Colorado burning, over 32,000 forced to flee

[Eddie Teach]

Air force cheerleaders? You guys really are a joke

http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/081101-N-0696M-133.jpg

I hope that wasn't meant as a rebuttal.

[PDH]

Hell, we are getting fire warnings here in OHIO. The end of days is here. PANIC

At times there is so much smoke here, even the poor people can pretend to be camping.  All it takes is a microwaved hot dog and a lawn chair outside to get that great campfire atmosphere.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Damn, that's as many people as live in my home town!

That's as many people that went to my university!

[Valmy]

It has been brutally Texas-kinda hot up there but without our charmingly high levels of humidity to go with it.  Really if it is going to be 105F what is the point of even living in the mountains?

[PDH]

It got up to 90 degrees here!

[Valmy]

It got up to 90 degrees here!

Fortunately you can rely on your central AC unit and....oh right.

[PDH]

It got up to 90 degrees here!

Fortunately you can rely on your central AC unit and....oh right.

It still drops down to 55 degrees at night

[Ed Anger]

I was able to open the windows last night...until a skunk bombed the side of the house with the master. OH LORD, BURNING RUBBER SMELL. CLOSE THE WINDOWS!

No open windows until at least Monday.

MOTHERFUCKING SKUNKS ARE GONNA PAY

[Valmy]

It still drops down to 55 degrees at night

Yeah you still have that on me.  I love sweating at 6:00 AM.  Builds character...and body odor.

[MadImmortalMan]

All you need to know:

Dry, dry, dry year here, no real rain for months.  The Pine Beetle caused die-off of lodgepole pine has made 30-50% of trees into large standing matchsticks.  High heat and 30-40 mph winds keep everything really dry.  Random lightning storms (without rain) roll through and light up the back-country.

That is Wyoming.  In Colorado they have hundreds of thousands retarded Greenies living IN those conditions, tossing cigarettes, lighting fires, enjoying the country life.  The Laramie Valley has been full of smoke for weeks now, and it ain't getting better.

Yeah, I was in Denver a couple years ago and went up in RMNP, Estes Park etc. The whole area was littered with places where large swaths of trees were dead from pine beetles and some disease they had. Big stripes of mountainside were the wrong color, and it was everywhere. Those trees have been just sitting there drying out for years.

[PDH]

Yeah, I was in Denver a couple years ago and went up in RMNP, Estes Park etc. The whole area was littered with places where large swaths of trees were dead from pine beetles and some disease they had. Big stripes of mountainside were the wrong color, and it was everywhere. Those trees have been just sitting there drying out for years.

The orange is mostly gone, the needles have all blown/fallen off.  Now the dead trees are just skeletons filled with old sap ready to explode when warmed sufficiently.  The Snowy Range to the west of where I live has some regions with 50% die-off, when lightning strikes there it will go boom.

[jimmy olsen]

Two mile wide wall of flame whipped up by 65 mile an hour winds!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47974222/ns/weather/#.T-vti5FZZlc

[Valmy]

I hear it is really grim around Colorado Springs.

[mongers]

Yeah, I was in Denver a couple years ago and went up in RMNP, Estes Park etc. The whole area was littered with places where large swaths of trees were dead from pine beetles and some disease they had. Big stripes of mountainside were the wrong color, and it was everywhere. Those trees have been just sitting there drying out for years.

The orange is mostly gone, the needles have all blown/fallen off.  Now the dead trees are just skeletons filled with old sap ready to explode when warmed sufficiently.  The Snowy Range to the west of where I live has some regions with 50% die-off, when lightning strikes there it will go boom.

That reminds me of the imagery from 'The Road'. 

[CountDeMoney]

Firefighting Planes Battle Wildfires And Old Age
by Scott Graf
www.npr.org

As wildfires continue to burn in the West, the U.S. Forest Service is going to battle this summer with fewer air tankers. The number of planes that drop retardant on fires has shrunk significantly over the past 12 years.

In Boise, Idaho, the shortage of air tankers has led to some unexpected repurposing of aircraft.

"This particular aircraft was used as Air Force One at one point," explains pilot Lyle Ehalt, standing next to his shiny white-and-green tanker at the Boise Airport.

Ehalt, who flew the air tanker over a nearby grass fire, says the plane used to carry President Gerald Ford. It eventually ended up in Saskatchewan and was turned into an air tanker. The plane is back in the U.S. this summer, on loan from Canada.

A Shrinking Fleet

In 2000, the Forest Service had contracts with private companies for 43 air tankers. Today, that number is nine.

"This is something that we are working very hard to rectify," says Forest Service spokeswoman Jennifer Jones.

She says structural failures led several models to be retired. Last summer, the Forest Service fired one of its vendors. A fatal crash in Utah claimed the lives of two pilots in June. Besides the loss of life, the accident meant one less plane in an already-shrinking fleet.

Contracting Bigger, Faster Planes

Jones says the Forest Service has appealed to Congress for funding for more tankers. "We are deeply committed to modernizing and improving our large air tanker fleet, and we've been taking a number of steps toward that goal," she says.

Two weeks ago, the Forest Service awarded contracts that will add a total of seven newer tankers this year and next.

Dan Snyder is the president of Neptune Aviation Services in Missoula, Mont. His company was given one of those contracts to build bigger, faster planes, which he says can carry more fire retardant and reach fire zones in half the time needed by older aircraft.

"If you can catch a fire in the initial attack phase, it saves that fire from growing into the megafires where it becomes a project [in which] you're constantly trying to deal with it for weeks on end," Snyder explains.

A Change In Strategy?

But Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, is disappointed by the new contracts, which he sees as nothing more than a Band-Aid.

"This is a national security issue. It's a public safety issue," Hall says. "It's one that demands national attention and national direction."

Hall led a panel that audited the nation's firefighting fleet. His group found a system that needed major upgrades. That was 10 years ago, and he says very little has changed since then. Hall hopes he's wrong, but thinks it could take a Katrina-like disaster to get the country's attention.

But Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who oversees the Forest Service, says the tanker issue is on Washington's radar. But he adds, "There also has to be a degree of patience, because it's not easy to make up for, literally, decades of a different strategy." That strategy has involved more passive forest management that's led to the buildup of fire fuels and an old, shrinking tanker fleet.

But Vilsack is confident that firefighters will have all the aerial support they will need this summer. Extra helicopters have been made available. Just last week, the Forest Service began activating National Guard aircraft.