morningsong said:

it's smokey up her by camp pendleton as well. there's a light level of ash all around as well. i think it'll be like this for a couple weeks ..at least.

Lot's of for everyone involved.

morningsong said:

It was foggy here in LA as well

As I have mentioned here before, my house was burned down by arson in June 1990.
After all the trauma you have been through, then you realize that even though you will not be able to live in your house, your mortgage payments continue! Unless you have really good insurance and rent is provided in the mean time. I was not fortunate enough to have my temporary rent paid by the insurance company, but I was fortunate enough to have a very generous employer who let me and my husband and son live in his guest house for 2 years while we re-built!! 2 years living in a small guest house get's old fast, regardless. I stop and wonder what all of these people will do? I feel so bad for them, I remember the feeling of losing everthing you own.

CHIC0 said:

Dear God i hope it isnt a few more weeks... Im a wreck... weeping from both eyes now.... I m veryyyyy allergic to smoke and the air is so bad and just hangs there now.....

Muse2NOPharaoh said:

I'm having the worst time too Karen. I have slept like shit all week long because I wake up gasping for air as if I just went running

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

I really wish i could just leave the state for a few days..... its that bad today.... I cant hold my eyes open.

As Calif. fires burned, copters grounded



A Los Angeles County firefighting helicopter passes through the smoke of Stevenson Ranch wildfire after making a water drop in Valencia, Calif., north of Los Angeles, Monday, Oct 22, 2007. As wildfires were charging across Southern California, nearly two dozen water-dropping helicopters and two massive cargo planes sat idly by, grounded by government rules and bureaucracy.



By AARON C. DAVIS and MICHAEL R. BLOOD / Associated Press Writers Published: October 26th, 2007 04:26 AM

LOS ANGELES -- As wildfires were charging across Southern California, nearly two dozen water-dropping helicopters and two massive cargo planes sat idly by, grounded by government rules and bureaucracy.
How much the aircraft would have helped will never be known, but their inability to provide quick assistance raises troubling questions about California's preparations for a fire season that was widely expected to be among the worst on record.

It took as long as a day for Navy, Marine and California National Guard helicopters to get clearance early this week, in part because state rules require all firefighting choppers to be accompanied by state forestry "fire spotters" who coordinate water or retardant drops. By the time those spotters arrived, the powerful Santa Ana winds stoking the fires had made it too dangerous to fly.

The National Guard's C-130 cargo planes, among the most powerful aerial firefighting weapons, never were slated to help. The reason: They've yet to be outfitted with tanks needed to carry thousands of gallons of fire retardant, though that was promised four years ago.

"The weight of bureaucracy kept these planes from flying, not the heavy winds," Republican U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher told The Associated Press. "When you look at what's happened, it's disgusting, inexcusable foot-dragging that's put tens of thousands of people in danger."

Rohrabacher and other members of California's congressional delegation are demanding answers about aircraft deployment. And some fire officials have grumbled that a quicker deployment of aircraft could have helped corral many of the wildfires that quickly flared out of control and have so far burned 500,000 acres from Malibu to the Mexican border.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials have defended the state's response, saying the intense winds prevented a more timely air attack.

"Anyone that is complaining about the planes just wants to complain," Schwarzenegger replied angrily to a question Wednesday. "The fact is that we could have all the planes in the world here - we have 90 aircraft here and six that we got especially from the federal government - and they can't fly because of the wind."

Indeed, winds reaching 100 mph helped drive the flames and made it exceedingly dangerous to fly. Still, four state helicopters and two from the Navy were able to take off Monday while nearly two dozen others stayed grounded.

Thomas Eversole, executive director of the American Helicopter Services & Aerial Firefighting Association, a Virginia-based nonprofit that serves as a liaison between helicopter contractors and federal agencies, said valuable time was lost.

"The basis for the initial attack helicopters is to get there when the fire is still small enough that you can contain it," Eversole said. "If you don't get there in time, you quickly run the risk of these fires getting out of control."

The first of the 15 or so fires started around midnight Saturday. By Sunday afternoon, fires were raging in Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange counties.

At the request of firefighters on the ground, at 4 p.m. Sunday the state Office of Emergency Services asked the National Guard to supply four helicopters. Under state rules, a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection "spotter" must accompany each military and National Guard helicopter to coordinate water drops.

The spotters have 24 hours to report for duty, and it took nearly all that time for them and the National Guard crews to assemble. By the time they were ready to go, the winds had made it unsafe to fly.

The helicopters finally got off the ground Tuesday.

Mike Padilla, aviation chief for the forestry department, acknowledged the Guard's helicopters were ready to fly before the spotters arrived. He said state officials were surprised.

"Typically we're waiting for them to get crews," Padilla said.

In a conference call with reporters Thursday, state officials rejected the notion they were ill-prepared, noting that more than 20 helicopters and airplanes were stockpiled in Southern California ahead of the wildfires because of the danger of flames erupting.

But high winds after the fires began meant "there was very little opportunity" to fly, said the forestry department's director, Ruben Grijalva.

"This is not a resource shortage on those days, this is a weather-condition problem," he said.

That explanation doesn't jibe with what U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray said state officials told him Tuesday night. Bilbray, who represents parts of San Diego, and other lawmakers were informed that 19 Navy and Marine helicopters were ready to fly, some as early as Sunday, but didn't take off because there were no state fire spotters to accompany the crews, said Bilbray's spokesman, Kurt Bardella.

Alarmed, Bilbray quickly helped broker an agreement to waive the spotter requirement, allowing flights to begin Wednesday.

"We told them, 'You don't want the public to be asking why these units weren't flying while we had houses burning,'" Bilbray told the AP.

By the time the helicopters got airborne, the area burned had quadrupled to more than 390 square miles, and the number of homes destroyed jumped from 34 to more than 700.

Criticism from Bilbray and other lawmakers on the call helped lead Grijalva on Wednesday to abandon the state's long-standing policy to have a spotter aboard each aircraft and instead let one spotter orchestrate drops for a squadron of three helicopters.

"I directed them to do whatever was necessary to get those other military assets into operation," Grijalva said.

He said he could not explain why more spotters were not deployed before the flames spread to ensure that every aircraft ready to fly could take off.

Padilla said state spotters do training exercises with the Navy and National Guard and are used to working with them on fires. That's not the case with the Marines, so when helicopters from that branch were made available, the state was caught off guard and had no spotters available.

Regardless, he said, safety - not availability of spotters - was the overriding concern in determining when to allow aircraft into the skies.

Padilla said he didn't want the Marines to participate because they "would have been a distraction" since they weren't trained.

"It's no different from me walking into Baghdad and saying, 'I'm ready to fight the bad guys,'" he said. "They would no more want me in their arenas, not being trained, prepared and equipped, than I would want them if they were not trained, prepared and equipped."

The C-130 saga is a much different story.

More than a decade ago, Congress ordered replacement of the aging removable tanks for the military planes because of safety concerns and worries that they wouldn't fit with new-model aircraft. California's firefighting C-130 unit is one of four the Pentagon has positioned across the country to respond to fire disasters.

New tanks were designed, but they failed to fit into the latest C-130s. Designers were ordered back to the drawing board. Republican Rep. Elton Gallegly said Congress was assured the new tanks would be ready by 2003.

Four years later, the U.S. Forest Service and Air Force have yet to approve the revised design. Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Paula Kurtz said "technical and design difficulties" have delayed the program.

Rohrabacher and Gallegly are angered by the delay, which has left no C-130s capable of fighting fires on the West Coast. The last of the older-model C-130s with an original tank was retired by the California National Guard last year.

"It's an absolute tragedy, an unacceptable tragedy," Gallegly said.

The situation meant that rather than deploying C-130s from inside the state, Schwarzenegger was forced to ask Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to call in the six remaining older C-130s from other states as far away as North Carolina.

None of them began fighting the fires until Wednesday afternoon.

In the meantime, the state relied mostly on smaller retardant tankers that carry about a third of the C-130's 3,000-gallon capacity.

Gallegly said such firepower was sorely needed earlier.

"I have actually flown in one and pressed the button," he said. "I know what they can do."

Muse2NOPharaoh said:

I feel so bad for you guyz.
Hope things will get better soon.


[Edited 10/26/07 14:21pm]

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Don't you guys have breathing masks? If it's that bad, you really should have one. My mom didn't worry about the air quality during the Cedar Fires in 2003 and for years she had problems with a bad cough that wouldn't go away. The ash was flying around and it smelled like a campfire and she was outside playing with my niece. I was like wtf are you doing out here? Please, take EXTRA SPECIAL care of yourselves. I heard that even when the obvious pollution goes away, the smaller particles are still lingering for a few days and those are worse because they can really get into your lungs. The bigger particles can't.

VinaBlue said:

Definitely. I'm so sorry, you guys.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

a totally welcomed sight... but the air is still bad

that picture was from valencia
i have relatives there. guess
i should be making some calls to see how they
are doing. same side of the family
that went through the category 4 tornado
in north dakota this summer

i hope the weather helps.

still for you guys. what an ordeal you've suffered! hope you are okay

Lots more for my fellow Cali orgers. That they remain safe and unharmed in any way.

for all my CA lovies

hows everyone doing?

air getting better up north?

I actually haven't seen any of the fires. Weird. I know they are all around socal, but I've seen nada.

Get ready everyone... Santa Ana's are predicted to start up again this week.

thinking of you all, this is messed up..

for Cali and all my favourite people that live within

Nice to see a blue sky again after all that smoke



and lots of white clouds

Fires in the South.

Now earthquakes up North. 5.6 that'll wake you up in the morning.

Okay, what did we do?

morningsong said:

and floods in Florida

CHIC0 said:

Hey, how's the folks doing there? Any check-ins?

Don't float away y'all.