legacycentral bbs

So there's two big fires burning basically on opposite ends of the sacto area, and it sending smoke all over the place. This is what the sky looks like just minutes ago at 1:30PM, and that's the sun. It was much redder earlier in the morning and will be again at night. Been like this since yesterday.





I think it's extremely cool, everything has a orangeish, yellow tint to it and really brings out the color in everything. Grass looks green, trees look brown, road looks black, it's awesome. I'm sure we're all getting some form of cancer from this though. I wonder how helens looks right now.

Looks cool. Digital camera? Every sky shot I try to take with my digital sucks.

Steve

I remember a couple of years ago when there were big forest fires in Quebec. We walked outside around 1ish after a night of heavy drinking, and couldn't figure out why it was still dark, until we looked up.

Looked very similar to those pictures. I agree, its a very cool sight.

Yeah, its a trip. Drove to work yesterday and thought to myself "Fog??? At 11am?? Cant be..."

Then i woke up this morning and found a bunch of white specs on my car. Was told its ash from the fires that surround us. I believe there's one in Woodland and another in the Sierra's. As long as the fires stay up there, im cool. The smoke does give it a very errie feeling. I kinda like it.

-Brian

Yeah Highway 50 was closed for a while. Might still be closed, but I havne't been keeping up on it.

I can't wait for it to snow. I want to hit the slopes so bad. I saw the ash on my car this morning and was like: "It's ALMOST like snow....only not."

I used to fight wild land fires with Oregon Woods Forestery and we were an Initial Assualt Crew ( one step below Hot Shots and two below Smoke Jumpers).

I've seen some crazy things out in the Mountains while fighting fires. A crazy sunset against the Northern Cascades, up around Twisp Washington someplace, that was probably the single most beautiful thing I've ever seen (besides my kids). Crowning trees that were like Tornadoes made of fire and sounded like you were standing next to a ram jet SR-71 engine at full throttle. You could scream to your buddy right next to you and he wouldn't hear you. Lightening storms that made my nuts shrink for life. We were on a night watch this one time watching an entire mountain side burn. We were on the otherside of a creek making sure that there wasn't any spotting across the line. There were trees that were breaking from being weakened by crown fires and they were rolling down the mountain side and exploding against rocks and stuff. It was intense. We were making bets wheather or not they'd make it to the creek.

Seriously the best job I ever had.

I only understand half of what you just said because I watched a thing on smoke jumpers on the history channel a few weeks ago.

How does a person get a job like that? I've heard you talk about it many times and I think it's very interesting. It would be very inspiring spiritually to see the twin forces of destruction and creation twisted together in flames. The raw power of the earth is awesome. It reminds me of the story of the phoenix.

Yeah, Matt, that sounds friggin' incredible.

Steve

Hey your smoke has reached Tahoe today.

Scott- Actually, a really good friend of mine that I've known and went to school with since kindergarden's dad is half owner of Oregon Woods Forestery, so I guess I kinda had an in. But really they usually have a shortage of fire fighters all over the western US. You apply, have to pass a physical that includes running 2 miles in under 15 minutes (IIRC, it was a while ago) and then attend classes for about a week to get certified.

It's a kick ass job but you work your ass off big time. You work 28 days straight then get 3 days off. You work a minumim 16 hrs a day (unless your waiting in camp to be deployed, in which case you still get paid a minimum 16 hrs to sit ) and can work up to 72 hrs straight with even longer hrs on special occasions. Sometimes they can't get you back in to camp so they drop you supplies (food, drinks, and these weird paper sleeping bags) and you have to live out by the fire in a safety zone. It can be a loooong time between showers when this occurs but it isn't often.

It's really like a war zone because you have Helicopters bringing in and taking out crews, Sky Cranes dropping HUGE buckets of water and bombers dropping fire retardent. It's nuts and really dangerous. It's great though.

Steve- It is, I highly recommend it to everyone.

Hardy- I imagine that you understood everything but "crown fire" and maybe "spotting across the line".

A crown fire is when the fire is in the tree tops. They can go up extremely quick and hot.

Spotting across the line is when the wind carries hot embers across the fire line and starts a new fire in a green zone.

Oh we got to do back burning operations too. Now that's a trip, you dig, doze or use a natural break (water, rock, ect..) to create a fire line. Then when the winds shift back into the the fire you start a forest fire at the line and burn the woods back into the black (already burnt area). It's crazy.

heh, I said that wrong, I understood everything, those were some of the key words I remembered from the show.

Hahaha, oops. I see what you meant now.