Simon's Cat ~ TV Dinner

I'll be posting updates on the fires in the morning, but for now, I'm posting a cute animated movie... I love the Simon's Cat videos on YouTube.. lol..



Anyway, the number of active fires all over the state have gone down to 38 according to the Cal Fire website! Fantastic news, isn't it? I'll grab all the stats in the morning and get them posted. (I sure hope no one was here specifically looking for fire updates today! Sorry about that!)

The InSessions message board came back up sometime this afternoon (I'm not quite sure what time it happened.. lol) and there has been a bit of new news posted there about a couple of the cases I've been watching, so tomorrow I'll see about adding that news into the blog as well.

It's Friday and We Still Have Yucky Air

The sun was still orange when it came up this morning, but the air doesn't seem quite so hazy. Thank goodness we aren't having to deal with the crud in the air that the firefighters see as in the photo above. I can actually see the trees on the next block today! They're not obscured by the smoke haze the way they were yesterday morning. The weather might be improving! I hope! It's not supposed to be quite as hot today either. They're still predicting triple digit temperatures, but this time the weather thingy is saying it'll only get to 101 today instead of the 108 we had the other day. We've actually got a bit of a breeze blowing out of the southwest this morning too.

The Cal Fire website was updated at 9pm last night, nothing new yet this morning on their information page, but some of the news was good on there last night. The total number of active fires has gone down for one part of their report, but for the statewide total, the number is the same. Of course, the lower number for the Cal Fire active fires could be because some of the fires have merged again. Check out the numbers below:

Statewide Fire Overview - Lightning Series

Current Situation: Firefighters continue to make progress in containing wildfires throughout California. Over fourteen hundred fires have been contained due to the endless efforts of firefighters from California, as well as from throughout the nation. Red Flag Warnings in northern California remain in effect tonight. Ten California National Guard fire crews began their assignment on the Mendocino Complex today. The priority of firefighting is for the protection of life, property and natural resources.
Download the latest fact sheet. (Updated 7/10 at 9 p.m.)
Download the latest statewide map.

• Statewide Fire Statistics
• Total Fires at Peak: 1,781
• Total Fires Contained: 1,459
• Total Active Fires: 322
• Total Acres Burned: 725,421

These numbers are total fires and acres that have occurred from state, local and federal firefighting agencies beginning June 20, 2008.

• CAL FIRE Statistics
• Total Fires at Peak: 1,005
• Fires Contained: 815
• Active Fires: 55
• Acres Burned: 239,418

These numbers are total fires and acres that have occurred ONLY in CAL FIRE jurisdiction since June 20, 2008.
The number of contained and active fires will not equal the total due to some fires merging together.

• Statewide Resources Committed
• Personnel Committed: 20,018
• Fire Engines: 1,507
• Hand Crews: 429
• Dozers: 282
• Water Tenders: 418
• Helicopters: 108

Highway closures: State highways, county and local roads are closed throughout California due to wildfire activities. Closures and delays remain in place for State Highways 1 (Big Sur Area), 32, 70, 96 and 299. Travelers are advised to seek current information from local law enforcement.

Evacuations: Areas of Butte, Kern, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Shasta and Trinity counties are under evacuation orders at this time. Precautionary evacuation orders currently exist in areas in Butte, Kern, Mendocino, Monterey, Plumas, Santa Barbara, Shasta and Trinity counties. Residents are advised to monitor their local fire situation, check with local law enforcement agencies for information, and be prepared to evacuate when necessary.

Structures:
Threatened : 13,358 residences, 141 commercial, 2,612 outbuildings.
Destroyed : 100 residences, 1 commercial, 116 outbuildings.

The Chico Record has a good update of what is happening on the Camp Fire (Butte Complex): 8:10 a.m.: Summary: Fire news mostly positive. The firefighters have managed to get more lines cut around the fire and the weather actually cooperated last night/early this morning. They were expecting "down canyon" winds of up to 40 mph, but when the morning winds came up, they weren't as strong as expected, so the fire didn't "take off" on runs as much. The areas that were evacuated the other day are still under mandatory evacuation orders though. Fire officials are still concerned about the areas of the fire that caused the evacuations in the first place.

Another tidbit of news about the fire up there came from Mike, my landlord, last night. He called and asked me to get a hold of some of the TV news organizations that are covering the fire up there. His internet gives him a lot of trouble at times and he knows I've got a good connection and use it all the time. So, I surfed around to some of the news sites and sent off some emails for him with sort of a news tip. He said that he's got some friends that live up near the Camp Fire, not in one of the evacuated areas, so they're still there. Anyway, the woman friend of Mike's called and told a story of a bear that had come into her yard. From what I gathered from Mike, the bear was going after her chickens. When she stepped outside, the bear, who was injured/burned made a move towards her. She had to shoot the thing. So, the emails I sent to the news media was sort of a suggestion that they might put a warning on their newscasts about the wildlife that will be coming out of the burned areas, injured and probably angry and what to do about them. Bears, mountain lions and who knows what. This morning I had a reply from one of the stations asking if they could contact Mike. I called Mike and got his permission to give them his phone number and off went another email to that station. I've heard nothing back from the other 3 stations that I emailed last night. I'll update later if I hear more on this story.

The California Fire News blog hasn't been updated for a couple of days, so I am guessing that the blogger and his co-writers have been out on the fire lines. So, I'm going to copy paste the list of fires into my blog this morning. Here we go:

CAL FIRE Summary of Fires by County

Butte: The Butte Lightning Complex has burned 47,700 acres and is 45% contained. The Butte Fire Information Number is (530) 538-7826. Click Here for more information.

Mendocino: The Mendocino Lightning Complex has burned 52,200 acres and is 65% contained. The Mendocino Fire Information Number is (707)-467-6426. Click Here for more information.

Shasta & Trinity: The Shasta and Trinity Lightning has burned 66,115 acres and is 45% contained. The Shasta-Trinity Unit Information Number is (530) 225-2510. Click Here for more information.

Humboldt: The Humboldt Complex has burned 1,310 acres and is 90% contained. The fires are burning throughout Humboldt County, with the largest fire, the Paradise Fire, north of Shelter Cove and is 925 acres and 85% contained. The Humboldt-Del Norte Fire Information Number is (707) 726-1225.

Kern County: The Piute Fire has burned 34,852 acres and is 32% contained. Click Here for more information.

Lassen, Modoc: The Corral Fire burned 12,434 acres and is now 100% contained. Click Here for more information.

Mariposa: The Oliver Fire burned 2,789 acres and now 100% contained. Click Here for more information.

Lake: The Walker Fire burned 14,500 acres and is now 100% contained. Click Here for more information.

Napa & Solano: The Wild Fire burned 40,000 acres and is now 100% contained. Click Here for more information.

Santa Clara: The Whitehurst and Hummingbird Fires burned a combined 994 acres and are both now 100% contained. Click Here for more information.

Tehama & Glenn: The Tehama-Glenn Lightning Complex burned 22,907 acres and is now 100% contained.

Major Federal and Local Incidents
For information on major federal incidents click here or click here for the Inciweb list of fires.

It's nice to see those "100% contained" notes in some of the fires, isn't it?

Other Stuff
Hackers have been an active little bunch since all the mess with the InSessions forums going *poof* in the last few days. InSessions and TruTV weren't the only ones being attacked. Yesterday evening, the Help Find The Missing forums got hacked and taken offline with a page with arabic text put in it's place. They're back up again this morning. Kudos to the admins of that site for working into the night to get things fixed and back online. The Crime Library Forums were also experiencing some strange activity yesterday. But, since they are also run by TruTV, it was probably an offshoot of what happened to the InSessions forums and the TruTV forums. On a few posts on the Crime Library forum there were reports of other boards being attacked at the same time, including a Christion based forum. But we did get some news about the InSessions forums, yesterday evening a message from Coldwater appeared on the TruTV forums:

As much as I know:
I don't have too much info other than our Techs did trace it back to the hacker's original point. From there they then knew how to program and upgrade our security. It was easier to do it on Tru as the message board program is a new one. The difficulty with IS is it still has the old original program and trying to update it is being a problem, they 'think' they can but are not making factual statements at this time. They were hoping to have it up and running today but I see that didn't happen. Don't know if they will work over the weekend or not. But trust me, they have informed they understand how all of you feel and doing the best they can, and appreciate your patience & hopefully you will return when it's in operation again. I think many websites were taken by surprise, all thinking they were too secure to be hacked. At first I thought it was an irate poster also & I still believe it was someone who had been banned that was deleting all the very long informative forums on IS. The reason I believe that after a certain change was made, the deletings stopped. This is a totally different situation and has been confirmed it started in Israel. As soon as I get further word I'll let you know, but at this point they are not talking about closing the IS boards for good. Just have to hope they can update the security. All have a good weekend. Check my "help" thread and give us some of your great ideas.

What makes hackers go after message boards and forums? Is it kids with too much time on their hands who think they're something special because they can get past the security on a forum website? Believe it or not, forums are extremely vulnerable to these kinds of attacks. Forums depend on the input of the people who post there, so there are "holes" that allow the input from the posters. Way back when, before the internet, there were "Bulletin Board Systems" (or as we called them back then; BBS's) that folks put up for people to visit and do things on. I had one of those, and hackers were a constant concern to any of us geeks who allowed people to dial into their home computer to visit those BBS's. In my opinion, the hackers back then were probably the same as they are now. Back then, they were kids with too much time on their hands and most likely it's the same now. If it's a truly destructive hack, like into a government or bank site, there's something malicious about those hackers. But the ones who attack forums.. Nah.. Not malicious. Just stupid.

And, again this morning, I'll end with a bit of humor...


more cat pictures

Quick Update
The Cal Fire website has just updated the statistics for the fires. The numbers haven't changed much, for the most part, the changes are in the resources section. Crews being sent off the lines to rest and the like, probably. But they've got the new fact sheet and map up.
Download the latest fact sheet. (Updated 7/11 at 9 a.m.)
Download the latest statewide map.

More Heat, More Smoke and More YUCK!

The smoke is pretty bad here today. When I walked outside my back door this morning, the haze was thick enough that it partially obscured the trees on the next street over. My sinuses are so messed up from all the smoke over the past few days that I can't smell the smoke, but I'm sure it's there. When it's thick enough down here in the valley that we can't see clearly a block over, it's bad. Yesterday's heat was bad too. The weather gadget that I have on this blog told me that it got to 108 yesterday.. Ugh!

I found an interesting item when I googled the fire news this morning. California has fire fighters on their way here from New Zealand and Australia! According to the news article I found, there will be 40 firefighters here for about 5 weeks or so helping to fight the blazes that were started by lightning back on June 21st. Since it's mid-winter in New Zealand and Australia right now, their need for wildland fire fighters is pretty low. Apparently this is the 5th time that we've had Kiwi and Aussie fire fighters here helping out. I have to wonder if the US has ever sent any of our guys over there to help them out during their fire season. There are teams of firefighters here from all over the country. One news item in the Reno Gazette Journal is about the teams that have been sent in from Nevada. I've seen other articles on other days about teams from Canada and other states here in the US. But, even with all the help that is being sent in, there are just too many fires and not enough fire fighters to contain them. The fires we see and hear on the news are just the "major" ones. The one near Big Sur, the one near Goleta, the one north of me near Paradise and Concow. According to the Cal Fire information page, there are still 322 fires burning all over the state. (As I write this, the latest statistics are from last night at 9pm.)

Statewide Fire Overview - Lightning Series

Current Situation: Firefighters continue to make progress in containing wildfires throughout California. To date over fourteen hundred fires have been contained due to the diligent and endless work of firefighters from not only California, but throughout the nation. Red Flag Warnings in northern California have expanded eastward up the west slope of the Sierra Nevada north of Yosemite. Record high temperatures and low humidities continue throughout northern California. The priority of firefighting is for the protection of life, property and natural resources.
Download the latest fact sheet. (Updated 7/9 at 9 p.m.)
Download the latest statewide map.

Statewide Fire Statistics

• Total Fires at Peak: 1,781
• Total Fires Contained: 1,459
• Total Active Fires: 322
• Total Acres Burned: 688,423

These numbers are total fires and acres that have occurred from state, local and federal firefighting agencies beginning June 20, 2008.

CAL FIRE Statistics

• Total Fires at Peak: 1,005
• Fires Contained: 814
• Active Fires: 59

These numbers are total fires and acres that have occurred ONLY in CAL FIRE jurisdiction since June 20, 2008.
The number of contained and active fires will not equal the total due to some fires merging together.

Statewide Resources Committed

• Personnel Committed: 19,474
• Fire Engines: 1,560
• Hand Crews: 408
• Dozers: 253
• Water Tenders: 407
• Helicopters: 102

Highway closures: State highways, county and local roads are closed throughout California due to wildfire activities. Closures and delays remain in place for State Highways 1 (Big Sur Area), 32, 70 and 96. Travelers are advised to seek current information from local law enforcement.

Evacuations:Areas of Butte, Kern, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Shasta and Trinity counties are under evacuation orders at this time. Precautionary evacuation orders currently exist in areas in Butte, Kern, Mendocino, Monterey, Plumas, Santa Barbara, Shasta and Trinity counties. Residents are advised to monitor their local fire situation, check with local law enforcement agencies for information, and be prepared to evacuate when necessary.

Structures:
Threatened: 13,489 residences, 162 commercial, 2,766 outbuildings.
Destroyed: 99 residences, 1 commercial, 88 outbuildings.

The latest satellite map of the fires from the Modis Rapid Response System gallery page really shows the smoke and what it's doing. This one was acquired yesterday and you can really see how thick the smoke is and how far it is traveling.

The fire crews on the fire nearest me, the Camp Fire (Butte Complex) got a little help from Mother Nature last night. The winds didn't come up so they've been able to hold the progress of their containment. The communities that had been evacuated in the last couple of days are still under evacuation orders, but they hadn't lost anymore homes according to the briefing at 8:30 this morning. The Chico newspaper articles, "7:45 a.m.: Paradise survives another night" and "8:30 a.m.: Evacuations still in place" detail the progress made on the fires and the evacuation status. From what I've read in all the articles, one of the problems in fighting this fire is the inability to use the air drops at times due to the thick smoke.

Other Stuff
The InSessions forums are still down, but the TruTV forums have come back up. Coldwater, the moderator for both message boards, posted yesterday shortly after the TruTV forums came back up. Here's what she wrote: "I haven't been able to post due to all forums being locked Tru opened today. Yes it was a hacker from Isreal, hitting several other sites also. Tech updated the security on here so there is no worry. The IS have not been updated yet due to the old program currently still there, never having been updated so it's difficult." Who knows when the techs will get the InSessions forums up again.

And to finish up this morning's post, I'm going to add some humor... lol... LOLCats to be precise. I found some cute ones this morning. Enjoy!

more cat pictures

more cat pictures

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Bad News on the Fire Lines

The news from the Camp Fire near Paradise isn't good this morning. The news agencies are reporting that they've lost more homes. ABC reports that they've lost 40 homes near Paradise, but they're not saying for sure whether the homes lost were in Paradise, Magalia, Concow or somewhere else. KCRA3 is reporting 50 homes destroyed. On the Cal Fire page for this fire, with the 10pm update, they said the number of homes lost is 40 plus 10 outbuildings. From what I can gather from the different news sources the evacuation area has expanded even more. But, they're also saying that the winds were calmer last night. The weather isn't improving though. It's supposed to be even hotter today than it was yesterday. Yesterday it was 108 degrees and last night at 10:30pm when I got ready to go to bed, it was still 90 degrees outside. It didn't cool down enough overnight to really help things out. It's already 70 degrees and there is enough smoke in the air that you can look right at the sun, which is a bright orange.

The Cal Fire overall statistics are looking a bit better. The total number of fires active in the state right now have gone down from 330 to 323. That number includes fires being "managed" by both state and federal agencies. Here's the statistics for all the fires:

• Statewide Fire Statistics
• Total Fires at Peak: 1,781
• Total Fires Contained: 1,458
• Total Active Fires: 323
• Total Acres Burned: 667,863

These numbers are total fires and acres that have occurred from state, local and federal firefighting agencies beginning June 20, 2008.

• CAL FIRE Statistics
• Total Fires at Peak: 1,005
• Fires Contained: 814
• Active Fires: 59

These numbers are total fires and acres that have occurred ONLY in CAL FIRE jurisdiction since June 20, 2008.
The number of contained and active fires will not equal the total due to some fires merging together.

• Statewide Resources Committed
• Personnel Committed: 18,488
• Fire Engines: 1,481
• Hand Crews: 379
• Dozers: 251
• Water Tenders: 396
• Helicopters: 110

Highway closures: State highways, county and local roads are closed throughout California due to wildfire activities. Closures and delays remain in place for State Highways 1 (Big Sur Area), 32, 70 and 96. Travelers are advised to seek current information from local law enforcement.

Evacuations: Areas of Butte, Monterey, Santa Barbara and Shasta counties are under evacuation orders at this time. Precautionary evacuation orders currently exist in areas in Butte, Kern, Mendocino, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Shasta and Plumas counties. Residents are advised to monitor their local fire situation, check with local law enforcement agencies for information, and be prepared to evacuate when necessary.

Structures:
Threatened: 13,323 residences, 288 commercial, 2,025 outbuildings.
Destroyed: 81 residences, 1 commercial, 77 outbuildings.

The Modis Rapid Response System had a new satellite image from yesterday. Again, the red dots indicate active fires.

The California Fire News blog has a link today to a gallery of fire photos (mostly from the fire near Big Sur.) at Boston.com. I agree with the fellow at the blog. These are some very spectacular photos and are highly recommended for viewing.

Other Stuff
The InSessions and TruTV message boards are still down this morning. I've managed to find a few of the people who posted at InSessions over at the Help Find The Missing forums. The moderators there have graciously provided a thread where folks are discussing what happened to the InSessions forums. And most folks posting there are agreeing that the cause of the forums going down was a hacker. The big question now is whether or not TruTV will restore the InSessions forums or leave them closed. If you're reading this and you're an InSessions poster, leave a comment and tell us how you're handling the InSessions withdrawals... lol

Smoke + Heat = Dangerous Weather

Yesterday was a miserable day. Triple digit temperatures and lots of smoke in the air made it very hard to do anything outside. And today promises more of the same. More heat and more smoke. It's getting hard to breathe at all. My voice sounds like I have a bad cold with the stuffy nose, watery eyes and cough along with it. But it's not a cold. It's the bad air we're breathing.

And up in the mountains to the North apparently has had increased winds as well. At 2am this morning they called for mandatory evacuations of the communities near the Butte Complex Fire. The California Fire News blog posted an update at 3am with more news of the evacuation orders. The fire is dangerously close to homes in that area now and all residents are being ordered out. An evacuation center for the people has been set up in Oroville and facilities have been set up for the evacuated animals. The Sacramento Bee has an article about the dangerous situation on the Butte Complex this morning as well.

As for the smoke in the air, the Sacramento Bee also has an article up this morning about the nasty air we're experiencing and it's apparently nothing new: "Smoke is normal - for 1800s". It's an interesting read.

On a side note, the California Fire News blog hadn't been getting regular updates the way it normally had. On Sunday evening, the fellow who "owns" that blog posted an apology for the lack of news. He's been out on the firelines on water tender duty!

The Modis Rapid Response gallery page had two images that I hadn't posted yet. The first has a time stamp of 7/6 and the 2nd one is time stamped 7/7.

According to Cal Fire, there are still 330 fires burning around the state. With the triple digit temperatures the weatherman is predicting, its going to be hard for those folks out on the fire lines. We need some cooler, wetter weather all over the state. Soon.

Other Stuff
The InSessions message boards have been down for about a day now. Rumor has it that a hacker attacked the InSessions and TruTV boards. At least that is what some are saying on a couple of other message boards. Whether or not the cause for the boards being down is a hacker, we won't know until the boards are put back online.

I guess I'll throw in a bit of humor for a closing note today.... Then maybe I'll go surfing around the net and see if I can find some good news for a change.

more cat pictures