¿ r u on fire ? ~


¿ r u in the dark ? ~


plz respon ~


in b 4 ~ mudslides ~



plz stay safe california exmos ~




thx ~


plz respon ~


thx ~

He's located between the Salt Fire and the SCU Fire Complex, and the air is awful apparently.

Tyson

Same with Colorado.
California-

How about Connecticut?

Does it need a haircut?

My sunsets have been awfully red lately.

Living Newsom’s dream, here.
Among the most intelligent, knowledgeable, politically savvy people on earth (celebrities).
Fires all around, smoky and reddish skies, closed businesses, fun neighbors watching out for maskless bandits, homeless people with nowhere to go, cooling centers for overheated people with social distancing/masking code, prisoners being let loose so they don’t become Covids.
Indeed, good times are here!

My skies are smoky and hot. Several fires to the north but none close.

The prisoners enslaved to fight these fires have been Covid hit:

Snippet:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article243977827.html

“California’s incarcerated firefighters have for decades been the state’s primary firefighting “hand crews,” and the shortage has officials scrambling to come up with replacement firefighters in a dry season that is shaping up to be among the most extreme in years. The state is hunting for bulldozer crews and enlisting teams that normally clear brush as replacements.”


(It’s shocking how unshocked Americans largely are about their nation’s prisoner slaves and the for profit Incarceration system that AGs keep chock-full with mostly black and brown bodies.)

They should have had a higher body count in the war in heaven.

I didn't realize the US used prisoners as forced labour, at some hazard to themselves if they are being "used" for firefighting. It's not surprising that I didn't know because I'm not American, but it's very shocking nevertheless...

In France, firefighters are either highly-trained part-time volunteers (who are compensated for loss of salary) or specialist firefighters who are attached to the army. I've known several because they also teach first aid inside companies.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2020 11:23AM by Soft Machine.

Bonjour (mon temps), M. Tom à Paris!

Les détenus du système carcéral californien ne sont pas «forcés» de combattre les incendies de forêt.

Voici un lien vers un article qui donne un aperçu du programme.

Mais quelle honte! c'est en anglais !!!


https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/wildfire/california-inmate-firefighters/103-0fdfca69-2f30-4abe-99a1-838364d395e6

And here’s Chris Hedges with some context (alas, also in English):

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-prison-state-of-america/

Snippet:

“Prisons are a grotesque manifestation of corporate capitalism. Slavery is legal in prisons under the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States. …” And the massive U.S. prison industry functions like the forced labor camps that have existed in all totalitarian states.“

[...]

“ But corporate profit is not limited to building and administering prisons. Whole industries now rely almost exclusively on prison labor. Federal prisoners, who are among the highest paid in the U.S. system, making as much as $1.25 an hour, produce the military’s helmets, uniforms, pants, shirts, ammunition belts, ID tags and tents. Prisoners work, often through subcontractors, for major corporations [long but not ever near complete list provide]. Prisoners in some states run dairy farms, staff call centers, take hotel reservations or work in slaughterhouses. And prisoners are used to carry out public services such as collecting highway trash in states such as Ohio.”

Please read the whole article. Hedges teaches in a prison and knows this American story with painful intimacy.

EOG, the Ghawd of the Interwebz does not allow me to see that article for some reason. Could you explain briefly if I flatter you by saying that your French is impeccable?

Buenas noches (my time ;-)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2020 03:53PM by Soft Machine.

First... I told Google Translate what you said about its French, and GT blushed!

Here are the key paragraph from the article:

The actual conservation camp program, of which the firefighters now form a part dates back to 1915, a time when CDCR (California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation) road camps were established. At that time, the camps were meant to provide able-bodied inmates a chance to work on projects throughout the state.

2. There are camps in 27 counties

There are 43 conservation camps for adult offenders in 27 counties throughout California. There are around 3,100 inmates working at the conservation camps, with about 2,150 who are fire line-qualified.

Camp inmates also work as support and maintenance staff at the camps, serving as cooks, laundry workers, landscapers, and water treatment plant operators.


3. An average year yields 3 million hours in emergency response work

For an average year, the CDCR claims the program provides about 3 million hours of response to fires and other emergencies, and 7 million hours in community service projects. Their services saves California taxpayers about $100 million.

The responsibilities of those in the camps can range from clearing firebreaks, restoring historical structures, maintaining parks, sand bagging and flood protection, reforestation and clearing fallen trees and debris.


4. Inmates must earn the right to work in these camps

Inmate firefighters must have non-violent behavior and conformance to rules while they are in prison.

Inmates who volunteer must be cleared as "physically fit" for the job and have "minimum custody" status. They are screened on a case-by-case basis. Only inmates with sustained good behavior in prison, conformance to rules, and participation in rehabilitative programming can pass.


5. Certain crimes make you ineligible for the program

Any inmate can apply to the program but not every inmate qualifies for the program. (For some reason, being convicted of arson makes you ineligible to be an inmate firefighter!)

Inmates who volunteer must also have five years or less remaining on their sentence to be considered.


6. Inmates considered for fire crews go through training from Cal Fire

The inmates considered for fire crew positions are evaluated for physical fitness by CDCR and trained in firefighting techniques by Cal Fire. The training includes a week of classroom instruction and a second week of field exercises.

They cover wildland fire safety, attack, hand tool use, teamwork and crew expectations. Once on a fire crew, they have a minimum of four hours-per-week in advanced training.


7. Inmate firefighters can still be employed by Cal Fire

It is possible for an inmate firefighter to be employed by Cal Fire, even with a felony conviction or incarceration. A felony conviction or incarceration does not necessarily disqualify someone for Cal Fire employment.

In 2018, CDCR, Cal Fire and the California Conservation Corps worked together to start a Firefighter Training and Certification Program in Ventura County. The program gives advanced firefighter training to former offenders on parole who were inmate firefighters.

The first cohort came about in 2018, followed by two others in early 2019. The training has already seen some participants land new jobs.

"Among the three cohorts, two participants have left the program early after being offered full-time employment with Cal Fire," Powell said. "A third participant left early after being offered full-time employment with an environmental clean-up agency in Chico that assists with debris clean-up in the community of Paradise."


8. Inmate firefighters get paid for their labor with wages and credits

Depending on their skill level, inmate firefighters can earn between $2.90 and $5.12 per day, according to Powell. That cost is paid by CDCR. However, while fighting fires, inmates earn an additional $1 per hour from Cal Fire, regardless of skill level.

The money earned by inmates at camps can be sent home or saved until they are released to parole.

Inmates can also earn time off their sentence by working in the fire camps. Every one day served can get them two days off their prison sentence. Even offenders in the fire camps that are not firefighters can earn one day of credit for every day of incarceration for good behavior.


9. Inmate firefighters work 24 shifts alongside Cal Fire crews

When a wildfire emergency occurs, at least one or two crews are sent on the initial dispatch with engines and aircraft. More crews can be deployed at the request of the incident commander.

During the wildfire, the crews are based in command centers with Cal Fire for 24-hour shifts. After that shift, the crews return to get a chance to rest while other crews take their place for 24 hours.

Are they paid anything?

8. Inmate firefighters get paid for their labor with wages and credits (remember, they already were sentenced to full room & board!!)

Depending on their skill level, inmate firefighters can earn between $2.90 and $5.12 per day, according to Powell. That cost is paid by CDCR. However, while fighting fires, inmates earn an additional $1 per hour from Cal Fire, regardless of skill level.

The money earned by inmates at camps can be sent home or saved until they are released to parole.

Inmates can also earn time off their sentence by working in the fire camps. Every one day served can get them two days off their prison sentence. Even offenders in the fire camps that are not firefighters can earn one day of credit for every day of incarceration for good behavior.

When I was a young woman, I worked for a period of time for a county parks department. It was a minimum wage kind of job. I planted things, watered and pruned trees, and collected trash. They trained us to fight forest fires, but my attitude always was, if you want me to do difficult, dangerous work as a part of my full time job, then you had better pay me like a firefighter. Thankfully my resolve to be paid a decent wage for firefighting was never tested.

and when they get out Cal Fire will hire them.

laperla not logged in Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> and when they get out Cal Fire will hire them.

Really?

Prison inmates are fighting California's fires, but are often denied firefighting jobs after their release

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/31/us/prison-inmates-fight-california-fires-trnd/index.html

Inmates who volunteer to fight California's largest fires denied access to jobs on release

Despite fighting California's largest fires, inmates are denied licenses they need to become firefighters after they get out.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/08/20/californias-volunteer-inmate-firefighters-denied-jobs-after-release-column/987677002/

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/wildfire/california-inmate-firefighters/103-0fdfca69-2f30-4abe-99a1-838364d395e6


7. Inmate firefighters can still be employed by Cal Fire

It is possible for an inmate firefighter to be employed by Cal Fire, even with a felony conviction or incarceration. A felony conviction or incarceration does not necessarily disqualify someone for Cal Fire employment.

In 2018, CDCR, Cal Fire and the California Conservation Corps worked together to start a Firefighter Training and Certification Program in Ventura County. The program gives advanced firefighter training to former offenders on parole who were inmate firefighters.

Denver Colorado here. Our wildfires are really bad right now too. The air is smokey. Really bad for those with lung issues. It's been a couple of weeks now, and will keep going on for weeks. We really need some of that monsoonal flow right now.

It wouldn't be California if something wasn't on fire.

Headline : "Big Basin Redwoods, CA's Oldest State Park, Engulfed in Fire"

I read this on the news several hours ago. Big Basin was one of the very few places that I could find peace as a kid and teenager. When I read this, I literally broke down and wept for about 1/2 hour. Trees, thousands of years old. They can never be replaced.

Yes. I feel sad and sick about Redwood trees impacted. They are magnificent, unique and so old. Heartbreaking.

Redwoods are old because they can survive fires. In fact, fire is part of their natural life cycle.

https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/00000144-0a36-d3cb-a96c-7b3f65710000

"Giant sequoias, found in the U.S. Sierra Nevada, require heat from fire to regenerate. Now, sometimes humans intervene in Yosemite National Park to help the process."

That's true. Thanks for that.
Walking through the undergrowth might look barren but in 1000 years all those new seedlings will hopefully be tall and healthy.

I live near Yellowstone. The place looked horrible for a few years after the fires there. The wildlife involved in burning areas was hard to see too.

Thank you. I had forgotten that. Perhaps they will be all right in the end.

CA redwoods are on the coast. Sequoias are in the inland mountains (e.g. Kings Canyon). The trees that burned in Big Basin are redwoods. The sequoias need fire. Not the redwoods.

BUT

CA redwoods are hard to destroy by fire, so they will probably be okay.

Big Basin is a magical place.

I hope no big foots are hurt

They're fast and stealthy. They've survived this many millennia without few seeing them. They'll survive this. <grin>

Oh, wait...

I shared this info on an other post (Blood Red Sun) but figured it's relevancy here, since there are numerous fires across America these days.

Obtained info from:
CNN

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/08/19/us/wildfires-in-the-us-by-state/index.html

While people in the West are suffering through record-breaking heat, wildfires are ravaging many areas, especially in California, and red-flag warnings have been issued from the Northwest into the Rockies.

There were at least 77 large complexes of wildfires burning in 15 states across the country as of Tuesday evening -- almost a third of them in California, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

The fires have burned at least 649,054 acres in the 14 states where fires are still spreading, according to the NIFC.

Some 45 million people remain under some sort of heat warning or advisories, and no reprieve from the record heat in the West is expected until the weekend.

Most of California and some surrounding areas are under an excessive heat warning from the National Weather Service.

Here's where the largest of the fires have been reported as of Tuesday evening, according to the NIFC, which counts area fires as complexes, not single fires. These numbers will be updated as soon as new data is available.

Alaska: 7 fires
(26,000 + acres)
Cause: Lightning strikes have caused most of the 331 fires reported this year to date, according to the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center.

Arizona: 11 fires
(31,000 + acres)
Cause: A lightning strike caused the largest...

California: 25 fires
(345,000 + acres)
Cause: The August complex, made up of 20 individual fires, was caused by lightning strikes in the Mendocino National Forest, according to information on InciWeb Information System.

Colorado: 5 fires
(135,000 + acres.
Smoke is covering much of Colorado, and the Denver metro area is under an air quality alert.)
Cause: The Pine Gulch Fire, the largest burning now, was caused by lightning, according to an incident report on InciWeb.

Florida: 1 fire
(100 + acres)
Cause: Unclear

Idaho: 2 fires
(490 + acres)
Cause: The cause of the Muldoon Fire, which has burned about 400 acres, is under investigation.

Montana: 3 fires
(8,000 +/- acres)
Cause: The Bear Creek Fire was caused by lightning. It's burned more than 7,500 acres.

Nevada: 2 fires that are totally contained, meaning they are no longer spreading.
(They burned 14,000 + acres).
Cause: Lightning caused the Poodle Fire, which has burned more than 13,600 acres.

New Mexico: 2 fires
(2,600 + acres)
Cause: Lightning also caused the Dark Canyon Fire, which has burned more than 3,000 acres.

Oregon: 7 w/ 2 contained
(22,000 + acres)
Cause: The cause of the Indian Creek Fire is under investigation. It's burned more than 14,000 acres.

South Dakota: 1 fire
(500 + acres)
Cause: Unclear

Texas: 2 fires
(4,000 + acres)
Cause: Unclear

Utah: 4 fires
(1,500 + acres)
Cause: Unclear

Washington: 6 fires
(44,000 + acres)
Cause: The Taylor Pond Fire was caused by lightning, according to a Facebook post by the Southeast Washington Interagency Incident Management Team. It's burned almost 38,000 acres.

Wyoming: 1 fire
(825,000 + acres)
Cause: The Waddle Creek Fire, on the border with Montana, is still under investigation, according to CNN affiliate KULR.

What's burning now?

Yes, I live in the Denver Metro area. The air is awful. My husband isn't supposed to go outside because he has COPD. We had a little rain last night, it helped a tiny bit. The fires are being fed by the beetle kill. Our forests have been tinder for quite a number of years.

Heidi,

I've known about the Western Beetle (if that's what they're called) for a while (1980s) in the trees in the Rockies.

So that makes them more susceptible since it basically kills the trees (making them like tinder)? That makes sense. I thought there would be a program by now to remove the dead trees.

They try, but since it is hundreds of thousands of acres, they can't get it all.

The Colorado State Forest Service releases an annual report entitled Report on the Health of Colorado's Forests. The most recent survey, published in January 2017,[2] presented the following statistics:
One in 14 trees are dead in Colorado forests
The number of gray-brown standing-dead trees has increased 30 percent since 2010 to 834 million
Colorado's mountain pine beetle epidemic killed trees across 3.4 million acres
The continuing spruce beetle epidemic has killed trees across 1.7 million acres

We're hanging in there!

Just spoke to my cousin in Suisun. They tell me it's pronounced "Suh-Soon," but they lie. The also tell me that "The Sierras" is wrong. "The Sierra Neh-vehhh-da" is right, and that there is a town of dead people under Lake Berryessa. Once in a while people find a floater.

Anyway, my Oma lives in Vacaville around the corner from the Charles Manson prison. She went to Suisun for a couple of days because of the smoke, but she's fine and back home.

Cousins in Benecia, Santa Rosa, and Vallejo are fine. The sunsets are nice.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2020 12:09AM by Beth.

To get straight information on the use of convict crews on forest fires try getting it from two places, Cal Fire and California Dept of Corrections.

https://www.fire.ca.gov/

https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/facility-locator/conservation-camps/

elderolddog's posting is the most accurate.

Any article posted by the media is like most media these days, it has a good dose of fake news, just depends on their political leaning.

It used to be that advertisers (i.e., producers of goods & services) paid to have their distorted views of what you should spend your money on broadcast to the biggest and/or best possible audience their money would buy. Of course, they still do so...

But now molders of public perception buy networks to do that very same thing! And ask yourself this, cui bono?



That's fancy-ass Latin, and it means, who profits? And it's what makes this ripe for RfM... Who profits, prophets?

I'm on the southern end of the central coast, and everything's fine here now. I almost feel guilty, but we've had our share of fires along with flash floods.

Guilty for feeling fine or not being in the path of wildfire?

Glad all swell

Earlier someone stated that the members of the prison crews weren't eligible to become fire fighters after they didn't their time.

There is a bill working it's way in the CA legislature to rectify the situation.

https://wildfiretoday.com/2020/09/05/california-passes-bill-to-allow-former-inmates-who-served-on-fire-crews-to-pursue-a-career-in-fire/

Firefighters are the source of many wildfires.

They benefit most from them.

To become a hero who makes overtime pay, add a match.

https://www.newson6.com/story/5f199184920451288bfe66dd/oklahoma-volunteer-firefighter-accused-of-starting-multiple-fires-including-one-at-his-own-home

Google will reveal this has been a handy cheat since the Cali fornia Gold Rush.

The genius Chief Investigator cashed in by consulting and writing a popular fiction crime novel about himself.

Holy Joseph!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Leonard_Orr

One of those fires was caused by a gender reveal party by those who want to enforce gender roles before a child is even born. In my opinion, those things are done by attention whores looking for more gifts, and cutting into a cake with food coloring in it is no longer enough for them. I guess the days of waiting for the doctor to announce at birth, "It's a boy" or "It's a girl" are gone now, as everyone seems to care what genitals a fetus has, instead of just being happy to have a healthy baby at the end of the pregnancy.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/07/us/california-fire-el-dorado-gender-reveal-trnd/index.html

One fire from a sparkler of some sort at a gender reveal party. A fire in Utah County burning right now was started by target shooters who ignited underbrush.

Who does that in hundred degree temps when everything is dry and it is breezy? Some people qualify for a whole separate adjective beyond "stupid".

Dark orange skies here in SF Bay Area. Our nearby fires are nearly contained, but new fires are sending smoke our way, mixed with fog it makes for a weird atmosphere. Labor Day, 2 days ago, it was 105° and today it's 68. The colder air should tamp down the fires.

My 11-yr-old grandnephew has learned a new word: "Apocalypse." (G-son of ex-mo relative.)

So many western fires lately... I heard that yesterday in Washington, (13?) fires burned more in 24 hours than in all of 2019. Oregon is burning. California is ablaze. Fires are growing and moving faster than ever.

Western America is on fire and half of her residents are breathing smoky air, dodging covid, weirdness, idiots, crime, apathy, empty shelves and burning eyes.

These comparisons help me try to wrap my head around the size of what has burned:

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2020/09/10/wildfires-california-washington-oregon-drought-heat-climate-change-graphics/5764156002/

Other Westernish states: "Wind-driven fires were also burning in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. In Montana, which is experiencing a mild wildfire season, fires sparked amid 90-degree heat last week were met days later with an early fall snow storm that snapped a 58-year-old cold record in Great Falls."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/12/wildfires-oregon-california-washington-cooler-weather-mass-fatalities/5778187002/