Radio Paradise, Paradise, Camp Fire

All looks pretty grim doesn’t it.

It is very grim indeed.

If you are around here in northern California, you will understand the magnitude of the fire, the disaster and the tragic losses of human lives.

I live hundred of miles from Paradise, but when I came out of the house on that Thursday morning, I could see the  whole area was shrouded in some kind of  a thick gray, spooky smoke.

For comparison take  the similar sized British town of Statford-upon-Avon. Starting early one morning a fire approaches the town from the east devouring one football pitch every second. The alarm is raised and all 27,000 residents with pets, loved ones and the clothes on their backs drive slowly down side streets heading to the single main four lane road out of town. As they drive the fire devours trees and  homes on either side of their vehicles also melting lights, taillights, and rubber trim of  those same cars. Traffic stalls, some vehicles must be abandoned and their occupants, many of them senior citizens, must run for their lives. By the end of the day no one alive is left in the town and all but a handfull of structures are leveled destroyed. All 27,000 residents are homeless. Fifty are confirmed dead. Another 100 or so are missing. Dozens of burned out abandoned vehicles line the streets some with human remains. Coroner crews begin searching for the dead. Some were essentially cremated in place and will never be identified as human remains.

That is Paradise California today. The fire that destroyed it is one of three of 100,000 acres or more still burning in northern and southern California.

Thanks Clay for sharing on this as we have nothing to compare it with in the UK.

It sounds like a vision of hell or from hell.

God bless America.

Coventry, East end of London, Hull, Glasgow in the 1939 1945 activity. It has taken a generation or more to rebuild these locations.   Do not forget the trashing of Syria, or the devastation of the Yugoslavian deconstruction both of which took place in the last 30 years and the rape of the Yemen.

After 9/11 an American friend commented about rare such devastation is, and had we any eexperience in the UK of such devastation I referred him to the WWII bomb damage. He reflected and was "humbled" in his response.

A fascinating and terrifying account of the days events in today's LA Times 
http://www.latimes.com/local/c...-20181118-story.html

Makes one feel very fortunate.  

P here's a satellite image of the fire.
Paradise is buried under the lower part of the fire at his point.

https://www.livescience.com/64...atellite-images.html