[BartSimpson]

xerxes xerxes:

Nasty. My lungs feel tight just looking at that.

I should also add that it makes me feel claustrophobic. My anxiety is firewalling pretty much all the time right now.

[BRAH]

Camp Fire death toll rises to 63 while missing list grows to 631 names

$1:

CNN)The number of missing in Californian wildfires has soared to 631, as authorities added hundreds of names to the lists of the unaccounted for Thursday, in what has become the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state's history.

Butte County Sheriff and Coroner Kory Honea said Thursday evening the death toll from the Camp Fire in northern California had grown to 63 people. Seven sets of remains were discovered Thursday, he said.
At least two other people have been killed in another, separate wildfire in Southern California, putting the state's death toll at 65 since the two blazes began last week.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/15/us/california-fires/index.html
_______________


_______________

[DrCaleb]

llama66 llama66:

The practical problem is no one want to live on the edge of a dirt moat. (Grass burns wonderfully as I found out when I was 10 when we (my dad, my brothers and I) tried to burn a little brush and we manged to burn an acre to the ground instead. That was the funnest of days)

It's amazing that we survived our youth, and more amazing we don't let kids now do the same things.

[llama66]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

llama66 llama66:

The practical problem is no one want to live on the edge of a dirt moat. (Grass burns wonderfully as I found out when I was 10 when we (my dad, my brothers and I) tried to burn a little brush and we manged to burn an acre to the ground instead. That was the funnest of days)

It's amazing that we survived our youth, and more amazing we don't let kids now do the same things.

I know, Toboggan until you have frost nip, playing unsupervised in a public park, swimming unsupervised, using pellet guns, handing fireworks, roman candle fights, riding bikes without helmets, skateboarding without gear, shinny in the winter....

We wonder why youth today is so screwed up... we've removed the natural selection in childhood..

[BartSimpson]

The official death toll is now at 63 and we're up to over 600 people reported missing and unaccounted for.

The air quality index for pretty much the entire Central Valley region is hazardous and in excess of 300ppm particulates with my office right now showing 362 and some areas with as much as 400+.

Almost all schools have cancelled classes and some 1.2 million students are staying at home. Upside: My trip to work this morning took about ten minutes instead of the usual forty or so minutes.

[llama66]

I don't think it got that bad here, even though it looked like the apocalypse here..

(photo I took back in August)

[BartSimpson]

Compared to here right now that looks pretty good.

[llama66]

Man, I can't even imagine. Come north its only -10 with snow, ice and wind... paradise compared to the hell California sounds like right now.

Seriously, be safe..

[BartSimpson]

llama66 llama66:

Man, I can't even imagine. Come north its only -10 with snow, ice and wind... paradise compared to the hell California sounds like right now.

Seriously, be safe..

Thank you. We're going up to Lake Tahoe tomorrow to get out of the smoke and enjoy ourselves some clean air. Hopefully this shit will blow away on Monday if the weather predictions are right.

EDIT: We never went. I had to go back to Gridley to help out.

[BartSimpson]

Where things stand this morning: 80 confirmed dead but the missing persons number has been reduced to under 1,000.

Over 10,000 homes were lost across California.

I was back up to the ranch in Gridley over the weekend and I'm pleased to note that about two-thirds of the evacuees have moved on to other locations with family or at places their insurance is paying for while a smaller group remains and is expected to be gone by the end of this coming weekend.

I'm also pleased to say that the evacuees have been absolutely drowned in donations of food, clothing, money, and even vehicles. A number of mobile homes, camper trailers, and even RV's have been donated so people have a place to stay.

President Trump was very well received in the area when he came to visit and see what's happening.

Lots of very sad stories coming out of this. A recurring theme is older men who stayed to try to save their homes and are now either dead or missing. Too many families are mourning their loss.

And it's not done yet.

Blessedly, rain is supposed to come in on Wednesday to help start putting the fires out.

[DrCaleb]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Blessedly, rain is supposed to come in on Wednesday to help start putting the fires out.

Yea, no. Rain isn't what you want, cooler temperatures and an end to the wind is what you want.

Good things are getting better though.

[BartSimpson]

We'll take the rain, really. And the temps are already below freezing at night in these areas and still the fires keep marching on.

[BartSimpson]

Just fuck.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/1 ... _obituary/

$1:

RIP Bill Godbout: Cali wildfire claims the life of master maverick of microcomputers

Silicon Valley legend dies in firestorm that has killed scores while more than 1,000 are missing

Obituary Bill Godbout, a maverick techie who played a pivotal role in getting computers into the hands of the masses, was killed this week in California's wildfires. He was aged 79.

Godbout was a key figure in the personal computing revolution in the 1970s, at least in the US. Around the time Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were dumpster diving for manuals, source code, and documentation for their computer projects, Godbout was selling the parts for hobbyists to build their own computers at a price most could afford. He manufactured S-100-compatible cards, S-100 being the first industry standard expansion bus for microcomputers.

These cards formed the backbone of early systems like the Altair 8080 and homebrew machines, allowing techies to interface their processors and memory with peripherals and form useful microcomputers. This was at the time computers were typically big hulking beasts lurking in the bowels of corporations, government agencies, and academia, and not bedrooms and small offices.

As well as these accomplishments, it was the man's sheer love of the technology that people remember most.

"George Morrow summed it up much more elegantly than I," Godbout said in a 1984 interview. "He said 'I have the best of both worlds. I enjoy what I'm doing, have immense fun at it and I get paid to boot'. I couldn't concur more."

Godbout was born in New England on October 2, 1939, and went straight into a job at IBM after leaving college. But his maverick style didn't fit well with the buttoned-down, starchy atmosphere at Big Blue. At the time IBM's sales crew were called the "wingtip warriors" because of their wingtip shoes to go with their mandatory fedoras.

Intel's 8080 microprocessor also grabbed his interest, leading him to leave IBM and pursue the use of the little powerhouse.

He surfaced in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1970s, and set up Godbout Electronics, later to become CompuPro, operating out of a rundown Quonset hut at Oakland Airport. Godbout bought up discarded electronics in bulk, mainly from military suppliers, and many in the nascent personal computing world made the trek to Oakland to get parts for their first systems.

Much more at the link.

[xerxes]

Every time there's a brutal fire like this I think of the Death Cab for Cutie video they made some years back:

[BartSimpson]

79 confirmed dead now. The list of missing is down to ~700.