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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (18359)	9/4/2009 11:40:35 AM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

and still no Obama, oh right he's on vacation...again? Firefighters gaining on Los Angeles-area wildfire Sep 4 10:21 AM US/Eastern By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON Associated Press Writer Comments (0) Email to a friend Share on Facebook Tweet this Bookmark and Share Dave Johnson looks over the remains of his home, destroyed by the Station... Cindy Pain, right, fights back tears as she embraces neighbor Dave Johnson... The hillside smolders near Mt. Wilson in the Angeles National forest north... LOS ANGELES (AP) - Fire bosses declared progress early Friday in taming the 226-square-mile arson fire north of Los Angeles that has led to a homicide investigation into the deaths of two firefighters. Flames had died down early Friday and the blaze, which was 42 percent surrounded, was "pretty quiet," fire spokesman John Huschke said. Firefighters were using bulldozers to clear a containment line around the fire, which destroyed 64 homes and burned three people. The fire has charred 148,258 acres of the Angeles National Forest, where many city residents escape to nature during the summer. Investigators determined on Thursday that the 11-day-old blaze was arson, and Los Angeles County sheriff's homicide detectives were investigating. Two firefighters were killed Sunday when their truck plunged 800 feet down a steep mountain road. Incendiary material was found along Angeles Crest Highway, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday, citing an unidentified source close to the investigation. The massive blaze is thought to have started in the area. Sheriff Lee Baca said details were being withheld to avoid jeopardizing the hunt for the arsonist. County Deputy Fire Chief Mike Bryant said he was glad investigators were making progress in the probe, but "it doesn't mend my broken heart." "Those were two great men that died," he said. "We've got to put this fire out so no one else gets hurt." "When you find out it is intentionally set, it's hard to take. A death is a death, but it's so senseless when it's deliberately set," Huschke said. A tribute for the two fallen firefighters was held before dawn Friday at the camp. Hundreds of firefighters took off their caps and helmets and bowed their heads as the men were remembered with speeches and a moment of silence. Elsewhere, a 25-acre wildfire broke out just after midnight about 60 miles southeast in Orange County in the Cleveland National Forest, county fire Capt. Greg McKeown said. No homes were threatened. On Thursday, a six-member firefighting crew mopping up in Angeles National Forest was overcome by fumes, apparently from the smoldering remains of a makeshift methamphetamine lab. Huschke said a hazardous materials squad was called in and one firefighter was hospitalized overnight. Hand crews and water-dropping helicopters had almost contained the fire's western flank in rugged canyons, but 65 miles of fire line have yet to be cut, U.S. Forest Service Incident Commander Mike Dietrich said. A historic observatory and TV, radio and other antennas on Mount Wilson, which at one point was dangerously close to the flames, were "looking pretty darn good," he said, but the fire was pushing east into the wilderness and down toward foothill cities of Monrovia, Sierra Madre and Pasadena. Even in a landscape blackened by wildfire, clues abound for investigators following the path of a blaze and trying to find out how it started. Investigators start where firefighters were first called and work backward. Jeff Tunnell, a wildfire investigator for the Bureau of Land Management, said even in charred terrain, investigators can detect important signs in the soot. "Fire creates evidence as well as destroys it," said Tunnell, a veteran of 50 wildfires who is based in Ukiah. "We can follow fire progression back to the point at which it started." Clues can come from burned trees and grasses, where the amount of burned foliage can show the direction and speed a fire was moving. Investigators search for the remains of whatever started the fire: a charred match or cigarette butt, a piece of metal from a car or part of a power cable. If no such object is found, they often conclude that a fire was "hot set," meaning it was started by a person holding a lighter to the brush. "That's what you are going to assume, because there's no other competent ignition source," he said. Most wildfires are caused by human activity. Even a fire caused by a singed squirrel tumbling from an electrical transformer is designated as human-caused, because humans put the electric box there, Tunnell said. Other wildfire causes are lightning and volcanoes. At the time the current fire broke out, Forest Service officials said there was no lightning and there were no power lines nearby. Three years ago, arson investigators probing the cause of a wildfire in the San Jacinto Mountains that killed five firefighters discovered evidence of different types of incendiary devices at several fires. They recovered everything from simple paper matches to more elaborate devices made up of wooden matches grouped around a cigarette and secured with duct tape or a rubber band. The evidence was enough to build a first-degree murder case against mechanic Raymond Lee Oyler. In March, the evidence was used to convict him and send him to death row. ___ Associated Press writers Greg Risling, Thomas Watkins and Jacob Adelman contributed to this report. look at the pictures breitbart.com

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (18359)	9/4/2009 1:06:05 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Figures. Feds Didn't Clear Brush In LA Wildfire Areas Because Of Liberal Pressure. Liberals - creating disaster area after disaster area. The wonderful thing here is that it's not just a story of glazed-eyed government incompetence breaking at the same time that the Obama administration is trying to nationalize 15% of the US economy. It's that the incompetence has its source in interest groups who issue diktats according to whatever the prevailing liberal pseudo-sophistication happens to be. 30 years ago it was preservation, then we decided that nature should always be allowed to take its course, then we decided we had to plant trees everywhere to enrich the atmosphere - oops! - and now we've got some kind of non-interventionist hodgepodge. The upshot being that if you think this is bad, wait until panels of doctors and bureaucrats get to make calculations - and set premiums - based on which social groups they think are responsible for unreasonable costs. The public "blame the smokers no blame the drinkers no blame people who drive too much" populism is going to be exciting enough. But when well-heeled Blue State bureaucrats start making decisions based on a combination of non-replicated studies, shrill urban hand-wringing, and a sensibility about healthy living derived mostly from the Barnes and Noble "Personal Enrichment" shelf - that's when things get really awesome. If someone in San Francisco has made a serious effort to ban or regulate something you enjoy consuming, bummer. Anyway, yeah: Federal authorities failed to follow through on plans earlier this year to burn away highly flammable brush in a forest on the edge of Los Angeles to avoid the very kind of wildfire now raging there... Months before the huge blaze erupted, the U.S. Forest Service obtained permits to burn away the undergrowth and brush on more than 1,700 acres of the Angeles National Forest. But just 193 acres had been cleared by the time the fire broke out, Forest Service resource officer Steve Bear said. The agency defended its efforts, saying weather, wind and environmental rules tightly limit how often these "prescribed burns" can be conducted... Some critics suggested that protests from environmentalists over prescribed burns contributed to the disaster, which came after the brush was allowed to build up for as much as 40 years. "This brush was ready to explode," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich... "The environmentalists have gone to the extreme to prevent controlled burns, and as a result we have this catastrophe today."... The blaze has destroyed more than five dozen homes, killed two firefighters and forced thousands of people to flee... Biologist Ileene Anderson with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental organization, said burn permits should be difficult to get because of the potential damage to air quality. Clearing chaparral by hand or machine must be closely scrutinized because it can hurt native species. Acres supposed to get cleared: 1,748. Acres actually cleared, according to official records: 12.8. In fairness, the fire service says that the records are wrong by a factor of 10 and that they actually managed to clear 193 acres. So just over 10% mererhetoric.com Feds didn't clear brush in wildfire area ..... Government firefighters set thousands of blazes each year to reduce the wildfire risk in overgrown forests and grasslands around the nation. Prescribed burns can also be used to improve overall forest health and increase forage for wildlife. Obtaining the necessary permits is a complicated process, and such efforts often draw protests from environmentalists. Biologist Ileene Anderson with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental organization, said burn permits should be difficult to get because of the potential damage to air quality. Clearing chaparral by hand or machine must be closely scrutinized because it can hurt native species. "Our air quality, for a variety of factors, doesn't need to be further reduced by these controlled burns," she said. .......... Los Angeles fire Capt. Steve Ruda said that pre-emptive fires were used more frequently in the region in the 1980s. But a growing backcountry population and increasingly complicated environmental rules have made them less frequent. ..... Max Moritz, co-director of the Center for Fire Research and Outreach at the University of California at Berkeley, said there is wide discussion about the need to do more prescribed burns to reduce the fire hazard. But "you have this difficult needle you have to thread to find the right place, the right conditions, to pull it off," Moritz said. Ultimately, he said, the answer is to stop building in fire-prone areas instead of spending huge sums on firefighting. Steve Brink, a vice president with the California Forestry Association, an industry group, said as many as 8 million acres of national forest in California are overgrown and at risk of wildfire. He said that too few days provide the conditions necessary for larger, prescribed burns and that the Forest Service needs to speed up programs to thin forests, largely by machine. "Special interest groups that don't want them to do it have appeals and litigation through the courts to stall or stop any project they wish. Consequently, the Forest Service is not able to put a dent in the problem," Brink said. google.com