Big Pine Burning

We had some hot calls last night at work and my trainee did quite well. When I train I give it all I've got because I want to know if the trainee can stand the stress of working dispatch and I want to make sure when I unleash her on my colleagues she will know what to do and how to be a full team member in a room that works as much by training as by protocol when the 9-1-1 calls are all lighting up. So training for twelve hours a night wears me out.


As a result I stepped out of the house feeling rather bleary after breakfast especially as my dog was mad keen for her second walk of the day. The dawn walk when I got home was forgotten already and Cheyenne the Wonder Lab was irritatingly frisky.


And much to my surprise Big Pine Key was on fire and roasting quite nicely to judge from the horizon.


There was actually a very small inconspicuous notice posted outside the CVS pharmacy explaining the prescribed burn, designed to clear undergrowth and allow new growth to sprout.


It is also I have no doubt a useful time to train firefighters in ways to protect the Keys when the burn is decidedly not prescribed.


Fire is always a little scary to see, except to people who actually enjoy that stuff. I remember when I was a small boy our kitchen caught fire at home and the blackened charred room was quite frightening and my mother covered my eyes when we walked by the same way she did when there was a bad wreck on the autostrada.


Some people like fires And enjoy the challenge of exerting control.


Not to be tragic but I've told my wife if ever I am really badly burned to please finish me off as I cannot imagine the agony of surviving extensive burns. That these people, photographed on the fly, do these acts of bravery for a living is beyond my capacity to imagine.


Flames are scary and I'd rather try to return broken merchandise to a big box store than deal with this stuff.


Big Pine Key looked quite beset.


I'm glad they knew what they were doing.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Fire On Upper Duval

In the early hours of this morning we received a call that flames and smoke were to be seen on the 1200 block of Duval Street.It was a big blaze from what we in dispatch could gather. All the city's fire units responded and the US Navy Fire Department kindly stood by in case of further calls for service across the city. Police officers evacuated the surrounding buildings including one guard dog in a business who was housed safely in a police car until his owner came to pick him up.

It is unclear at the moment exactly why the fire started or how much damage it caused but several buildings in the middle of the 1200 block are reported to have suffered damage, some severe . This is the second major blaze on Duval Street in less than a year. I guess this very wooden town, with buildings thrown up very close together is lucky, or sensible, to have the Fire Department it does. What a crappy night. The hole created by the fire last March on the 500 block is still there; and now this. It's like Duval Street is becoming gap toothed.

Fire,Hurricanes and Siegelman

I find it hard to imagine how a state of 30 million people can evacuate half a million and find somewhere for them to live. Yet this is the second time in two years Americans are evacuating en masse. The extent of the fires burning up Southern California is hard to imagine. 1500 homes destroyed equates to the City of Key West reduced to embers. And here we are, sunny tranquil and hurricane free- for now! All those spring predictions of a summer to dread failed to materialize in the Keys this year. Unlike fire season, hurricane season threatens every summer, and we just get a cool winter to refresh us before the next round of threats. Summer fires in California destroy the brush that holds together the manufactured slopes that slip slide away in the heavy winter rains. There will be lots of possibilities this winter across Southern California.

Southern California is a desert and sucks the water out of the Colorado River, the Sierra Nevada (Snowy Mountain) range and anywhere they can get water. And when the winds blow, as they do down the desert canyons, they send the flames tumbling before them. And its hot and dry this year, doubtless attributable to Global Warming, the cliche du jour, the same warming that is going to raise seawater and drown South Florida.

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Living the middle class life these days feels a bit like going to war- the economy is wrecked (Merrill Lynch posted $8 billion in losses today), and where you live determines how you die, drowned burned or run over. In fact I got cut off yesterday evening on my way out of town by a car that decided to turn sharp right when he realised he'd missed the 1st Street turn, off North Roosevelt. Layne was riding alongside on her ET4 and seeing I was okay on the ground took off after the Mitsubishi and forced him to stop up 1st Street. He apologized and in the same breath claimed I was riding inside him (in my own lane!) and it was my fault. He was Vietnamese and put his hands together and kept bowing and saying sorry and on and on and blaming me as an aside. Layne was angry but I shooed him away when I found no damage. I toppled gently and kept the machine off the ground with my elbow and knee and leather shoe.

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My wife remembers Don Siegelman, the former Alabama governor from their time at college together. He announced back then he wanted to be governor of his state and she remembers thinking "Not him! He's not smart enough!" And she was wrong. Now he's been sentenced to 88 months in prison on a bribery conviction. And a Republican attorney is charging Karl Rove with using the US Justice Department to bring down a prominent democrat who might have been a solid presidential candidate! We met Siegelman's wife last year in Birmingham, during a road trip to New Orleans (Katrinaland) and she protested they were trumped up charges, sounding for all the world like a loyal wife. I wish we had been convinced at that time. Not now when its obvious to one and all.

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A ruined reputation is worse than all the fires, hurricanes and motorcycle tumbles in the world.