Althouse: Driving through fire.

June 11, 2023

Driving through fire.

23 comments:

Curious George said...: Crazy. Time to get your shit together baby Fidel. And I don't mean telling taxpayers that for every C$1 they donate to fight fires the government will double match it with C$2 that they already have paid in taxes.; 6/11/23, 7:40 AM
Big Mike said...: Meh. There were dash cam videos a few years back from the big California wildfires that were way more harrowing than this one. I’m especially thinking of one taken by a man as he escaped Paradise, California, the day it turned from Paradise into Hell.; 6/11/23, 7:44 AM
TickTock said...: My favorite client is a start-up by two young and very, very smart UC Berkeley graduates who grew up in rural California. They wrote some ai/database software while in college that they have adapted to wildfire evacuation planning to ensure that people understand just how long it takes to evacuate when every-one hits the road at once.

Of course growing up in rural California the have been heavily influenced by the deaths in the Paradise fire.

They started selling their software a little over a year ago and have made significant sales on the West coast and now have a good deal of momentum. If you are a first responder, you should see a demo. Their barebones website is at Ladris.com.; 6/11/23, 8:06 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/11/23, 8:22 AM
Eva Marie said...: Quite a juxtaposition. There are your pictures of a cool, wet, morning. And above them, forest on fire. Landscapes probably not too different from each other. Kind of nice to have all that reassuring water nearby, though.; 6/11/23, 8:42 AM
tim maguire said...: That was stupidly suicidal. The fire gets worse and the passenger’s response is to go faster? They almost rear end somebody. What if they had and the cars weren’t drivable? Then what?; 6/11/23, 9:11 AM
lonejustice said...: I like to do risky things sometimes, even dangerous, but this is nuts.; 6/11/23, 9:52 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: There’s a calculation I would need to make before doing what these people did.

What could be so important on the other side that I would risk my life and limb because it couldn’t wait.

Maybe they were rushing to put out the fire that engulfed their house.

That must’ve been it. I’m positive 🫨; 6/11/23, 10:26 AM
madAsHell said...: This is nothing.

Where’s the video of the firefighters trying to keep the suicides out of Burning Man?

People do stupid shit. Try not to be there when it splatters.; 6/11/23, 10:48 AM
pacwest said...: The air temperature outside the car must have been hot.; 6/11/23, 10:55 AM
Temujin said...: What you don't want to do, if it can be avoided, is to drive through a wildfire. If you have not see the documentary, "Fire in Paradise", it would be worth a watch (if this sort of thing interests you). It's pretty harrowing stuff about the 2018 wildfire that came across Paradise, CA.; 6/11/23, 11:13 AM
Michael K said...: The best wildfire pics come from CA and Canada because of their lunatic attitude to forest management.; 6/11/23, 11:38 AM
JAORE said...: Dumazz.; 6/11/23, 11:43 AM
JK Brown said...: Sometimes you go early and the "controlled burn" jumps the road

https://youtu.be/4XLFyYLTiSo; 6/11/23, 11:47 AM
Christy said...: I see absolute faith that the government would have shut the road down if it had been dangerous. A.K.A. idiots.; 6/11/23, 12:03 PM
farmgirl said...: I think they were praying… I would be.
Country song title: When You’re Going Through Hell- Keep On Going.; 6/11/23, 12:13 PM
Mason G said...: I guess they'll need to wait for the next event to win their Darwin Award.; 6/11/23, 12:44 PM
SteveWe said...: I lived at the edge of the Harmony Grove Fire in Carlsbad CA. I saw the guy who drove through that fire and then stopped his car at an intersection just outside of the fire area. He was transported by an EMT to the hospital where he died. He had been "roasted" in his car by the fire as he drove through the fire. Do not drive through fires, people.; 6/11/23, 12:55 PM
Mike of Snoqualmie said...: What fools these mortals be...; 6/11/23, 1:25 PM
Jaq said...: Last night the moon was orangish even though it was high in the sky, and it's still smokey right now. Which is weird because the wind is from the South. When it was from the North, it was majorly smokey, couldn't see hills that are less than ten miles away. Maybe I am just used to the smell, but at least I can't smell it anymore.; 6/11/23, 1:56 PM
holdfast said...: I yield to no man or woman when it comes to despising Baby Trudeau, but the reality of Canadian constitutional federalism is that this is almost exclusively a provincial problem, not a Federal one. Unless the land is an actual national park or a military base, all the “unused” land belongs to a provincial government, not the Canadian Federal government.

It’s one of the few areas where Canada federalism is superior to American federalism.; 6/11/23, 3:33 PM
Jaq said...: According to Steve McIntyre, who has done a lot of research on boreal climate, the forest is a monoculture of black spruce, and has been for millennia, not something new, and the average black spruce is 100 yrs old, that's because, on average, 1% of the forest burns every year. So no, it's not "climate change."; 6/11/23, 4:42 PM
Joe Bar said...: That does not look like a good idea.; 6/11/23, 7:02 PM