Tinder-dry California burned anew on Monday, with more people forced from their homes, more forests destroyed and firefighters stretched to the limit.
From the Bee's Sam Stanton, Ryan Lillis, Bill Lindelof and Edward Ortiz:"“We don’t see an end to fire season for months to come,” California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Director Ken Pimlott warned Monday as the state marshaled an army of 11,000 firefighters to battle 12 major blazes in the state that have consumed more than 700 square miles."
"The two latest – the Butte fire that broke out Wednesday and is burning in Amador and Calaveras counties, and the Valley fire that erupted Saturday in Lake County – have destroyed hundreds of homes and killed at least one Lake County woman, although officials said the death toll could rise..."
"The woman confirmed killed in the fire was an elderly, disabled resident of the Cobb area who was unable to get out of her home. The Lake County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday that a call to help the woman came into its dispatch center Saturday at 7:12 p.m., almost six hours after the fire erupted."
From KQED's John Myers: "Gov. Jerry Brown, after being briefed on a fire season that went from bad to worse over the course of a weekend, warned Californians to brace themselves for what’s in store."
“This is damn serious stuff,” said Brown at a Monday morning briefing with fire and state emergency officials outside Sacramento. “Firefighters have to be careful, but so do people who live out in their cabins or in their homes.”
"The governor’s meeting with top officials comes as his administration’s budget team pegged the cost of California’s wildfire season at $212.6 million through early last week, a number undoubtedly too low after a devastating weekend that saw the destruction of two Lake County communities, Middletown and Cobb."
Meanwhile, five power plants around the geothermal facilities at The Geysers in Lake County were damaged as the 61,000-acre, fast-moving Valley Fire continued burning erratically Monday
For those who have lost everything in a fire, the first response is gratitude for being alive. And then come the tears.
The Press Democrat's Chris Smith tells us why: "Four weary and overwhelmed people, all of whom probably if not certainly lost their homes and everything in them to the Valley fire, spoke at a round table Monday morning in the dining hall of the evacuee shelter in Calistoga."
"For a time, they were hearteningly upbeat."
“It’s exciting this morning,” remarked Janis Irvin, who’s lived the past three and a half years in the Anderson Springs community five miles outside of Middletown and who presumes that her home burned. “There are a lot of people talking about rebuilding.”
For those who want to experience two minutes of fear during a night escape from the Valley Fire, check out this video. We said 'Wow' when we Tweeted it yesterday, and "Wow" it is.
From the fire into the frying pan, so to speak, we turn back to California politics. When voters approved Proposition 30 three years ago to raise sales and income taxes, the new levies were temporary -- which was a big part of selling the package, pushed by Gov. Brown. But a new ballot initiative is being proposed to extend them.
From the Bee's Christopher Cadelago: "Whether California would move to keep the tax hikes on the books has been a recurring topic of debate during budget talks at the Capitol. Tom Torlakson, the state superintendent of public instruction, called for an extension of Proposition 30 as early as January 2014."
"But Gov. Jerry Brown, who championed Proposition 30 as temporary, has repeatedly stressed that the sales and income tax measure should remain so. The initiative was approved by state voters in 2012."
"The new “School Funding and Budget Stability Act” would boost income tax rates on couples earning more than $500,000 a year for 12 years, with the proceeds deposited into an account to support K-12 schools and colleges. The quarter-cent sales tax increase would not be touched, and expire as planned in 2016."
"Sierra Nevada" in Spanish means "snowy mountain range" but a new report suggests that it may not be for long. It turns out that the Sierra snowpack is at its skimpiest in hundreds of years. I know, that's just what you wanted to hear.
From the Chronicles David Perlman: "The abysmal winter snowpack in the High Sierra this year was the worst in the past 500 years, and the water content in what little snow remained was also at historic lows, researchers say."
"In the fourth year of California’s drought, the snow’s water content was only 5 percent of its historical average over the same five-century period, the scientists report."
“Snowpack conditions in the Sierra Nevada mountains present an ominous sign of the severity of this drought,” said Valerie Trouet, a tree-ring specialist at the University of Arizona and lead scientist on the study. “We were expecting that 2015 would be extreme, but nothing like this.”
Speaking of scant water, during our worst drought ever farmers are getting creative at fnding new ways to use every drop of water to maximum efficiency. They're even going digital.
KPPC tells the tale: "His high-tech irrigation system lets him stretch what little water he has as much as possible. In the middle of a row of almond trees, Rogers pulls a soil moisture probe out of the ground..."
"This is one of the data stations in the orchard where sensors record measurements about the exact conditions on Rogers’ ranch – temperature, humidity, the amount of soil moisture. All the information gets uploaded to the Internet every 15 minutes, which allows Rogers to make decisions about exactly how much water the trees need..."
"Instead of getting soaked by sprinklers once a week, his roughly 15,000 trees get tiny doses every day. “In essence, they’re spoon feeding the tree,” said Heather Cooley, co-director of the Pacific Institute’s Water Program."
