Anybody from San Francisco that can give updates about fire/blackouts

[rbl]

So my wife is planning on flying into SF this Tuesday night. It’s a funeral and I’m trying to setup accommodations. I saw somewhere that half moons bay is in blackout, and there will be more. Any advice our up to date info. If it’s really bad she may not go. The funeral is important but it is not a close family member or close friend. Thanks.

[locutus49]

And what about the fire near the Getty center in LA? Will that be close to Beverly Hills? Don't mean to hijack the thread, but CA is on fire.

[locutus49]

Update on SF, just watching news. 66K acres burning in Sonoma, 5% contained. Gov declares national emergency. No reported fires near SF.

[Blansky]

I got chased out of Sonoma County on Saturday. The fires are holding a block from my house. The winds are supposed to quiet down today.

We are in the Marriot Hotel at the airport in San Francisco. About 100,000 people are evacuated from Sonoma County alone. Areas down toward the airport have no power in places. So it’s a bit of a mess. Sonoma County is north about 50 miles from San Francisco.

[Blansky]

Originally Posted by rbl

So my wife is planning on flying into SF this Tuesday night. It’s a funeral and I’m trying to setup accommodations. I saw somewhere that half moons bay is in blackout, and there will be more. Any advice our up to date info. If it’s really bad she may not go. The funeral is important but it is not a close family member or close friend. Thanks.

I would send your regards and stay home. You’d be traveling into a mess and there is more talk of more power outages. And traffic could be horrendous.

You’d be heading south of San Francisco and it may all be fine but the hotels here are pretty jammed a lot of traffic lights are not working etc.

[Danny83]

No blackouts in the City of Sf but yes in some surrounding areas.

[Blansky]

This is a block from my house. I think the firefighters have the fires blocked off but it’s all about what the wind does.

[sokoloka]

Hope you and your family stay safe Blansky!

[Blansky]

Thanks. We’re fine.

[.brian.]

Originally Posted by Blansky

This is a block from my house. I think the firefighters have the fires blocked off but it’s all about what the wind does.

Wow, you seem unusually calm knowing that is going on so close to your home. I am sure this is not your first rodeo, though. Hopefully everything works out.

Also, I know you are from the area, but since you are at the Marriott, might as well hit up Kincaid's (kind of ironic name). I was just there a few weeks ago before flying home.

[LandWatch]

Wow, looks horrendous. Hope they manage to contain the fire and your house is fine.

[Blansky]

Originally Posted by .brian.

Wow, you seem unusually calm knowing that is going on so close to your home. I am sure this is not your first rodeo, though. Hopefully everything works out.

Also, I know you are from the area, but since you are at the Marriott, might as well hit up Kincaid's (kind of ironic name). I was just there a few weeks ago before flying home.

Thanks. We didn’t have to evacuate in 2017 but we were really close. The lessons learned here this time is to not let the fires hit residential areas. The people on acreages are in trouble in some areas but they line up firetrucks on corridors now to stop fires spreading in dense areas. In 2017 it happened a 2 in the morning. Nobody was ready.

This time the evacuate mainly to get rid of people and cars in the areas so the firefighters can move quickly and freely from one place to the next.

But sadly this could be the new normal with the perfect storm of Santa Ana type dry air moving from the inland towards the ocean, and a massive wind storm.

I’ll look into Kincaids. The good version. Thanks

[Blansky]

Originally Posted by HighlandWatch

Wow, looks horrendous. Hope they manage to contain the fire and your house is fine.

Thanks.

[uscmatt99]

I'm in Michigan and most of my family is in northern California. To sum it up, my brother in law just said "The state is on fire." While the fires are scattered as reported in the news and more specifically by Blansky, a large swath of the state is at risk for fire later this week. I'd advise passing on the trip out there. In fact, I had my parents pack a car with water and some food and leave the car parked on the street in case a fire erupts near them. As the power is going out all over the place, you can't escape if you can't manually open the garage door.

We didn't end up visiting for Thanksgiving during the last fire season where the entire bay area basin was filled with smoke. If anything, the rest of the family wanted to escape to Michigan! It's toughest for one of my cousins whose home burned down in the Coffey Park fire in 2017. They just finished a rebuild and have now been evacuated the week before they were set to move in. Fortunately they had much more time to evacuate this time around, out of an abundance of caution.

Best of luck to Californians for the remainder of this fire season.

[Boothroyd]

Stay safe! Truly tragic. Have enjoyed the impacted areas many times--feel horrible that people are going through this. Here's hoping something happens to impact the situation--and the winds die down.

[Blansky]

Almost every fire for the last few years was started by PG&E. The classic, they fiddled while Rome burned. Billions in damage and many lives lost.

They have a sad history of rate increases for exec salaries and lobbying but their infrastructure is antiquated from lack of
maintenance and upgrades. Now they’re in bankruptcy from all the lawsuits.

A real mess.

[Boothroyd]

Ibtl.

[Blansky]

This has been going on for years. The movie Erin Brockovich from 2000 was about PG&E.

They have a terrible record.

It’s pretty easy to google their history.

[mannyv11]

Ibtl due to dba meme.

Hope everyone stays safe.

[Old Expat Beast]

Originally Posted by mannyv11

Ibtl due to dba meme.

Hope everyone stays safe.

His post was pulled so the thread can stay open.

[AzPaul]

Seems to get worse every year, and sadly, doesn't seem to be much being done to make things better. Lots of finger pointing, of course, but in the meantime . . . . . Nero fiddles.

[GoingPlaces]

This seems like a chronic problem. I have to believe human error has much to do with this and it's not just natures wrath only.

[Blansky]

The supposed problem is PG&E for years didn’t do tree maintenance or do much equipment upgrading. When the Santa Ana type winds blow in Oct it dries the air considerably through the already dry forests making every thing a tinderbox. During the rest of the year the air moves from the ocean, inland, which has far more humidity in it.

Then during October with these conditions if we get a wind storm with these very high winds in the 100 MPH range trees and branches fall in transmission lines which break and fall on the ground and a fire is started. Another problem is with the heat, transformers blow and the same thing happens.

This is all a laymen’s description of the scenario.

So while nature plays a role, PG&E’s negligence in their responsibilities plays the other role.

Now due to the billions in lawsuits from the 2017, 2018 and now 2019 fires they pretty much just say, we’ll it’s fire season, so we’ll just shut down the whole grid so we can’t be held responsible.

[martinr]

PG&E sucks. Not only fires but gas explosions. Google San Bruno explosion.

[JTL31]

Best wishes and stay safe to all the CA folks!!

[Blansky]

Just because I’m bored and sitting in my hotel room in San Francisco I thought I’d post this info on how the firefighters and logistical people work when these massive fires breakout. This is just stuff I’ve gleaned over the last couple of years and is maybe not 100% correct.

But the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection usually called Cal Fire is responsible for the protection of the forests and when these fires break out, the City Fire Department call into Cal Fire and report them if they begin to get out of control.

Cal Fire has something like 5400 permanent employees, 2500 seasonal, 5000 volunteer and around 5000 inmates. During the year they do cut lines, and control burns as well as lots of other stuff. They have a couple of hundred stations through the state, as well as trucks and air tankers and helicopters.

When all hell breaks loose they come into the area set up command centers with local firefighter outfits, local police, media, evacuation centers, hospitals, the weather service and plenty of other agencies.

If it’s a major deal the call goes out and Police Dept and Fire Dept through out the state and neighboring states all send in resources and some have come as far away as Australia to help.

You often hear that there are up to 10,000 people fighting the fires. It’s not just guys with hoses. It’s heavy equipment trucked into the area so bulldozers can make cut lines to stop the direction of the fires and block it off. With little wind this is what happens but with high winds the embers cross the cut lines and highways and keep on going. This happened in Coffey Park subdivision in 2017 in Santa Rosa and the Fire jumped a 6 lane highway, and in a couple of hours it took out something like 3500 houses.

When I was evacuating last weekend at 5 miles an hour down 101 to San Francisco I saw at least 3 convoys of police cars and police motorcycles coming on the other side of the highway with lights blazing, between 15 and 20 in a pack, coming from other cities to help.

They handle barricades to stop people and looters from getting into evacuated places and to handle whatever arises. This same thing happens with fire trucks from companies hundreds of miles away.

I guess it’s almost done the way you would prosecute a war. It’s all about command and control, making decisions on resources and allocating where they go and where the next flare up happens during that time.

The Camp Fire of 2018 which took out the Town of Paradise (population 28,000) 56 killed, there were 600 fire engines, 100 fire crews, 100 bull dozers, and 24 helicopters and when the smoke had cleared there were 18,000 buildings lost, and 150,000 acres burned. Fire was started by, you guess it, PG&E.

Thanks for listening. (Reading).

[Boothroyd]

Thank you for that, Blansky and hang in there! Hoping for the best!