Author: Bill

I was impressed by this extraordinary picture of a Delta II rocket carrying the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) being launched at Cape Canaveral. Click on it to see a larger version.

SFGate has an interesting story about lessons that were learned from the 1991 fire in Oakland that claimed the lives of 25 people and burned 3,000 homes. Here’s a very brief excerpt:

“We don’t ever want to happen what happened in ’91 and it showed today,” Battalion Chief Lorenzo Frediani said Thursday afternoon as he returned from the scene of a 2-acre grass and brush fire, near the epicenter of the 1991 blaze, that took crews about 90 minutes to contain.

And

“Fighting a building fire and a natural wildfire is the difference between writing a newspaper article and writing a novel,” Frediani said.

Firefighters on the 40,000 acre Evans Road fire in eastern North Carolina are planning a massive burnout operation on Friday or as soon as the weather permits. They want to remove the unburned fuel between the east side of the fire and N.C. 94 by burning it under controlled conditions, rather than waiting for the main fire to burn through the area. This two-day project and other burnouts will add at least another 10,000-20,000 acres to the fire. They had hoped to do this on Thursday but heavy smoke prevented aircraft from flying.

The map below shows the fire perimeter in yellow as mapped by fire personnel, and heat detected by satellites early Thursday morning in red, orange, and black. Click on the map to see a larger version.

Here is a 53-second video of the fire in Simi Valley of California September 28-29, 2005. It was shot with three cameras over a period of 28 hours. The fire burned 25,000 acres.

An excerpt from a lengthy article in the Press-Enterprise:

By BEN GOAD
Washington Bureau

Roughly a third of California’s fleet of federal fire engines is currently unavailable due to staffing shortages, according to figures supplied by a group that represents U.S. Forest Service crews.

Statewide, only 186 of the agency’s 276 engines were ready to respond to fires as of Friday, according to a report created by fire officials and released by the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association.

The number of available engines fluctuates daily as staffing levels vary slightly, said Casey Judd, the group’s business manager.

Thirty-two percent of federal engines were not staffed Friday, underscoring the magnitude of a firefighter retention problem that the agency’s top officials have downplayed, Judd said.

“There’s nobody to go to these fires,” he said. “As a result, fires that should be put out will grow in size, intensity and, ultimately, cost.”

Federal fire officials said they are moving quickly to put several dozen more engines into service in the state by late June. Meanwhile, they said, the agency is ready for the approaching fire season.

The following comment about the fire in Norway was left yesterday by bjorn ivar:

“The Froland fire in Norway is now reported to have burned between 2000 and 6000 acres. More than 20 cabins and one farm has also been consumed by the flames. 4 helicopters and 200-300 firefighters is fighting the fire.

This is probably the largest wildfire in Norway since WWII by a wide margin.”

Here is more information from Aftenposten

“Forest fire burning for fourth day in a row

More homes were evacuated as a fire in Froland, southern Norway, kept burning during the night. Officials were more optimistic, however, that they would soon gain control over it.

The fire that turned into an inferno near the town of Mykland on Monday seemed to be “calming down,” said one official. “It’s been a good night, with a lot of positive developments, and we think this will be a good day,” Ove Frigstad, leader of the fire battalion, told Aftenposten.no Thursday morning.

Frigstad conceded that “the wind was still dangerous,” but forecasts that it might finally start raining fueled his optimism.

He also said emergency crews knew where the various “fire fronts” were, and that they were positioned at all of them.

“We have crews on all fronts, but don’t have full control until they’re all extinguished,” he said. “It’s very dry in the area, and the fire has been burning for a long time.”

More than 10,000 mål (about 2500 acres, or 1,000 hectares) have been ravaged by the blaze and nearly 70 persons remained under evacuation orders.

The fire in Froland, Aust-Agder County, is just one of several fires to have broken out in southern Norway during the past two weeks. Eight persons lost their homes during another fire near Modum in Buskerud County on Wednesday.”