Fuck:
And of course, as I noted earlier, the aftermath’s it’s own tragedy, however slowly it unfolds:
I’m usually down in Monterey County on the weekends, and this time of year is usually pretty quite, but not this year. Lots of refugees from up north. The air is still not great down there*, but much better than north of SF.
*A half-marathon was canceled last weekend due to unhealthy air quality.
Starting today, I’m hosting a family of 3 from the area. They are more friends of friends, but I’ve met them sevedfrkal times before so they’re not strangers. I have room, and offered them a stay at least thru Christmas, if they need. I figure it’s the least I can do.
Many events are being cancelled
Yesterday, the air quality in San Francisco was rated the worst in the entire world for major cities. Chico, Oroville, and Paradise were even worse. Here in Citrus Heights, our air has been horrible but today it’s much clearer. I hope it stays this way.
At last night’s briefing, the Sheriff said that 9700 single family homes were destroyed. The fire is still only 40% contained.
Good for you. You’re doing a good thing.
The air quality here (near the Delta) is terrible. Schools are cancelled. Everything is cancelled I think. Last I heard Trump is supposed to visit the fire tomorrow. Considering the conditions, I’m thinking he’ll be in the way. On the other hand, maybe he’ll learn something. One can hope.
No cite, but I’ve seen it mooted about that there were ~15,000 structures in the fire zone and it is unlikely more than 5% survived( and many of those will probably be effectively write-offs due to smoke damage ). I expect numbers will continue to get worse in every respect.
The air conditions in my area today are exceptionally shitty. Which is slightly better than yesterday when they were phenomenally shitty( both days were/are “very unhealthy”, but slight qualitative variations on very unhealthy ). The air quality around Chico in particular has looked borderline apocalyptic - these wildfires may well be killing people before their time even years from now.
I was going to recommend the Purple Air maps for a more granular view of local air quality, but it appears all the attention is crashing their site and they are now having trouble displaying all the deployed sensors.
Good on you, John. Big thumbs up, eh.
Here’s a list of all CA air quality measuring cities and towns (AirNow). I was able to go out for a walk this morning in my area - first time in a week. I refuse to complain as the hardships of people directly affected here are much worse.
This whole thing is just mind-boggling.
I sure hope that the increasing number of missing people is caused by duplication of names on lists, but I’m not optimistic. 
Back a few years ago when Colorado Springs had fires, Obama came to visit. I understand why presidents and governors want to see things first hand, but I couldn’t help thinking that the local police who helped guard him had far better things they could have been doing, given the circumstances.
They said that they’ve finally had time to go through and tabulate all of the 911 calls. I think they need to now scrub the list for duplicates, and they are asking people to call and let them know if they have found missing people. The list will hopefully shrink for good reasons, but I expect that there will also be a lot more dead. 
It’s really terrible what’s going on there but some of the videos are amazing. Undoctored footage of exactly what I would imagine hell or a nuclear Holocaust looking like.
It’s a no-win situation for whoever is president. Criticism if he visits, criticism if he doesn’t.
Got my refuge guests more or less settled in yesterday. They didn’t talk too much about the experience, and I certainly wasn’t going to press them. I figure they’ll tell me what they want or need to tell me at some point. They did mention that they lost “lots” of friends and few relatives. I shudder to think what they are going through. We got their daughter enrolled in the local Catholic school. She was in a Catholic school up north, and fortunately there is a very good one within walking distance of my house. The staff was super-friendly and helpful. They assigned her another girl student as a “buddy”, which I think was a great idea. I had only met the daughter once before, and didn’t know her really at all, but she seems like she’s suffering from shell shock.
I left them alone for the weekend and took off the for the coast early today. I was pleasantly surprised to see a normal sunrise instead of the pale, orange one we had here last weekend. The air is noticeably better here today. We’re all coming over here for Thanksgiving next week, so I hope that gives them some sense of peace. The restaurant I had reservations at was gracious enough to expand our table from 4 to 7, even though they were fully booked.
I expect the death toll to top 100 in the near future. Ugh. What a disaster.
The number of missing is more than a thousand. A good many of them were scattered like chaff getting the hell out of there and will turn up when they settle down somewhere and have the time to get in touch with the authorities, but it can’t be all.
Who the hell decided to name it the Camp fire anyway? It sounds all too benign. “Let’s go see the camp fire.” Surely there must have been some other geographic point of interest nearby than Camp Hill Road.
It’s working now. 176 for the town next to mine, probably better than yesterday. I thought it was fairly clear, until I noticed that a tree maybe a block away was fuzzy.
241 in Sausalito, and 309 closer to the fire.
This is a tragic story:
ttps://www.popularmechanics.com/about/a25137713/wayne-charvel-shop-destroyed-paradise-fire/
At least 76 people are dead. I think a few guitars getting burned doesn’t rise to the level of “tragedy” in this situation.
California fire: What started as a tiny brush fire became the state’s deadliest wildfire. Here’s how
It’s sounds like a lot fewer would have been killed if the authorities weren’t so grossly incompetent.
First they had a potential disaster 10 years ago which they narrowly missed so they had plenty of time to make plans:
https://weather.com/news/news/2018-11-15-grand-jury-report-fire-risk-paradise/
Second the first report of fire a few miles away came in at 6:29 am, winds blowing at 52 mph, yet no evacuation order in Paradise until 7:46 am and that only for the eastern part of the town–the rest of the town not notified until an hour later.