Thoughts and prayers for San Diego as they are roughing it in this sweltering heat
Fire Report
This is the SoCal Steemit Fire Report. The main goal is to provide information about the numerous fires during fire season. Additionally, our mission is to report any natural disasters and provide a hub for supporting any steemian displaced by a natural disaster in Southern California.
They say do something you are good at, well Southern California is good at catching on fire. So we at @socalsteemit would like to provide a centralized hub of the information on fires and natural disasters located in SoCal. Please refer to previous Fire Reports for any incident prior to this timeline.
Before we get into the fire report I want to point out what else is "on fire". No not the roof, the daily Steemit rewards fund.
@dragosroua explains in his post the rewards fund is at an all time high.
I keep my position towards this metric: when it's high, it means there's a lot of supply to be capitalized. Or, in other words, the pie is bigger than usual.
To sum it up, this is a great time to post on steemit. We have low numbers of activity, most likely due to the low "value" of steem. Check out @penguinpablo in his regular posts about stats on the steem blockchain.
image from @penguinpablo
The value of steem and like most other tokens mimics with the price of bitcoin. I personally try and look at the price of BTC/STEEM and try to maximize the amount of steem I can get with BTC. The main point I focus on, how much steem can I buy with BTC? Fewer people using steemit + bigger reward fund = more tokens. Granted this is not a guaranteed more steem in your wallet, it just increases your odds. I like those odds and hope you fellow SoCal steemians will too.
A quick update on existing fires in SoCal.
The Holy Fire as of yesterday was 22,986 acres with 85% containment.
link
According to the incident page
Crews will continue to conduct mop up operations across the burn area. Suppression repair will continue toward meeting the standards set in the approved Suppression Repair Plan. Southern California Team 1 continues to develop a transition plan for the Forest type 3 organization to assume command on 8/18/2018 at 1800 hours.
The Valley Fire
1,348 acres and 29% contained
The fire is experiencing minimal growth and remains in steep, inaccessible terrain. However, smoke may occasionally still visible from the burn area. Helicopter water drops will continue as needed, and ground and air resources remain assigned to the fire."
Our resident press photographer @creationofcare took some pictures of a helicopter working on the valley fire. This is a good sign when restoration is already starting.
We have a couple small fires in SoCal nothing to big or new to report. Our fires have been dwarfed by the large fires in the north. This fire season is getting old but we must stay vigilant. Below you will see a stat with California's top fires. It is worth pointing out, most large fires happen in the summer months but the now second largest fire in California started last December.
Northern California
The Mendocino Complex fire is the largest fire in California history. The Press Democrat out of Sonoma County, CA reports.
The Ranch fire — which has killed one firefighter who was struck by a falling tree — grew by about 3,000 acres Saturday as firefighters held containment at 76 percent, officials said in a 7 p.m. update. Cal Fire said some of the more active areas of fire burned within containment lines, including the area of Goat Mountain Road on the northeast side of the fire in the Mendocino National Forest.
More than 3,400 firefighting personnel were assigned to the Ranch fire and the nearby River fire, a 48,920-acre blaze in Mendocino and Lake counties which has been 100 percent contained since Monday. Collectively called the Mendocino Complex fire and being managed by Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service, the fires have destroyed 157 homes and 120 other structures since they broke out a month ago.
Link
This is still an active fire and every acre it burns adds to the record size of the fire. This is a devastating fire to say the least and I hope this can be contained soon.
MENDOCINO COMPLEX TOTALS
CAL FIRE Unit: Mendocino Unit, Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit
Unified Command Agencies: CAL FIRE, U.S. Forest Service
Total Acreage: 384,567 acres
Total Containment: 79%
Expected Full Containment: 09/1/18
Firefighter Injuries/Fatalities: 1
Firefighter Injuries: 2
Structures Threatened: 1,050
Structures Destroyed: 157 residences / 120 other
Structures Damaged: 13 residences / 24 other
Link
Just north of the Complex fire is the Carr fire with 227,098 acres and 83% contained. A new fire starting to grow and possibly keep an eye out for is the Donnell Fire south of Lake Tahoe. Mostly we are looking at small fires being contained and larger fires getting close to wrapping up.
Stats for California is above the 5 year average and total acres burnt for this year is just under one million.