Thomas Fire Days

I thought I’d post an update on the fire news.  Thanks for the concern, but this time there is little to fear on my personal account.  The above map is the USGS satellite maps of heat signatures displayed on the GeoMAC viewer.  Updates are about every 12 hours.  Red circles are current hot spots, orange and yellow are from previous days if not still hot there, and black is 2 days old.  The Triangle is where the fire started Sunday or Monday.  The yellow is the official burn zone…the recent detections are outside the area.  It can move fast – those two “arms” of recent burning all formed in 2 days.  Ojai (between the arms) and Carpinteria (on the coast) are the real danger zones.  The winds weren’t as bad as feared these last days and were in a “good” direction, if there is such a thing.

The ridges also form good places to try and hold a fire, and the lay of the land gives several stop positions along the general N to S path of the Santa Ana winds.

I live about where the “Thousand Oaks” name is, and work where Camarillo name is.  The two are about 15 miles apart.  To get to me personally would have to go through about 150 thousand homes.  There was a tiny fire near the 101 in T.O. that was stamped out quickly.

In 2003, that entire area between Santa Paula and Moorpark and off map to the east burned, and it jumped the highway near the Moorpark label and burned some in that area. That had me watching the map updates carefully and thinking evacuation.  A few years later there were fires above the “Oaks” in T.O.  burning my way.  There was ash falling like snow but I wasn’t as worried.  And a few years back the hills south of Camarillo burned.  In these virtually no structures were lost, and few outbuildings.  The Thomas fire has been worse, with 150 to perhaps 400 buildings lost or damaged, mostly in Ventura on the first days.

Today at lunch there was a wind shift that blew smoke over us in Camarillo.  Since it gave the fighters on the front lines a break from having it blowing to them it was a good thing.

Tonight I was upstairs visiting with Anna and remembered I hadn’t posted.  So I decided to use my gaming PC and use some old pictures to give a fire update.  Anna and Sherman were in that room so I shut us up in here.

Anna is pretty good with Sherman, only giving him normal warning hisses if he gets too pushy about getting close.  She’s willing to lie down and relax and isn’t fretting over who might be at the door.  I may do this more often in the future.

Sherman now is peering under the door.  I’m not sure who is out there, I heard someone thunder by a while ago running which was probably Rhea.  I imagine the other boys are hovering around the door.

A few new fires have sprung up near San Diego which might divert some of the effort from Thomas.  On the plus side, the other two threatening fires in Los Angeles seem mostly under control.  If the firemen can block the fires near the towns, they may more or less let the fires run along North and West until they are closer to other towns, and hope for some rain to help end it.  That does risk mudslides on the hillsides with the vegetation burned off, though.