Dixie Fire near Paradise explodes across 1,100 acres in less than a day
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
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Damn…
As of 9:00 AM (your time) the fire had DOUBLED, and increased to 2250 acres. That was 2 hours ago, so it’s probably 2500 acres by now. https://www.chicoer.com/2021/07/15/9-a-m-update-no-containment-yet-on-dixie-fire-now-at-2250-acres/
Also from the ER today- a nasty report about all the toxic and deadly crap we all inhaled for weeks during and after the Camp Fire. I suggest anyone suing PG&E (like myself) for damages from the camp Fire also go for a “future medical” clause in their settlement.
Another suggestion- I was shocked to find out that the majority of claimants suing PG&E have NOT provided their attorneys with a “target amount” for their damages. Most have only submitted “loss amounts” for their personal property.
My target amount is $2.25 million. I don’t expect to get that much, but the number at least sets a benchmark to work with.
Good luck, Gerard- I hope they get that one contained and out before it turns into another 11-8-18 scenario.
Keep us posted.
Bad news. Unfortunately, wild fire is everywhere. Going to be a bad bad summer on the left coast
VI
Good luck Pete.
Fyi air quality in Dakotas is edging into bad category due Canada wildfires and the NWS COC forecasts are not good- above average hot and dry next 60days.
Thanks Foo. We’ll see what the settlement amount is about the same time as when the cows come home. As for air quality, no luck needed where I’m at- Ohio.
We’ve gotten so much rain & thunderstorms here lately that our air here is pretty pristine. And as long as we don’t paint a Fentanyl Floyd mural on the wall, no worries about getting hit by lightning.
And yeah- I’ve seen the fires in Canada, WA, ID, OR, UT, MT, and other states. Kinda “Biblical proportions” stuff.
UPDATE on the Dixie Fire-
Now at 5000 acres, about 7% contained as of 5:30PM Thursday.
https://www.paradisepost.com/2021/07/15/9-a-m-update-no-containment-yet-on-dixie-fire-now-at-2250-acres/
Some evacuations are going on.
Gerard, here’s hoping that you and Olive won’t need your bug-out bags– but as Casey said, keep us posted.
Yes, please keep us posted, Gerard. This must be upsetting
for you.
At this time Oregon has 7 fires burning with the Bootleg fire in Klamath County being the largest at 227,000 acres. In Northern California there are 3 fires that I know of with the Beckwourth Complex being the largest at just over 100,000 acres. Here in the Rogue Valley we have had minimal smoke to deal with as the wind has been predominantly out of the West. A nice change from last year but its early. Hope all of you stay safe.
UPDATE 7-16-21 9:30 AM PT-
More bad news on the Dixie Fire.
It’s now grown to about 8000 acres, gaining around 5000 acres over a 24 hour period. It’s continuing north towards Tobin Ridge.
https://www.chicoer.com/2021/07/16/930-a-m-update-dixie-fire-pushing-north-toward-tobin-ridge-now-mapped-at-7947-acres/
Temperatures in the 100s, low humidity, and winds of 10-14 mph over the weekend will add to the fire danger.
I just finished a backpack through the Sierra Nevada, that included a section that had burned last year. Within that section, there were parts that were mostly a ground fire, it killed the small trees and almost all of the needles on the larger trees. The largest trees had charcoal-black trunks , black branches down low and green branches way up high. The forest floor was completely covered with all the dead needles that were brought down in the last winter.
In other parts the fire had crowned and killed everything, all that was left of the standing trees were black charcoal spires, every branch was consumed. All that was left of the old stumps were holes in the ground, and the old fallen trees were just lines of ashes in the dirt.
There was a chokepoint in the canyon, and I think the firefighters were able to stop the crown fire there with suppressants and water drops, else the fire would have marched all the way to the timberline meadows at 11,000 ft.
This summer, there are scattered ferns and other opportunistic sun-loving plants sprouting through the ashes, even though this was a low-snowfall year.
In three years, the crowned sections will be a luxurious fairy meadow of low flowering bushes with black spires everywhere, a beautiful ghost forest.
In eight years, if the Federals don’t actively maintain this important trail through the mountains (and it’s not clear the feminized NPS and FS will do so), it will be an impenetrable and brutal thicket of buckthorn, manzanita and deer brush, interlaced with a pixie stick jumble of fallen charcoal trunks.
I’ve lived long enough to see exactly that progression, first the fairy meadow, then the thicket where the only way through is to climb on top of and walk the fallen charcoal trunks and hop from one to the next. And woe to that guy (me!) who wearing a backpack slips off a trunk and falls into the buckthorn.
Western forests must burn. Let them burn often. The largest, strongest trees will survive the ground fires. Don’t suppress the fires. To live in western forests, a person must clear a zone around their dwellings, an adequate defense against the ground fires. But people don’t and they won’t, else why live in the forest, the big trees march right up to their houses. It is inevitable, suppress the fires and some day the crown fire will come; nature abides, men not so much.
STILL more bad news- the fire is now over 15,000 acres.-
https://www.chicoer.com/
HUGE UPDATE-
Ready for some deja vu? According to the Chico ER headlines, “Some ‘California utility company’ MAY
BE LINKED to the Dixie Fire.”
In other words, the bastards at PG&E have CAUSED ANOTHER HUGE FIRE, and the ultra-liberal Chico ER is too freakin’ pussified and milquetoast to actually come out and SAY IT. I’ll say it for them-
PG&E CAUSED THE DIXIE FIRE!
https://www.chicoer.com/2021/07/19/pge-utility-linked-to-dixie-fire/