in from Sac. Hope everyone stays safe.

[johncage]

what happens if you built a home made of stone, clay, and concrete with maybe nomex shutters for the window, and clear out all trees surrounding the house, build a moat, etc would it survive the fire?

[user120312]

what happens if you built a home made of stone, clay, and concrete with maybe nomex shutters for the window, and clear out all trees surrounding the house, build a moat, etc would it survive the fire?

There's been good examples seen on video in SoCal fires where the houses themselves are clad in fire-resistant materials but the tricky part is keeping the heat, sparks, and embers from getting into combustible areas since the houses are generally not built and appointed entirely of fire-resistant material. Vents are a common pathway. Also, if the outside gets sufficient heat exposure the combustible materials inside will reach that magic number and poof. It could be nothing more than drapes on a window or a chair, or wood framing in the attic.
However, I would like to know what this outhouse is built out of, this picture taken from the Dixie Fire. Everything around it is smoked....


Here's a sobering short clip from the night of August 16 on Golden Aspen Court in Grizzly Flats...Ring doorbell video. It was the audio that got me.

https://twitter.com/GuyTucker27/status/1427706798979514368

ETA, also found some video of the fire when it was 'small', on 8/15, posted by the Mountain Democrat....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sp7aqYyjsA

IDK, flame lengths like that in tall dry timber? Small? OK. Also, two days before it exploded.

[kalalp]

https://www.sfgate.com/renotahoe/article/Bay-Area-woman-Tahoe-fire-Echo-Summit-arson-arrest-16392428.php

There are arsonists of all kinds up in the hills. Lots of tweakers. In my neighborhood in the foothills as well.

[RNE228]

Lot of air resources on Dixie fire today too. McClellan is BUSY today

[RNE228]

Too bad GST944-747 got repurposed to a freighter...

[realbadlarry]

They close the whole El Dorado national forest until the end of September absolute power corrupts absolutely

[Cali-Glock]

There has been a lot of home building all up and down the Sierras over the last 50 years. I have heard people (usually coastal urbanistas) say that others should not be allowed to live in the mountains in outlying areas. My reply is that people should not be allowed to live in areas where there is the potential for a major earthquake, which leaves them like " Uuuuuuhhh....."

Going further with that mindset, we should not allow building in areas that are prone to hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, blizzards, landslides, etc. That eliminates about 99% of the US.

The Sierras and foothills used to have FAR fewer trees. We suppress the natural fires that normally keep the forest thin, while keeping people from logging, and failing to otherwise maintain the forest so everything gets grossly overgrown.

Fire in Sierra Nevada Forests: A Photographic Interpretation of Ecological Change Since 1849 is an amazing book. They dug up a ton of photos from the 1800s and then replicated the photos - in many cases it is NIGHT AND DAY difference in the forest with the numbers, size and density far greater today.