Well darn it. I guess it's time to push the whole shebang into the ocean a few years early.

Dateline is Billings Montana? Nice job, Lou.

Is there a city in Montana called California or what the hell?

Right now, fully 25% of the state of Idaho is on fire.

Submitter: Kinda News: Forest fire in California. News: Becomes second-largest state wildfire in modern history. Fark: It's been buring since July 4th

What's buring?

I heard on the news today they expect to have the fire fully contained by September 6th. NOT extinguished.... contained.

Glad I'm not in that part of Cali right now.

Sorry, didn't read BKITU's post. Shame on me.

Don't panick! The only people that live even remotely near those areas, are rich people. And luckily for them, the middle and lower class will get stiffed when the state uses tax dollars to re-imburse them so they can rebuild their house AGAIN, just so it can go up again next year.... Yes its a pattern. Same with mudslide areas.

Well that's not nearly as interesting as it falling off into the ocean. Unless it's burning as it falls. That'll be fun television.

/"Is that the big one I hear in the background?"
//"Bye, you lizard scum!"

I live on the San Andreas Fault, so I'm really getting a kick out of all the replies having to do with California falling into the ocean.

/oh, this is about the fire?

Is there a city in Montana called California or what the hell?

Considering the number of Californians that go up there, they should rename the state North California.

(whisper) Psssst! Calfornians! You didn't hear this from me, but... Montanans hate your guts. Consider ruining Idaho or Wyoming for a while -- those places are pretty much the same as Montana.

We've been real lucky so far, we haven't had any Santa Ana winds coming in to carry the fire over to the other side of the mountains. Got to keep our fingers crossed that it stays that way.

cool album cover


/burning eternally in this very fire

Knucklepopper: Is there a city in Montana called California or what the hell?

Pssst, the article wasn't just about the California fire. There are other fires as well.

Last year the "Day Fire" began burning in the Los Padres Nat'l Forest near Los Angeles on Labor Day (Sept 4) and was fully contained - not controlled; just the perimeter was secured - on Oct 2, 28 days later.

/"only" 162,702 acres burned (250+ square miles) were burned

Can you see the fires from space? I'm not interested until you can see them from space.

gradatim: Is there a city in Montana called California or what the hell?

Considering the number of Californians that go up there, they should rename the state North California.

(whisper) Psssst! Calfornians! You didn't hear this from me, but... Montanans hate your guts. Consider ruining Idaho or Wyoming for a while -- those places are pretty much the same as Montana.

Pssssst! I'm not planning on going to those any of those holes ever again. We have a collection of dickheads in the valley enough to keep me caught up for the rest of my life. The scenery was really nice, but 13 years after my only visit to the rest of the western states, I still figure I'd rather stab myself in my eye than deal with the xenophobic freaks I ran into.

Come to California. You'd be surprised at most of us treat visitors. We actually like their tourist dollars.

mikaloyd: The rest of the country sucks so hard that CA couldnt fall into the ocean if it wanted to.

"What're you doing? Talking to TV producers? Bummer! Me? I'm readin' a book! Yeah! We're evolving out East!"

Just in time for Buring Man!

Caturday.
In the park.
I think it was the Fourth of July.

The smoke plumes are right outside my living room window. The best of them look like a nuke went off just on the other side of the ridge. For most of the past two weeks there's been ash falling from the sky; some days it was like a snow flurry. It's Apocariffic!

This is much different from living back East. New York was never on fire, except that one time...

US Forest Service cuteness 0:57 into report @ Link (new window)

Caturday
In the Fark

I hear ya, bro. Had a roomie from Oregon that forgot to scrape off his "Don't Californicate Oregon" bumpersticker. In 1986.

S.O.B. still lives here.

Oregon should be so lucky as to have anything anycate it. At a certain point even ass smells better then poo. I have been up and down the whole north coast, from nearly above Mexico on up into Canada. Oregon is the shiattiest part. There may be nice parts, but I never saw them. It had the highest per capita of unwashed people of any place I've seen, including the south, and the most hippy infested parts of CA. You can literally tell you're in Oregon by looking out the window and going hmmmmm looks shiattier. Must be in Oregon. Both the landscape and the people just have this scrubby beat down. Their state motto should be 'Oregon: MMMmmmmmm meth'.

god the news not new fark headlines just get lamer and lamer and lamer

NOTE TO CALIFORNIA! Hey a-holes, did it ever occur to you that you could break your forests up into sections divided by clear cut zones? That way a small fire is less likely to become a BIG fire.

Impudent Domain: NOTE TO CALIFORNIA! Hey a-holes, did it ever occur to you that you could break your forests up into sections divided by clear cut zones? That way a small fire is less likely to become a BIG fire.

Thanks for the tip. However there are couple things you haven't considered. 1) In Southern California moving into Central California, national forests are only a name. There aren't really trees present in significant quantities where this fire is burning and instead it is primarily low lying dry brush with only the occasional tree. 2) There are these things, I don't know if you have them, called winds. They tend to carry embers over any gaps that aren't hundreds of feet wide so it is difficult to cut lines that stop fires due to the sheer costs and environmental considerations given the size of the "forests" in question.

We didn't start the fire...

/crashes into tree

No structures burned, no deaths.. The semi-arid environment has evolved around fire, many plants depend on it for reproduction. What's the problem? Sure the cost, and some smoke and ash, but firefighters are employed and the land in the long run stays healthy-finally erasing the misguided suppression efforts of the last century. For all of you Californihaters- California's GDP: 1.5 trillion, suck it.

No significant structures, no homes anyway...

Please stop saving homes in the path of forest fires. Seriously. We can't build on coast lines easily because insurance companies won't cover homes. If we stop saving homes in the middle of forest-fire prone areas, insurance companies will stop covering them and people will be less likely to build in the forest, thus naturally reducing the risk of property and life by building in those areas.

My parents' house is ten miles south of the fire. I hear there's been a lot of ash falls, parents went to a town meeting, stocked up the ol' emergency kit. Otherwise, nbd so far.
For the guy who says only rich people live there... not true. In the hills of Santa Barbara and Ojai there are mansions, however, there's also working ranches there and further east. Also further east--little rural towns I never heard of.
And "this happens every year", well I call bullshiat. The area the Zaca fire is burning hasn't burned in ONE HUNDRED YEARS. So uh, you're way off. It's true there seems to be a big fire every year... usually in a different spot, but that's part of the natural cycle of things, as forest what are they called... rangers have slowly been coming to discover. That if you don't have the occasional burn, by the time there is one, it's gigantic.
Anyway, people like my parents that have money enough for a mansion also are almost always smart enough to cut back the brush and have a pump for the pool water (isn't that a great idea? In case of fire emergency, empty pool) etc. It's only the elderly and the idiotic who don't maintain their property.
Anyway, I just think it's part of living in California. If it's not a fire, it's an earthquake or a mudslide.
But when that mudslide happened in La Conchita (like ten miles south-east the house), I just laughed. Only an idiot would build on an ancient mudslide. Those rains were pretty spectacular.

matrixxx1: Don't panick! The only people that live even remotely near those areas, are rich people. And luckily for them, the middle and lower class will get stiffed when the state uses tax dollars to re-imburse them so they can rebuild their house AGAIN, just so it can go up again next year.... Yes its a pattern. Same with mudslide areas.

Gotta link for that state tax dollars thing?

Ceph: Please stop saving homes in the path of forest fires. Seriously. We can't build on coast lines easily because insurance companies won't cover homes. If we stop saving homes in the middle of forest-fire prone areas, insurance companies will stop covering them and people will be less likely to build in the forest, thus naturally reducing the risk of property and life by building in those areas.

As someone who lives on the Gulf Coast, I'm getting a kick...... I live minutes from where the eye of hurricane Ivan made landfall. You would think that construction of private homes and condos would be slowing on the beach due to the reason that you mentioned but you would be wrong. Insurance companies will cover anything at an increased rate. The best part is that my house is 30 minutes from the gulf but I get to pay astronomical rates due to those homes on the beach.
I used to say the same thing as you. Don't farking build there! But after thinking about it for a bit, I came to the conclusion that we cannot abandon huge swathes of the eastern seaboard and gulf states due to hurricanes. California cannot be evacuated to avoid earthquakes, wildfires and mudslides. We cannot move everyone away from the Mississippi river basin. It is unlikely that we can find a place to put all those Oklahomans where the tornados can't get them. Bad shiat happens everywhere.
We need more stringent building codes and more sane insurance regulation. People need to use a little more common sense when choosing a location for their homes, 100' from Gulf -BAD, half way up a mountain prone to mudslides - BAD, etc. I wish that people couldn't get insurance on their 5th home here at the beach (100 feet from the Gulf of Mexico). Then maybe I wouldn't be paying $3150.00 a year for a $150,000 home that IS built to withstand 135 MPH winds.

yeah, i'm too near that fire in S. Cali, no less.....in a VALLEY!!!

This is our air quality.

The day time:


The sun (no filter)



The moon (no filter)

My senior year in high school there was a big fire in Southern CA and we weren't allowed to exercise outside. I was thrilled by this because I played on our varsity basketball team, but that joy was cut short once our coach announced we were running 3 miles...in our gym.

PREACH!! I want a monkey... Fire is good for the land, and better when more frequent.

Yep, I live in Santa Barbara, and a couple of weeks ago, watching the local news station here, some panicked caller who lives not more than a few miles from the beach called in and asked "Where do we flee too if the fire crests the mountains?" The firefighters in the studio politely took her seriously. I didn't and laughed. It was pretty crazy though for awhile, with worst-case-scenario contingency plans being grudgingly alluded to by the firefighting powers that be, and nuclear bomb looking clouds forming behind the local range.