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Shock Videos from California: Wildfire Evacuation as a Small Town Burns to the Ground

September 15, 2015

Shock Videos from California: Wildfire Evacuation as a Small Town Burns to the Ground

However prepared you think you are for an emergency wildfire evacuation, when it looks like you’re driving through the outer edges of Hell, it’s going to be a scary ride.

Wildfires are a real threat every year in California, but this season seems to be especially dramatic and uncontrollable. Chalk it up to the severe drought that has caused the grass and trees to become well-seasoned fuel for the fires.

Valley Fire Map

One particular fire rages out of control in Lake County, just north of the famous Napa Valley, putting thousands of acres of vineyards on the outskirts of the inferno.

That is far from the worst of it, though. Over the weekend, the tiny burg of Middletown, California was burned off the map.  The flames moved so quickly that there was barely time to notify the families of the town that they had to evacuate.

middletown fire

When the fire hit the gas stations on the edge of town, the fuel tanks exploded, worsening the blaze. The fire traveled to the down and destroyed virtually every single building More than 1000 homes and businesses burned to the ground. Pay close attention at 1:30.

Residents literally only had minutes to evacuate as the flames approached. This was not a calm, orderly evacuation. This was families fleeing for their lives.

Do you think you are prepped to evacuate? What if you had to literally drive through a wildfire? Here’s a dose of reality. This video was shot as one family left their home for what is most likely the last time. (Some very understandable harsh language).

I know what you’re thinking: That guy waited way too long to bug out.

The thing is, this fire moved so incredibly quickly that people who bugged out within minutes of notification had a scene exactly like this. They had a soundtrack of approaching flames roaring in their ears. One minute, the fire was a plume of smoke on the horizon, and the next minute it was in their backyards.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Thousands Flee Lake County as Valley Fire Spreads to 25,000 Acres

September 13, 2015

Thousands Flee Lake County  as Valley Fire Spreads to 25,000 Acres

Valley Fire spreads to over 25,000 acres; thousands evacuated

Cal Fire says the Valley Fire in Lake County has grown to over 25,000 acres burning homes, shutting down parts of Highway 29 and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people from of nearby towns.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. (KGO) —

Cal Fire says the Valley Fire in Lake County has grown to over 25,000 acres burning homes, shutting down parts of Highway 29 and forcing the evacuation of nearby towns and more than 3,000 people.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection says the fire began around 1:30 p.m. Saturday in Lake County, which is about 100 miles north of San Francisco. At its start, it was 50 acres, but grew to 400 by 4 p.m. It was over 10,000 acres by 6:30 p.m. It was past 25,000 acres late Saturday night.

PHOTOS: Fire crews battle 10,000 acre Valley Fire in Lake County

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Oil Giants Crush California Bill Aimed at Reducing Gasoline Use

September 11, 2015

Oil Giants Crush California Bill Aimed at Reducing Gasoline Use

Steve Snodgrass / CC BY 2.0

The oil industry has derailed an environmental bill in California designed to reduce gasoline use by up to 50 percent by 2030.

The Guardian reports:

Senate president pro tempore Kevin de Leon announced on Wednesday that he would amend the bill, SB350, to drop the petroleum provisions. It will be changed in the assembly’s natural resources committee as soon as Thursday to deal only with increasing the state’s renewable electricity supply and boosting energy efficiency in buildings through retrofits and upgrades.

With only two days left in the legislative session, “we could not cut through the million-dollar smokescreen created by a single special-interest with a singular motive and a bottomless war chest”, he said in a statement.

The Western States Petroleum Association – a trade organization representing petroleum companies including Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil, said in a statement that the fuel provisions were “arbitrary and infeasible”, but with that portion of the bill deleted, “we can move forward and work together on other climate change efforts”.

SB350 has been the focus of an intense media and lobbying campaign by petroleum interests in recent weeks.

Read more here.

 

California Drought and Strengthening El Nino Accelerate Statewide Water Transition

August 24, 2015

California Drought and Strengthening El Nino Accelerate Statewide Water Transition

New infrastructure, laws, and practices help the state respond to hydrologic extremes, but more are needed.

California Kern County canal agriculture drought farming Central Valley carl ganter circle of blue

Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue
California’s canal system moves water hundreds of miles from the Sierra Nevada foothills to Los Angeles and San Diego. Adapting to 21st century water conditions requires less reliance on energy-hungry water imports and more sharing of water between users, according to panelists who participated in Circle of Blue’s August 18 town hall. Click image to enlarge.

As perhaps the strongest El Nino on record forms in the eastern Pacific Ocean, public officials in California are preparing for a winter in which the state’s drought emergency might be interrupted by disastrous floods.

Yet even a “Godzilla” El Nino, as one NASA scientist dubbed the warming ocean waters, will not solve the state’s water supply imbalances that preceded the current drought and will persist long after, according to experts who spoke Tuesday at a virtual town hall, hosted by Circle of Blue and Maestro Conference.

Godzilla unfortunately doesn’t have freezing breath ensure that all the rain we get is going to restore the snowpack in our mountains.”

–Kevin Klowden, managing director
Milken Institute’s California Center

“Godzilla can’t dig cisterns and build us water storage infrastructure, and Godzilla unfortunately doesn’t have freezing breath ensure that all the rain we get is going to restore the snowpack in our mountains,” said Kevin Klowden, managing director of the Milken Institute’s California Center in Santa Monica, at the Catalyst: California town hall.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

California Oilfield Operators Refuse To Report Water Usage, In Violation Of The Law

August 21, 2015

California Oilfield Operators Refuse To Report Water Usage, In Violation Of The Law

How much water does California’s oil and gas industry actually use? We still don’t know, despite a 2014 law signed by Governor Jerry Brown that went into effect this year requiring companies to report on all water produced, used and disposed of by oilfield operations.

Oil and gas regulators with California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) missed the first reporting deadline, April 30, claiming they had simply received too much data to process in time. But now we know there was probably another reason: hundreds of companies had flat out refused to obey the law.

In fact, more than 100 companies still refuse to comply with the water reporting requirements altogether.

DOGGR extended the filing date for the first quarter of 2015 to June 1, and has now, at long last, released the first report on oilfield water usage and disposal — though more than 100 companies still haven’t submitted any data to the state despite the extension.

According to the report, just 166 oilfield operators filed their quarterly water report by June 1, prompting DOGGR to issue 289 Notices of Violation to companies that failed to meet the extended deadline. Some 146 companies complied with the violation notices and did submit their water usage data, but 104 operators remain out of compliance and at risk of civil penalties.

No fines or other penalties have been levied against noncompliant companies so far.

DOGGR says the data it did receive, and on which the report is based, represents “approximately 59 percent of the produced water, and 41 percent of the injected water during the first quarter.” The agency did not verify the accuracy of the data self-reported by oilfield operators.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Nestle Pays Only $524 to Extract 27,000,000 Gallons of California Drinking Water

August 21, 2015

Nestle Pays Only $524 to Extract 27,000,000 Gallons of California Drinking Water

Los Angeles, CA — Nestle has found itself more and more frequently in the glare of the California drought-shame spotlight than it would arguably care to be — though not frequently enough, apparently, for the megacorporation to have spontaneously sprouted a conscience.

Drought-shaming worked sufficiently enough for Starbucks to stop bottling water in the now-arid state entirely, uprooting its operations all the way to Pennsylvania. But Nestle simply shrugged off public outrage and then upped the ante by increasing its draw from natural springs — most notoriously in the San Bernardino National Forest — with an absurdly expired permit.

 

Because profit, of course. Or, perhaps more befittingly, theft. But you get the idea.

Nestle has somehow managed the most sweetheart of deals for its Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water, which is ostensibly sourced from Arrowhead Springs — and which also happens to be located on public land in a national forest.

In 2013, the company drew 27 million gallons of water from 12 springs in Strawberry Canyon for the brand — apparently by employing rather impressive legerdemain — considering the permit to do so expired in 1988.

But, as Nestle will tell you, that really isn’t cause for concern since it swears it is a good steward of the land and, after all, that expired permit’s annual fee has been diligently and faithfully paid in full — all $524 of it.

And that isn’t the only water it collects. Another 51 million gallons ofgroundwater were drawn from the area by Nestle that same year.

There is another site the company drains for profit while California’s historic drought rages on: Deer Canyon. Last year, Nestle drew 76 million gallons from the springs in that location, which is a sizable increase over 2013’s 56 million-gallon draw — and under circumstances just as questionable as water collection at Arrowhead.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Parts of California Have Sunk Over a Foot in Eight Months Due to Drought

August 21, 2015

Parts of California Have Sunk Over a Foot in Eight Months Due to Drought

Screen Shot 2015-08-20 at 3.27.14 PM

California Dreamin’ this is not.

Sounds pretty freakin’ terrifying actually. From Bloomberg:

Land in California’s central valley agricultural region sank more than a foot in just eight months in some places as residents and farmers pump more and more groundwater amid a record drought.

The ground near Corcoran, 173 miles (278 kilometers) north of Los Angeles, dropped about 1.6 inches every 30 days. One area in the Sacramento Valley was descending about half-an-inch per month, faster than previous measurements, according to a report released Wednesday by the Department of Water Resources. NASA completed the study by comparing satellite images of Earth’s surface over time.

“Groundwater levels are reaching record lows — up to 100 feet lower than previous records,” Mark Cowin, the department’s director, said in a statement. “As extensive groundwater pumping continues, the land is sinking more rapidly and this puts nearby infrastructure at greater risk of costly damage.”

 

Areas along the California Aqueduct — a system of canals and tunnels that ships water from the north to the south –– sank as much as 12.5 inches, with eight inches of that occurring in just four months of 2014, researchers found.

Get to work Dr. Bernanke.

Screen Shot 2015-08-20 at 3.21.02 PM

For related articles, see:

Wal-Mart Exposed Bottling Water from Sacramento Municipal Supply in the Middle of a Drought

Video of the Day – Stunning Scenes from California’s Central Valley Drought

 

‘Biggest El Niño of our generation’ may be tempered by The Blob

August 19, 2015

‘Biggest El Niño of our generation’ may be tempered by The Blob

Climatologists unsure of outcome of battle of ‘Godzilla’ El Niño vs. the Pacific Blob

For many drought-weary Californians, it has become the ‘Great Wet Hope.’ Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, has given it a less enthusiastic nickname.

“This is the Godzilla El Niño,” Patzert says. “This potentially could be the El Niño of our generation.”

El Niño is the term for a massive patch of warm water that appears in the the Equatorial Pacific every few years, affecting weather patterns across the world. Typically, its appearance means more rain on the Pacific coast and a milder winter west of the Rockies.

“Places that are normally dry get extremely wet, and of course that would include the American west,” Patzert says. “So we’re kayaking down the street in Los Angeles, and they’re playing golf in February in Minneapolis.”

Climatologists suspected El Niño was coming. Now they’re predicting it’ll be even bigger than they thought.

el nino

Sea surface temperature anomalies for May 2014. Warmer colours indicate warm temperatures. (NOAA)

el nino

Sea surface temperature anomalies for May 2015. Warmer colours indicate warm temperatures, and are particularly noticeable around the equator and South America. (NOAA)

“A large El Niño like we saw in 1997 and 1982 has a big impact not only on the U.S. and Canada, but (also) all over the planet,” Patzert says. “The signal that we see in the Pacific from space is actually larger than it was in August of 1997.”

In 1997, a massive El Niño brought floods, mudslides and hurricanes. In California it killed 17 people and caused half a billion dollars of damage.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Tomgram: William deBuys, Entering the Mega-Drought Era in America

August 18, 2015

Tomgram: William deBuys, Entering the Mega-Drought Era in America

The other day here in New England it was chilly, rainy, and stormy and I complained. Where was the sun? The warmth? The summer? I happened to be with someone I know from California and he shook his head and said, “It’s fine with me. I like it rainy. I haven’t seen much rain in a while.” It was a little reminder of how insular we can be. California, after all, is in the fourth year of a fearsome drought that has turned much of the North American West, from Alaska and Canada to the Mexican border, into a tinderbox. Reservoirs are low, rivers quite literally drying up, and the West is burning. In rural northern California, where the fires seem to be least under control, the Rocky Fire has already burned 109 square miles and destroyed 43 homes, while the Jerusalem Fire, which recently broke out nearby, quickly ate upalmost 19 square miles while doubling in size and sent local residents fleeing, some for the second time in recent weeks.

Fires have doubled in these drought years in California. The fire season, once mainly an autumnal affair, now seems to be just about any day of the year. (This isn’t, by the way, just a California phenomenon. The latest study indicates that fire season is extending globally, with a growth spurt of 18.7% in the last few decades.) In fact, fire stats for the U.S. generally and the West in particular are worsening in the twenty-first century, and this year looks to be quite a blazing affair, with six million acres already burned across the region and part of the summer still to go.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

 

California Distributed Energy Incentive Program Disproportionately Benefiting Fossil Fuels, Regulators OK With

August 16, 2015

California Distributed Energy Incentive Program Disproportionately Benefiting Fossil Fuels, Regulators OK With 

A California program designed to spur innovation in technologies for distributed generation of low-emission energy is disproportionately benefiting fossil fuels projects, primarily natural gas — and a new proposal to update the emissions threshold that determines which projects are eligible will not change that, critics of the program say.

Some 70 percent of the energy generation that has so far received rebates from California’s $83-million-a-year, ratepayer-funded Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) has been fossil-fueled, according to the Sierra Club.

SGIP, administered by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), provides rebates for distributed energy systems installed on the customer side of the utility meter — “behind the meter” in industry parlance.

To qualify for funding, distributed energy system providers must demonstrate that their technology’s greenhouse gas emissions fall below a certain threshold, ensuring that it’s cleaner than the grid energy it will replace.

Janice Lin, executive director of the California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA), says that the new emissions threshold proposed by CPUC chairman Michael Picker is too high because it fails to properly account for California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which directs energy providers to increase procurement from renewable sources to 33 percent of the state’s total energy mix by 2020.

“If they had correctly factored in the 33 percent RPS,” Lin told DeSmog, “they would have arrived at a much lower emissions factor threshold.”

In one example cited in a comment CESA and the Natural Resources Defense Council submitted to the CPUC, a consumer using a distributed energy system that adheres to the proposed emissions factor could be responsible for as much as 23 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than if they were to simply stick with the grid, which is easily on pace to achieve

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

World without Water: The Dangerous Misuse of Our Most Valuable Resource

August 15, 2015

World without Water: The Dangerous Misuse of Our Most Valuable Resource

Photo Gallery: The World's Growing Water ShortagePhotos
REUTERS

Amid climate change, drought and mismanagement, our world’s most valuable resource is becoming scarce. Much of the crisis is man-made — and even water-rich countries like Germany are to blame. By SPIEGEL Staff

 

Men like Edward Mooradian are saving California. Indeed, there would hardly be any water left without them. And without water California, now in the fourth year of an epic drought, would be nothing but desert. That’s why it’s such a cynical joke and, most of all, a tragic reality, that men like Mooradian are also destroying California. In fact, they are actually aggravating the emergency that they are trying to mitigate. The Americans call this a catch-22, a situation in which there are no good alternatives. Either way, the game is lost.

On a Sunday morning in July, Mooradian is standing between rows of orange and lemon trees near Fresno in the Central Valley, the stretch of land in the heart of California that supplies the United States, Canada and Europe with fruit, vegetables and nuts. It is shortly before 8 a.m., but the temperature is already high and there is no wind. Mooradian, tanned and muscular, wearing a helmet and sunglasses, switches on the drill mounted on his truck. It gurgles furiously for a moment and drives a long pipe into the earth.

Mooradian is drilling for groundwater. He has been doing this day and night, seven days a week, ever since California’s rivers and lakes began drying up. His order book for the next few months is so full that he no longer answers the phone. Were he to answer, all he could do would be to put off the callers, and hearing the desperation in their voices depresses him.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Forest Service Official Who Let Nestle Drain California Water Now Works For Them

August 15, 2015

Forest Service Official Who Let Nestle Drain California Water Now Works For Them

NestleAn ongoing investigation by The Desert Sun into Nestle’s contentious bottled water operations in drought-stricken California first disclosed that the company’s permit to draw water had a rather astonishing expiration date that occurred over a quarter century ago, in 1988. Recently, the Sunreported an update in the investigation with a jaw-dropping twist: the Forest Service — not Nestle — is the agency primarily responsible for failing to renew Nestle’s permit.

In fact, judging by the government agency’s complete inability to even review Nestle’s long-expired permit — not to mention the lucrative job a retired Forest Service supervisor currently enjoys — there is an arguable case that collusion and corruption are at the heart of the entire issue.

Forest Service officials shirked their duty to review the company’s long-expired permit by conducting numerous meetings about what was needed t0 initiate necessary procedures — but never once followed through with a single proposition to completion. Even the basic legality of allowing a private company to use federal land for the extraction and bottling of water for profitable sale was once called into question by several officials.

Letters, emails, and meeting notes clearly mark a number of instances where the review process and various studies of the environmental impact from continued collection of the spring water were initiated between 1999 and 2003 — but not followed up by any action. In fact, nothing in these documents offers definitive answers for the inexplicable lack of action on every aspect of the Arrowhead permit. Forest Service officials have given plenty of excuses — citing everything from a tight budget to limited staffing — for the reason other concerns were given priority.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Disappearing Lake Shows Drought’s Extent in New Space Image

August 15, 2015

Disappearing Lake Shows Drought’s Extent in New Space Image

 

Aerial view of Goose Lake on the border between California and Oregon taken June 25, 2015, NASA Earth Observatory Landsat 8 – OLI.
Credit: Jesse Allen

A lake straddling the California-Oregon border looks like an empty swimming pool in new photos taken from space.

The water levels of Goose Lake and its several neighboring lakes depend on the season’s rain and snow amounts, and California has been in a drought. A camera onboard NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite captured the lake’s current dry spell on June 25, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory.

The photo of the parched lake is a stark contrast to a photo taken by NASA when the lake was hydrated two years prior, on June 3, 2013.

Goose Lake State Park has a “dry lake” advisory on its website as of May 13: “The Lake is dry and not available for boating or fishing from the park.”

When Goose Lake brims with water, it spans about 145 square miles (375 square kilometers), with a depth of about 24 feet (7 meters). There are eight fish species native to the Goose Lake basin, including the redband trout, suckerfish, tui chub, lamprey, Pit-Klamath brook lamprey, speckled dace, Pit roach, and Pit sculpin.

When the lake is dry, the fish head over to the tributary streams connected to Goose Lake. Redband trout used to be commercially fished, but its populations have not been consistent from year to year.

Most of Goose Lake’s water flows in during the spring and early summer and comes from snowmelt that accumulates in its eastern streams. Goose Lake also receives water from groundwater basins.

 

Goose Lake overflowed in 1881, but dried up in the summers of 1851, 1852, 1926, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934 and 1992.

Dryness in the 1920s shriveled the lake to the point where wagon tracks left by gold miners of the mid-1800s appeared on the exposed lakebed, according to the Earth Observatory.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Surviving the Drought: 25 Easy Ways to Conserve Water

August 1, 2015

Surviving the Drought: 25 Easy Ways to Conserve Water

If you aren’t already storing and conserving water, it is absolutely your top preparedness priority as our country suffers from the drought that has now reached epic proportions. Forget, for now, about the beans and rice – how are you going to cook them without any water?

From a survival aspect, you absolutely must focus on a long-term source of water.  All of your best-laid plans will be for naught if you don’t have water rights on your property, a collection system for rainfall, and second and third sources to rely on, as well as reliable purification systems.  Safe municipal water (although with the inclusion of all the toxic additives ‘safe’ is debatable) could soon be a thing of the past.

It’s beyond dispute that the United States is facing a water crisis. On the West Coast, where much of our produce is raised, California Governor Jerry Brown declared a State of Emergency and ordered statewide restrictions on water use. On the East Coast, the water is plentiful but is polluted by chemical spills, as seen inWest Virginia and radioactive leaks, as seen in South Carolina. In Detroit,thousands of people who couldn’t afford to pay their bills no longer have running water in their homes.

Three years ago, Michael Snyder wrote about the endless drought of 2012, calling it the largest natural disaster in American history.  He predicted a water shortage that will change the lives of every person on the planet.

It’s certainly beginning to look like he was right.

How much water are you using?

One thing that people don’t always stop to consider is exactly how much water they use each day.  Everyone in the preparedness realm knows the adage about 1 gallon per person per day, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. It doesn’t include the vast amount of water we customarily use for hygiene purposes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

The Politics of California’s Water System

July 31, 2015

The Politics of California’s Water System

In a decision bursting with symbolism, the California State Water Resources Control Board recently announced its intention to draw down the main water supply reservoir for a half-million people who live just outside of the state capitol to only 12% of capacity by September 30. Lake Folsom on the American River — the main water source for Roseville, Folsom, and other Sacramento suburbs — will plummet to 120,000 acre-feet by that date, according to a forecast by the water board, which announced the plan at an unusually lively Sacramento workshop on June 24.

The artificial lake will therefore be only months away from turning into a dreaded “dead pool,” a state in which a reservoir becomes so low it cannot drain by gravity through a dam’s outlet. Such an outcome would leave area residents scrambling for water — if recent predictions of an El Niño weather pattern fizzle and rain fails to appear later in 2015. If that were to happen, then Folsom could be a harbinger for the rest of California.

Indeed, as the American West lurches through its fourth summer of an historic drought, numerous major reservoirs are at or near historic lows relative to the time of year. New Melones Reservoir on the Stanislaus River in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties, which was only 16% full as of last week, appears likely to meet the same fate as Folsom this year. A study by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2008, three before the current drought began, warned that the nation’s largest reservoir, Nevada’s Lake Mead (which supplies much of Southern California), has a 50-50 chance of running dry by 2021.

 

So far, a consensus of state and federal officials is that this state of emergency has come to pass due to a natural disaster beyond their control. Water board member Steven Moore has called the drought “our Hurricane Sandy.” 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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