Are fires in CA anywhere near Lindens ?

Tell me about it! I started coughing yesterday afternoon and have had headaches and irritated sinuses all day.

Fun!

I'd probably be in the hospital right now if I was in the area.. fortunately, I'm in Arkansas.. Oh, that's not MUCH better, thanks to the farking trees

If LL was smart, they'd have a back up login and asset system at the Texas Colo and could divert traffic to it if the need was dire enough.

((Also, I recommend a mixture of pickling salt and baking soda snorted into the sinuses. Helps with the irritation and cleans out the ash. Helped with I had to deal with the fall out of a local forest fire.))

So far..so good from me. I'm very close to the Canyon Country fire. Hopefully the winds won't pick up at sundown, tho they probably will.

My thoughts and prayers are withthe Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead, Malibu and San Diego folks..and any that I missed.

sooz

I'm giggling thinking how much the non-sinus-sufferers are repulsed by this idea right now! But believe me, it can bring such relief.

We should probably mention that it's a mixture salt and baking soda IN WATER. Otherwise... well, ouch!

*giggles* Well.. I did forget a step, but thankfully I don't do that in RL! Bad enough to get plain salt water up the nose! And make the water as warm as you can tolerate it.. cold water is like an ice-cream caused brain freeze.. only WORSE.

Thanks for the reminder to do this. I've done this for allergies but didn't think about it today and my headache is awful from all the ash.

Depends if one is used to sticking powders up one's nostrils

OR---- just go get some Sudafed for the sinuses. I <3 Sudafed!!

Heh...I had that t-shirt, until an ex-girlfriend of mine stole it when she moved out of state to Florida.


...and I agree on the sinuses being assaulted...
...and our sunset sure was muddy looking - too much smoke to even see the sun approach the horizon...
(going to take weeks to get this smoke smell out of the house and everything else)



...and folks!! Remember those firefighters out there putting their asses on the line for the rest of us!!

The constant smell of smoke is sickening.

Err... pretty much all of your earthquakes are from the San Andreas. It runs right through the San Fran area and moves at a slip rate of 35 mm/year. What's happening is that the plates are sliding alongside eachother, and they sometimes catch and hold (like if you run a snaggly fingernail across your shirt, it might catch and pause for a bit) and cause a build up of tension. A lot of times, the edges catch only briefly before moving onward. That's what the small quakes are. It takes roughly 170 years to accumulate enough strain to cause a displacement of about 6m, which would be a big quake (7.5 or above.) So you San Fran people may or may not have a "big one" some time soon.

Re: Lexxi's question about mudslides... the land on those slopes is made from a lot of very fine material, much like clay. Clay is super fine and is often roughly two-dimensional, like flakes of mica. When it absorbs enough water (after big rainstorms) it gets very slippery and actually starts to act like water in the way that it interacts with other clay particles; they slide along eachother and eventually the entire mountain slides out from under the houses. The constructors of those houses never bothered to shore up the earth under the houses with rock foundations, etc.

So does that mean an earthquake is possible where LL is located? I think a tsunami or earthquake would get them before fire. Maybe a hurricane if it hit Texas hard enough. Are all of the servers and computers in the US?

There are four chapters in Bill Bryson's "A Brief History of Nearly Everything" that talk about all the things that can kill us, from earthquakes to asteroids to viruses. Also overdue to blow and very active is the supervolcano under Yellowstone Park. When it erupts, it could cover half the country in ash.

Sorry... I guess I just don't equate the San Andreas fault directly with the tectonic plates doing the actual sliding. Although the San Andreas fault is certainly one of the larger faults in our area, it is only one of many. The individual quakes can arise from any one of these faults.

I will admit I exaggerated a bit, though... plenty of quakes come from the San Andreas. I was just trying to dispel out the common misconception that every quake in the SF area originates in the San Andreas.

For those who are interested, here is a USGS map of the major faults in the SF area. You can hover your mouse over each red line to see the fault name.

http://quake.usgs.gov/info/faultmaps/San_Francisco.html

All of California and Nevada (doesn't give fault names):
http://quake.usgs.gov/info/faultmaps/index.html

Assuming the URL works, this is a map of activity in the last week:
http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/122-38.htm

(The cluster in the upper left is a geothermally active area with geysers, and normally has a lot of activity.)

And as long as I'm feeling all linky, here's a nice picture of the fault (or the surface evidence of it) on the San Francisco peninsula:

http://www.aerialarchives.com/stock/img/AHLB2130.htm

I used to commute to work on the freeway next to the fault. It's not immediately obvious from this picture, but it is extraordinarily beautiful, especially when the ocean fog comes cascading down the mountains into the fault valley.

The weird thing is that just 20-30 miles south, the fault is barely noticeable from the surface. Not sure why. But up north, it forms Tomales Bay, which is a lovely sight in itself.

Man, I love where I live.

Dallas where the colo in Texas is located is too far from the Gulf of Mexico to feel the full fury of a hurricane. They might get some winds and a lot of rain but that would be about all. Hurricanes that hit that part of the Texas coast usually veer to the northeast and deminish in power farily rapidly after they move inland.

Yes, earthquakes are possible and even likely in San Francisco, but the ones large enough to severely damage the co-lo are very rare. Coincidentally, the worst earthquake in SF history, the 1906 one, supposedly did more damage with the fires it caused than from the actual shaking.

Tsunamis are a weird thing here because of the geography, both above and below water. Because the whole area is very hilly, only a few very low lying areas are at risk at all, but I couldn't tell you offhand how high the LL co-lo is. (If someone has the address, we could google earth it. Anything above 100 ft is considered almost totally safe.) It also makes a difference if it's on the ocean side or the bay side... tsunami surges could be significantly affected by the natural resonance caused by the bay's shape and underwater features.

The most likely problem is power outages due to various reasons, but they don't usually last very long in the more populated areas like where the co-lo is. But a major quake would probably cut SL off for a while. I think it was maybe 24-48 hours before normal communications returned after the 7.1 quake in 1989. That one was strong enough to knock down buildings and freeways in places, which is obviously very rare.

No, in Dallas it's just the tornadoes!

Seriously people, this whole planet is out to get us. We need to seal ourselves in bunkers and interact only through a 3D virtual world interface.

*pauses to reflect a moment*

/me checks that one off the to-do list.

Satellite image taken this afternoon of the fires and smoke





Jopsy? Are you in an evacuation area?


*for those who would like a reference point - the bottom fire is the one at the border of San Diego and Mexico. Upper fires are the Santa Clarita and Malibu fires in Los Angeles.

The biggest threat to LL in San Fran is the rent and cost of living there. Given the SL economy, it's a lot more likely it will be a disasterous balance sheet that destroys our world, not the Big One.

Sadly, Ray is oh so right on this one.

... back to fire news:


That is NOT good.

Haven't seen the news yet this evening... is it getting worse?

Yes it is. Until the wind dies down on Wednesday, it's going to be bad. Too dry, too hot, too windy and too few firefighters.

Hi Raymond. As a Northern CA coastal girl, I concur with your observation. It is not a place for those who have few lindens in the account.

A lot of our firefighters are heading south now. Convoys of trucks are on the roads. It's a massive effort. My love goes with them.

I live in the middle of the two areas, just north of Long Beach. Not near the evacuation sights. Yet, we have ash covering our sidewalks, everything in my house, my throat is soar and the headaches are horrible. I can't even imagine what it must be like for those closer to the fires. My heart goes out to them.

I went through this up on the North Coast a while back. Worse than the earthquake.

Love California for all that and more.

How about you Ava?

Make sure your house is completely closed up - windows, doors, etc... Keep pets inside. AQMD has issued an advisory saying that the particulate matter in the air has reached an unhealthy level (not a newsflash to those of us suffering headaches, coughing, nosebleeds, etc...):

http://www.aqmd.gov/news1/2007/2007_wildfires.htm
http://www.aqmd.gov/pubinfo/PDF/PublicLayoutenglish.pdf

If you happen to have a pond, cover it with plastic.

They are starting to send evacuees up to Orange County from Del Mar as of a few hours ago. If the fire crosses the 5 freeway then all North/South travel will be cut off in and out of San Diego (15 is already closed.)