South San Francisco, CA August 19, 2020
At the time of this writing, there are 367 active fires in California, all at varying degrees of containment, creating unhealthy air quality while also bringing some beautiful colors to the sky. Award-winning aerial photographer Roger Cain has once again taken photos of last evening’s sky and shares with us all.
We need a governor who convenes a commission drawn from a variety of professions and persuasions to study the issue of wildfires in California, their genesis, their prevention, and their mitigation. Commissions are potentially synergistic. They can promulgate genuinely informed policy recommendations that in turn inform administrative decisions and legislation. A handful of self-appointed experts can’t stop wildfires. Many are harmed by wildfires. Many deserve representation in stopping wildfires. Commissions have the potential to be genuinely democratic, informed, and efficacious bodies.
And how are we supposed to prevent the unexpected and extraordinary thunderstorm and lightning strikes in drought-patched land? You’d better get WITH the climate change reality instead of treating it as an excuse for inaction ’cause we’ve seen its impact repeatedly in our coast and inland the last few years (Central Valley had literally NO running water for a few years, and a whoLe condo complex in Pacifica is now condemned as half of it fell into the ocean). This abuse of our natural resources has gone on unabated for DECADES and now we’re paying the real price for our lousy custodianship of this planet. Did you know that, since the start of the Industrial Age, 50% of the party’s species have gone extinct?
Ghastly! We’ve got to rethink how we handle our wildfire prevention and wildfire response. It’s not enough to lecture a populace about global warming or a dated electrical grid. It’s time to put an end to the annual holocausts that are terrorizing Californians.
A lot of evacuations and fired so intense they created their own micro-weather patterns..including fire tornados! Here in SET we seem to have been spared the smoke reaching the ground, though I could see it covering San Bruno and Daly City, just like we often see fog over us like a blanket but none either North or South of us. You can drive on ECR(good luck with that!) And Mission Road and actually pass through the fog hate and see it in the background! Very odd and rare thunder and lightning storm, especially in Summer. Welcome to climate change, folks!