Body cam footage as officers helped residents evacuate during Tubbs Fire

body cam tubbs fire wildfire
A screenshot from the ABC10 video below, shot by an officer’s body cam.

In the video below produced by ABC10, law enforcement officers and firefighters tell their stories about encouraging residents to evacuate during the first hours of the Tubbs Fire that burned into Santa Rosa, California October 9, 2017. One firefighter explains how he kept working after learning that his house was one of the hundreds that were destroyed. Body cam footage gives us an up close viewpoint of what the first responders were going through. The North Bay fires destroyed about 8,900 structures (including homes and outbuildings).

Man sentenced to 5 years for burglarizing fire department truck during Carr Fire

Brian Martinson
Brian Martinson, Chico Police Department

A man who stole items from inside a Redding Fire Department truck during the Carr Fire at Redding, California received much more than the 1-year sentence plus probation recommenced by the Probation Department. Judge Cara Beatty gave Brian Daniel Martinson five years in county jail, according to the Shasta County District Attorney’s Facebook page.

Mr. Martinson had pleaded guilty to grand theft and committing the crime during a natural disaster.

Below is an excerpt from an article in the Redding Searchlight:

Martinson was accused of stealing items belonging to Redding firefighter Erick Mattson that were inside a fire department utility truck while it was parked in front of Mattson’s home.

Mattson was at his Palo Cedro home resting in between fighting the Carr Fire when Martinson broke into the truck.

In August, Martinson was arrested in Chico after being caught shoplifting from a Sportsman’s Warehouse. Officers there found Martinson with a backpack belonging to the firefighter and items from the fire department.

The stolen property included more than $5,000 worth of things that included a laptop and a hard drive containing family photos. Chico police said at the time the hard drive wasn’t located.

Butte County investigators questioned Martinson and he admitted to burglarizing the fire truck, the DA’s office said.

The Carr Fire started July 23, 2018, killed eight people and burned over 229,000 acres and 1,604 structures.

In a different but similar incident, the two men who were arrested on the first day of the Camp Fire for stealing a vehicle and other items from a fire station at Jarbo Gap November 8 have pleaded not guilty to the crimes. Robert DePalma and William Erlbacher, both of Concow, California are scheduled to appear in court December 6 for a preliminary hearing. They remain in custody with bail set at $250,000 each. More information about this incident is at the Chico Enterprise-Record.

The Camp Fire burned more than 153,000 acres at Paradise California, killed approximately 85 people (as of November 25, 2018), and destroyed over 14,000 homes.

Little improvement seen in wildfire situation in Queensland

map wildfires in Queensland, Australia
Satellite photo showing smoke from wildfires in Queensland, Australia November 29, 2018. NASA

Firefighters in Queensland are expecting another five days of exceptionally hot and dry weather. There are 130 fires currently burning, with about seven of them described as fast moving and significant.

Hundreds of firefighters have arrived from New South Wales and other areas to lend a hand.

An evacuation order remains in place for Deepwater, while a number of areas including Dalrymple Heights, Winfield, Carmila and Captain Creek are being urged to “stay informed”.

Record temperatures are forecast for Longreach in excess of 45 C (113 F) in the coming days before the heatwave is expected to move down to the southeast next week.

The premier of Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has been monitoring the situation closely and is helping to spread important information to the residents of her state.

Looking at fire through the eyes of the Eldorado Hotshots

hotshots eldorado
Screenshot from the ABC10 video.

A television station in Sacramento, ABC10, has recently produced several videos 8 to 13 minutes long about the wildfires in California. We will be showing you a few of them over the next couple of days.

The example below is about the Eldorado Hotshots, and features a former military sniper and another who initially received his fire training as a member of an inmate crew.

The President expands on his comments about the wildfires in California

Camp Fire Northern California
Camp Fire in Northern California. Inciweb photo.

Several times over the last month President Trump has expressed his opinions about wildland fire management. On two occasions he said forests were being mismanaged in California, but did not specify exactly how, or if he was referring to the half of the forested land in the state that is managed by the federal government, or possibly the state managed lands, or private property. He also threatened twice to cut funding in the state because “forest management is so poor”, but it was not clear what funds he wants to reduce.

On November 27 Mr. Trump expanded on his wildfire management opinions in a lengthy interview with two reporters from the Washington Post, Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey. Below is what he said to them about fires, according to the Post:

“The fire in California, where I was, if you looked at the floor, the floor of the fire they have trees that were fallen, they did no forest management, no forest maintenance, and you can light — you can take a match like this and light a tree trunk when that thing is laying there for more than 14 or 15 months. And it’s a massive problem in California. … You go to other places where they have denser trees — it’s more dense, where the trees are more flammable — they don’t have forest fires like this, because they maintain. And it was very interesting, I was watching the firemen and they’re raking brush — you know the tumbleweed and brush and all this stuff that’s growing underneath. It’s on fire and they’re raking it working so hard, and they’re raking all this stuff. If that was raked in the beginning, there’d be nothing to catch on fire. It’s very interesting to see. A lot of the trees, they took tremendous burn at the bottom, but they didn’t catch on fire. The bottom is all burned but they didn’t catch on fire because they sucked the water, they’re wet. You need forest management, and they don’t have it.”

This quote was in the Post’s Fact Checker column, written by  Glenn Kessler and Salvador Rizzo, in which they checked a number of statements made in the interview. If you scroll down you will see what the authors determined to be factual, or not, in the President’s comments about fire.

This reminds me of how fictional President Josiah Edward “Jed” Bartlet of the TV series The West Wing handled a controversial wildfire issue. (Spoiler. It was very different.)

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Kelly.
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