Valentine Fire

[joeycheeto]

Hey all.
I am in valentine, NE. I have been here for a week and 1/2 (I am here for 2 months) and I was involved with that fire today. It was (actually still is) really scary. I am a med student at the hospital and was responsible for most of the patients at the hospital today. I actually saw all those patients in the World Hearld article. We have set up the ER in a middle school on the west side of town. We are prepared for some major happenings. Anyways, there is some major tragedy here. I caught some pictures, but I will not have them up for a while. I will keep everyone informed. There are a lot of people who lost everything though. It is really devistating.
Hope everything is good in the O-town.

[ladyred]

Hang in there Joey! My brother lives there also and he called us yesterday to say he and his family are all okay. Don't know about his house yet though. We are thinking about all of you.

Patty

[Brad]

I hope things get better up there for everyone.

I will be up there for vacation in the end of august.

[Brad]

Wall of fire crosses creek, destroys homes in Valentine

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=1638&u_sid=2208024

VALENTINE, Neb. - A fast-moving "wall of fire," aided by 30-mph winds and drought conditions, pushed into the Valentine city limits before being contained early today.

More than 100 firefighters, aided by a Black Hawk helicopter fitted with a 750-gallon water bucket, continued to battle hot spots on the north side of Minnechaduza Creek, which flows along the north side of town.

Patients of the city hospital and residents of two assisted-living centers, who were evacuated at about 6 p.m. Sunday, remained at other facilities. About 200 residents of the north end of town were allowed to return to homes after midnight.

Officials said the fire was contained this morning, although there were concerns that it could re-ignite in the windy, hot conditions.

[Swift]

Mmmm global warming.... *salivates*

[jcitta]

It must be global warming, because there was never any fires before power plants and automobiles.

[Linkin5]

Mmmm global warming.... *salivates*

No.

[MTO]

We'll know for sure if its gm if a flood puts the fire out.

[Swift]

Actually, I was more refering to the record number of wild fires that are taking place around the country right now...

And no they didn't ever as much or as often as there are right now.

Wildfire Increase Linked to Climate
Higher temperatures over 34 years -- rather than land-use changes -- have led to more blazes, researchers say. They're sure it's not a fluke.
By Robert Lee Hotz
Times Staff Writer

July 7, 2006

Rising temperatures throughout the West have stoked an increase in large wildfires over the past 34 years as spring comes earlier, mountain snows melt sooner and forests dry to tinder, scientists reported Thursday.

More than land-use changes or forest management practices, the changing climate was the most important factor driving a four-fold increase in the average number of large wildfires in the Western United States since 1970, the researchers concluded.

The average spring and summer temperatures were more than 1.5 degrees higher in Western states between 1987 and 2003 than during the previous 17 years. In fact, the seasonal temperatures were the warmest since record-keeping started in 1895, the researchers said.

While the researchers stopped short of linking increased wildfire intensity to global warming caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases, they were confident that they had documented a broad climate trend and not a fluke of natural weather variability.

"It all fits together," said climate researcher Anthony Westerling, who led the research while at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. "The [fire] seasons do start earlier and run longer. It is consistent with a changing climate."

Some scientists were more confident that greenhouse gases from industrial activity, cars and pollution were to blame.

"I think this is the equivalent for the West of what hurricanes are for the Gulf Coast," said fire ecologist Steven Running at the University of Montana in Missoula, who was not connected with the research. "This is an illustration of a natural disaster that is accelerating in intensity as a result, I feel, of global warming."

All told, the average fire season has grown more than two months longer, while fires have become more frequent, longer-burning and harder to extinguish. They destroy 6.5 times more land than in the 1970s, the researchers found.

Last year was the worst wildfire season on record, with over 8.53 million acres burned nationwide by the end of December. So far this year, more than 60,000 wildfires have charred almost 3.9 million acres — twice the number of fires during the same period last year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

"I see this as one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States," said Thomas W. Swetnam, an expert on fire history and director of the laboratory of tree-ring research at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who was part of the research team.

In the first detailed study of its kind, scientists at Scripps and the University of Arizona analyzed 34 years of wildfire activity, temperature records, snow-melt trends, stream flows and other climate-related data.

The research, published online Thursday by the journal Science, was funded by grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Forest Service and the California Energy Commission.

The researchers studied more than 1,100 large wildfires between 1970 and 2003.

They reported that almost seven times more forested federal land burned between 1987 and 2003 than during the previous 17 years. During the same period, the length of the wildfire season increased by 78 days. The average time between a fire's discovery and its extinguishment also lengthened — from 7.5 days to 37.1 days.

Wildfires cost more than $1 billion a year in federal firefighting expenses, plus untold property damages.

The impact of rising temperatures on wildfires seemed most profound in the forests of the northern Rockies, which accounted for 60% of the blazes from 1987 to 2003, and least pronounced in arid Southern California, the researchers said.

The effort to prevent Western wildfires has been consumed in recent years by controversies over management of federal forests. Forestry managers have attempted to rectify generations of fire suppression, which allowed combustible vegetation to build up to dangerous levels, by thinning forests and logging weak trees.

"The most stark conclusion here is that, while they do say land use and management has played an important role, the broad scale increase in wildfire frequency has been driven primarily by recent changes in climate," said wildland fire analyst Tom Wordell at the National Interagency Fire Center. "It does not paint a pretty picture for future fire activity, given the climate model predictions."

Indeed, the finding calls into question the ability of forest management policies to keep pace with what may be an insoluble problem. The Government Accounting Office recently reported that the cost and severity of fires have grown as more people build homes on the edges of national forests and other federal lands.

"It is looking like we will have more wildfires and, given what we can afford, management is not going to prevent an increase in wildfire area," said research ecologist Don McKenzie at the Department of Agriculture's Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab in Seattle, who was not connected with the study. "We don't have the resources to do that."

If regional temperatures continue to rise, as many computer climate models predict, wildfire activity throughout the West will intensify so long as there is acreage to burn, several experts said.

Moreover, as more forests do burn, the destruction of so much biomass will release massive amounts of carbon dioxide, further accelerating the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and helping to further increase temperatures.

Western forests account for as much as 40% of all the carbon sequestered in the U.S.

"Lots of people think climate change and the ecological responses are 50 to 100 years away," said research team member Swetnam.

"But it's not 50 to 100 years away. It's happening now in forests through fire."

[eomaha]

The good news is... we may eventually have consistently warmer winters. The bad news... the states agricultural economy dries up. I guess then we just become an Arizona.

[Omaha Cowboy]

From what I understand fron what I sw on the news replay tonight, that they have the fire under control now..

How is it now joeycheeto?..

..Ciao..LiO....Peace

[joeycheeto]

The fire is mostly out. The helicopters are circling overhead dropping water and the scout plane is still in the area. There was a small fire about two hours ago, but it is much better.
Hearcity.com has some awe inspiring views of the fire.
All is well, only 10 or so houses were lost and NO major injuries!
Live is getting back to normal, finally.

[Brad]

I think you are missing a "T" on http://www.heartcity.com