As most everyone is aware, three members of our community — Besame and smileycreek and paradise50 — lost their homes in the Camp Fire. As we go to press tonight, GoFundMe pages are being established to support them in rebuilding. (Be on the lookout for an announcement shortly and give what you can. Please indicate any news in the comments and I will update diary this evening. Thanks.)
Currently, in the San Francisco Bay area the Air Quality Index (AQI) is registering purple with a score of 311—worse than this morning when the air quality was level red at 177.
“Health risk increased for everyone,” warns SF Emergency. “Best to stay indoors.” (Toxic Air Quality Gets Worse)
You're not imagining it: The air quality suddenly got worse in the Bay Area
The blanket of wildfire soot suffocating the San Francisco Bay Area got thicker Thursday, and air quality quickly deteriorated.
This marks the the highest reading the city has seen since the Camp Fire started a week ago.
This afternoon, the index was 182 in San Jose, 186 in San Rafael and 217 in Oakland; these readings are in the "unhealthy" range. "Good" air quality falls in the 0 to 50 range.
And we are almost a four hour car trip from Paradise. Impossible to imagine the conditions for those who are sheltering in the fire zone!
Most people I am seeing aren’t wearing N95 masks yet. Seems like a lot of people are just ‘sheltering in place.” School children are being kept inside for the entire time between drop off and pick up. The stores are unusually empty. Vets yesterday were telling clients to limit pets outdoor time to 20 minutes. And that was before we entered the purple zone.
Please Note: If you're using an N95 mask for smoke, you'll need a new one every 8 hours
It feels eerie, as if California is in the throes of creating a fifth season. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Fire. Winter.
From Besame’s post yesterday: (read through the comments for pictures and comments from smileycreek)
“The line of cars moved swiftly and as I turned right towards Skyway, realized it was getting darker all the time. The car clock said 9:10. How could that be? It was midnight dark. I thought “maybe the power is out from the fire and the clock isn’t right?” This makes no sense now but then it did. As I puzzled about the discrepancy between the clock time and the outside darkness, a sheriff’s car drove slowly through the middle of traffic announcing through a loudspeaker “All vehicles leaving Paradise are to go down Clark Road not the Skyway.” www.dailykos.com/…
Here are some news shorts Besame shared with me this morning when I wrote to tell her I was posting about the upcoming fundraisers at KTK tonight.
“We’re on the edge,” said Ed Mayer, the executive director of the county’s housing agency, when asked if the county was facing a humanitarian crisis. Local officials warned the destruction from the Camp Fire could set off a wave of refugee migration akin to a smaller version of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. … “Big picture, we have 6,000, possibly 7,000 households who have been displaced and who realistically don’t stand a chance of finding housing again in Butte County,” Mayer said. “I don’t even know if these households can be absorbed in California.” … The county has the capacity to place 800 to 1,000 households in permanent housing, Mayer said, but its short-term options are overwhelmed. Officials have offered no timetable for when residents will be allowed back to their homes, if they’re lucky enough to have a home still standing.
Housing was already scarce in Butte County before the Camp Fire. The housing vacancy rate was less than 2 percent, which “is considered a crisis state,” Mayer said. And unlike wealthier Sonoma County, where fires destroyed thousands of homes last year, many residents of Paradise don’t have the financial means to rebuild their homes quickly.
Gov. Jerry Brown and federal government officials visited Butte County on Wednesday as the number of fatalities continues to rise In California’s deadliest wildfire ever.
“This is so devastating that I don’t really have the words to describe it,” Brown said. “It looks like a war zone — it is.”
“It’s a real sight of horror and I can’t imagine what the residents went through as they struggled to get out,” he told the Enterprise-Record.
Brown, U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Federal Emergency Management Association Administrator Brock Long and other agency officials viewed the devastation in Paradise. [...]
“It was so complete…85 percent of the town is gone, the extent of the damage and the speed of the fire,” Brown said. “I never seen such fast fire, and I have never even heard reports of such a fast moving fire.”
As of Wednesday morning, Zinke said he has traveled to California four times this year to see the aftermath of wildfires. He noted that during each trip, he has said it’s the worst fire he’s seen.
“Now here we are today, and this is the worst fire I’ve seen,” Zinke said.
Long agreed.
“Unfortunately everything that I’ve seen, this is just truly devastating and heartbreaking,” he said. “This is one of the worst disasters that I’ve seen in my career, hands down.”
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
🔥 CALIFORNIA FIRE RELIEF: A Work in Progress 🔥
If you’re aware of effective organizations who are actively helping in California now (for instance, ShelterBox is a terrific organization, but they don’t have a California project yet), please drop a comment or kosmail the KTK group. This list will be up for many weeks.
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