California Fires

[Andrew]

So southern California is on fire for past several days with 1 million people evacuated.

Here's some webcam video from this morning up until now. The night one shows how easy it is spreading.

17 mb of video

Here is webcams for the area

http://hpwren.ucsd.edu/cameras/

Lyons Peak is the one I uploaded to mytempdir.

I know some people on Fed2k are from california. Any insights?

flickr photos

flickr photos 1

EDIT:

NASA sat images

[Andrew]

Not much in the news about the fires now.

FEMA held a press conference, gave a notice of 15 minutes that they were having one, and the only people that asked questions were FEMA employees. They asked easy questions that made it look like FEMA was doing a great job.

FEMA Meets the Press, Which Happens to Be . . . FEMA

So the mass public sees/hears this press conference, and believes what is said, not knowing that the "reporters" are FEMA employees.

FEMA sorry for fake news briefing

So they say they are sorry. The only way to prove they are sorry is to fire everyone.

"It was absolutely a bad decision. I regret it happened. Certainly ... I should have stopped it," said John "Pat" Philbin, FEMA's director of external affairs. "I hope readers understand we're working very hard to establish credibility and integrity, and I would hope this does not undermine it."

OK. so this guy had the power to stop it, admits he should have stopped it but didn't.

Philbin's last scheduled day at FEMA was Thursday. He has been named as the new head of public affairs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI spokeswoman Vanee Vines said.

So the guy is done with his job last Thursday (2 days after the press conference) and is being transferred somewhere else.

The US government is very corrupt.

[nemafakei]

"The US government is very corrupt."

Nah. They've just got a joke of a press, so they're largely a bit bumbling at being corrupt. Most other nations are far more discreet.

[Egeides]

This FEMA part is getting peculiar though. It simply is of another level of deception, at least compared with what I had heard of up to now. Here, it leaves to think they're to the point of not needing to even try to make an effort to still think it'll work. If a whole group thinks like that at such a level, it doesn't bring the same evaluation as with usual press conferences, even restricted ones.

[Dunenewt]

I went on holiday to San Diego for a couple of weeks a few years ago, and I remember waking up, and it was like the aftermath of a nuclear attack.  Sky was almost black, and there was ash everywhere, like snow.  Didn't really spoil the holiday though, as it was quite a unique experience.

[thomas]

I go to school in san diego (UCSD actually), and the fires didn't really affect us, 'cept that the air quality was crap, and the campus was closed for a week

btw, it's good to be back :-)