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Author
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Topic: I will rebuild!
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Cdog911
"There are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them."--George Orwell.
Member # 7
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posted December 15, 2021 09:31 AM
In the past two weeks, my part of Kansas has enjoyed a series of earthquakes, with maybe six of them being 4.0+. I've yet to actually feel one but everyone around me says they're happening all the time. Last week, I was on the throne in my basement bathroom when my phone started blowing up with ppl who'd just felt one. You'd think being attached to a concrete tub packed into the ground, I'd have felt that. Nope.
Well, this morning at just before 4a, I was awakened by a table fan in my bedroom falling off a slick topped table ten feet from by bed. I wondered WTH would have caused that, set it back up and went back to sleep. Wasn't until I got up that I heard about the quake on the radio.
I've already rebuilt. Now I just need to focus on the 75mph winds here for most of today. And record temps. I miss winter.
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I am only one. But still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something; and, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
Posts: 5438 | From: The gun-lovin', gun-friendly wild, wild west | Registered: Jan 2003
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ATexan
Knows what it's all about
Member # 6799
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posted December 15, 2021 02:39 PM
We are burning up here in the Texas Panhandle. There are 5 fires burning around my area. 40 mph sustained winds with 70+ mph gusts. 5 streets south of my house is burning. Have my wife and kiddo at my mom's house taking shelter. I am currently watering my roof and yard. The town west of us is evacuated. Had to leave work to come home and get my family and guns somewhere safe. It's a repeat of 06 when a couple of million acres burned. Send rain. -tex
Posts: 112 | From: Texas | Registered: Mar 2018
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Leonard
HMFIC
Member # 2
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posted December 16, 2021 11:22 AM
Interesting. I have not heard anything?
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EL BEE Knows It All and Done It All.
Don't piss me off!
Posts: 31459 | From: Upland, CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Cdog911
"There are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them."--George Orwell.
Member # 7
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posted December 16, 2021 02:31 PM
I feel ya, AT. I got empty traps checked at first light today and didn't bother with remakes since this front was coming thru, but since 4a this morning, within a 30 mile radius of my back door, we have had three earthquakes, 75-85 mph winds, dust bowl conditions have shut down I70 from just west of me to the Colorado line (~300 miles), a severe thunderstorm with hail, a small tornado to the NE of my house, and frequent little wink pouts for our power. Fire departments running around like crazy due to fires started by downed power lines. Three times in the last minute. Make it 4.
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I am only one. But still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something; and, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
Posts: 5438 | From: The gun-lovin', gun-friendly wild, wild west | Registered: Jan 2003
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Cdog911
"There are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them."--George Orwell.
Member # 7
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posted December 16, 2021 02:55 PM
Seconds after hitting "Add Reply" last evening,things here went from bad to worse.
First, the power flickered one last time then everything went dark. That was at maybe 5p. Wind really started to howl by then, near 100 mph. Took a drive around town after to see how far the outage went and everything was down but one stoplight. (Yes, we have more than one)
In the business district, broken glass was everywhere from big windows being sucked out of their frames. Big trees, halves of trees and branches anywhere up to 20 inches thick were everywhere blocking streets and roads. Trash dumpsters were flying around everywhere like balloons, and a few trampolines.
Several businesses had their roofs peeled off and a series of those larger power poles just snapped bringing the main feed line for the entire city crashing to the ground across a main street and the UP railroad tracks. The whole town was dark.
Temps were starting to fall as my neighbor two doors down met me in my front yard to tell me he was going for a generator and to watch his house. Told him I have a big 6500/8750 watt Yamaha generator and asked him how badly he needed it because it was buried in the back of my shop. He reminded me that the older neighbors between us have multiple medical issues including COPD and that she needs her breathing treatments to keep the smoke from putting her in a bad spot. Within a half hour, we had the generator out and them sitting comfortably. We rounded up enough gas to run it all night and beyond if needed and he asked me if I wanted him to stay up and monitor it. Told him since he had to work today, I would.
Fun Fact: Sleeping in the bucket seat of an F150 sounds comfortable. It isn't.
I climbed in and watched Netflix on my phone, then the weather, checked the Evergy outage map multiple times, then went and got a blanket and pillow. Truck got chilly as I sat there listening to the wind hammer the side panels with the steady drone of the gennie in the distance. Finally nodded off around 1230. Woke up about 1:55a and grabbed my phone. The wind had settled. Clear skies, starry and cold (20's). I'd been sitting there about 5 minutes when the street light at the end of my drive came on. Christmas lights began twinkling around me. Everyone had gone to bed with all their lights still on and the entire 'hood lit up, well, like a Christmas tree.
I jumped out to shut off the generator and check on the neighbors. Jack came from his house, told him to check on them while I shut things down. They were sound asleep in their living room chairs so he switched her machines to the household service and we quietly locked up for them. Bid Jack good nite and hit the sack. Indoors. Sore as hell today but glad we kept them safe. He and I are the neighborhood sheepdogs when shit goes western. He's a good man.
Abilene looks like a war zone.
Wildfire out west swept into Paradise, Kansas- an eery coincidence with Paradise, CA - and burned five homes to the ground. Several other small towns were spared.
One helluva day for sure.
Today? Sunny and calm. 50 degree.
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I am only one. But still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something; and, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
Posts: 5438 | From: The gun-lovin', gun-friendly wild, wild west | Registered: Jan 2003
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Leonard
HMFIC
Member # 2
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posted December 17, 2021 10:21 AM
Lance, 'splain me the advantages you have in a backwater like Abilene? Just kidding! I'm sure flyover country is very nice this time of year. I think they refer to it as "Heartland" or something like that? I know most of the National trends originate in either Kansas or Nebraska or Missouri? Like extreme weather, floods, wind storms and 'nadoes. Yet, they keep living in double wides that turn into kindling as soon as it gets a little windy.
Sorry for picking on the midwest
Good hunting. El Bee
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EL BEE Knows It All and Done It All.
Don't piss me off!
Posts: 31459 | From: Upland, CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Cdog911
"There are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them."--George Orwell.
Member # 7
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posted December 18, 2021 08:36 AM
If all those things are what keep liberals away, they're good things. I guess you have to live here, or visit here to get it. Many people visit or are stationed here and choose to stay, because of how the people are. Sleeping in my truck to ensure my neighbors are okay isn't heroic. It's just what we do. When Chapman down the road got hit by their tornado, 1200 residents saw over 2000 ppl show up from all over the state to pitch in. Where you live, people burn their neighbor's houses and businesses down. Where I live, we grab our gear and pitch in to build things back because of a storm, fire or both. You can make fun all you want but I'm convinced I have things better here. This video gives a pretty good accounting of what happened west of me Wed night. Farmers. here are loading semi truck with hay to donate. Do they do that in LA?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ifv6z07m2FE
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I am only one. But still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something; and, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
Posts: 5438 | From: The gun-lovin', gun-friendly wild, wild west | Registered: Jan 2003
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Leonard
HMFIC
Member # 2
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posted December 18, 2021 09:54 AM
Yeah, you got me with my pants down.
One thing in my defense is that the coastal areas are very liberal and control the state politics. But what we have here in what we call, The Inland Empire, it's a little more redneck than you have been lead to believe. However, due to gerrymandering we lost our Republican congressman a couple cycles back and now I have a liberal Democrat jew representing my district. I live in the "West End" of San Bernardino County which is the wealthiest part of what might be the largest county in the United States. I have heard that Oklahoma City County might be larger but It must be by population rather than square miles? In fact, about 8-10 miles from where I live, 4 counties come together. But you have Riverside, Los Angeles, San Bernardino and I think Orange County all coming together down around Chino? This is a situation where you don't realize that you have traveled from one city to another unless you see a sign because it's wall to wall civilization, no open ground between one city, or town and another.
I forget how many cities are in Southern California but it must be like a hundred or so? Yes, there is open land but sometimes it's hard to find, and normal people can't access it; it's like leased to some oil company and might as well not be there unless you look at a map.
No, every once in a while, I think it might be nice to spend a month in Bucolic and rural Kansas and where the big social gathering is at the Dairy Queen, and I assume every town in Kansas has one? They are not easy to find out here, in fact I don't know of one? There is one about a hundred miles from here, that's about it.
Good hunting. El Bee
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EL BEE Knows It All and Done It All.
Don't piss me off!
Posts: 31459 | From: Upland, CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Cdog911
"There are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them."--George Orwell.
Member # 7
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posted December 23, 2021 08:09 AM
Made a trip to Plainville, Kansas on Monday and saw the damage first hand. A friend of mine and his brothers own a big hay company and we transported 50,000 pounds of prairie hay to the stockyard/ sale barn there. It was eye opening.
North of Hays, we encountered the first "burn" where it came from the west and crossed 183, about a half-mile wide. It wasn't until maybe 15 miles later that we hit the next burn south of Plainville and it was black as far as you could see up the drainages and the faces of the big bluffs.
When we got to the stockyard, they were genuinely grateful that we'd made the trip. Our load had been reserved for an elderly couple who lost everything but a few dozen angus cattle, and a bachelor rancher who is a firefighter and who lost his home and everything he owned while out fighting the fire. He did have some cattle survive, and unlike the big operators out there like the Bar S Ranch, these small producers had been getting little attention or help. Those are the folks we wanted to help.
The guy that was there to unload our semi had never handled the big 1/2 ton rectangular bales that we brought and there was a bit of a learning curve for him with the skid loader that he had, but he had us emptied in about an hour. While he was unloading us, we watched as several more semis came in hauling round bales and a convoy of flatbed trucks and stock trailers bringing in what I termed "refugee cattle". Ranchers are bringing their animals to the yard and to the centrally located hay drops which is handy.
Talking to the staff, they told us that one rancher we'd just missed had just finished burying all 400 of his cattle that had been burned alive. Of the several hundred others on the lot, most were "hold and observe". Many had had their eyes burned by the fires and were blind, many had their hooves destroyed by running through the fire, and many more are expected to die from pneumonia and other lung trauma from smoke inhalation that won't be seen for days or weeks.
What you cannot appreciate if you don't really know the cattle industry is how deeply this will go. Most, if not all, of these ranchers lost more than the cattle killed. Those cattle are the product of generations of selective breeding started by their fathers and grandfathers and decades of work and bloodlines were lost in hours. Very few of those cattle - aside from a few of the best breeders and bulls - were insured.
Yes, Leonard, we did catch a burger at their Dairy Queen before leaving town where we drove toward Paradise. Five homes burned there, which accounted for about 15% of the town. They're nestled at the base of a long bluff that runs for miles and is a straight up vertical wall reaching 300-400 feet above the Saline river Valley. This is the area I called coyotes in with my mentor, Joe Wiggins, way back when.
The fire followed the Saline River for miles and miles. We saw one spot where the fire traveled over a mile down a fenceline in a strip of grass less than ten feet wide, then jumped a highway into a large area of contiguous rangeland where it burned mile after mile. You would leave one burn, travel a mile or two and enter another and this happened time and again.
Road ditches were drifted level with topsoil and soot. North-south fences in unburned areas were four foot tall walls of solid grass, corn stalks and leaves, and crushed tumbleweeds where they'd finally been stopped from being carried on by the winds.
We saw four different farms where everything had been burned. Three of them were old, limestone block houses. The limestone was black and everything that was combustible was completely gone. Skeletons of trees and shelterbelts were the only remaining structures above the ground. The only way you could tell where outbuildings had stood was by these large patches of white and gray ash in a sea of black char.
Yesterday morning, the Kansas Forestry Service (yes, we actually have a "forestry" service, LOL) completed their aerial survey and downgraded the total area damaged from 400k acres to 163k acres, or right under 255 square miles. To fully appreciate this, a California wildfire may take most of a day to burn a few square miles. 255 square miles may take a week or more. This fire burned that area in less than 12 hours being driven by winds of up to 100 mph.
Furthermore, when we think of this, we think of one solid area which, in this case, would be a square roughly 16 miles on a side. In this instance, the fire snaked through drainages and up hillsides, following the lay of the land over four counties and twenty or more townships being fought by over thirty different rural and city fire departments, mostly volunteer. The fire moved so fast that it burned the grass completely to the soil, but barely singed the cedars out there.
As a former rural firefighter, rangeland firefighter and fire captain, I immediately saw the challenges they faced. Fires like these are fought along the edges and I would guess that, at its peak, this fire had over 1,000 miles of fireline to work. The Kansas National Guard deployed several blackhawk helicopters to assist, but the one tanker plane we have couldn't fly because of the wind. I cannot imagine the feelings of futility those guys endured being out there in pitch black, surrounded by walls of fire for as far as they cold see with hurricane force winds blowing them around.
One tool we have here is farmers with big tractors and big discs. Where they could do so, dozens of these machines lined up in a staggered line and plowed the earth under for mile after mile in an attempt to create a fire break to slow or stop the fire. These man and women aren't firefighters. They're farmers and ranchers risking their lives for others. They're actions were both heroic and effective.
One account I heard of was a mother who got a call from her two sons. They were completely surrounded by fire and called to let her know that they didn't think they would survive. They somehow did.
One elderly rancher stayed at his farm to try and save his animals. He died.
Another young man left ahead of the fire and was traveling a side road 10-15 miles ahead of the closest fireline. He didn't make it and got burned alive, three days after getting engaged.
A Plainville veterinarian heroically rushed into a farmstead ahead of the fire to save a client's dogs. He barely survived and the fire got so hot around him as he drove to escape that it blew all the windows out of his SUV.
One man who did survive rolled his truck trying to escape. Somehow, he found a safe place to ride it out and when they found him, he was so emotionally damaged and traumatized that had to be taken to a hospital and sedated.
One fire officer I spoke with lost communications with the command post when the smoke became so thick that the airborne carbon particles in the smoke blocked his radio signals.
Most folks don't realize that winds like these blowing across barbed wire fences actually creates static electricity, enough to energize the wire and emit sparks. That same static electricity can and will kill winter wheat.
Yesterday, I saw a long convoy of semi trucks from Nebraska hauling millions of pounds of hay to the Paradise area. God bless them.
For me personally, I'd not been able to start going through Lisa's clothes, but Sunday, I sorted out several big boxes of everything from bathrobes, blouses, jeans, bras and a fox-trimmed winter coat. I cried some doing it, but I knew there were folks there who could really, REALLY use them more than me. I left those along with some cash donations others sent with us. Tyson Foods donated $100,000 yesterday, amongst an uncountable number of other regional businesses donating and offering help.
It was an emotional trip for me. We had as much hay on our trailer as the law would allow and a little more. The Kenworth tractor we used struggled to pull it up the hills in Ellsworth County and the 3-hour trip there took us over 5 hours to make. It was the second trip (100k pounds total) that my friend Greg Wilson and his brother Mark made. Greg estimated that what we delivered would maybe last for 4-5 days at best. These folks won't be able to put their cattle back on grass until maybe May, if not June. It will be a long winter for them.
It's a true disaster and they've since identified it as one of a very few rare December derachos to happen in North America. It will take years of recovery, if even then.
After posting this and reading it thru, I saw my sig line and yes, I believe what it says.
[ December 23, 2021, 08:15 AM: Message edited by: Cdog911 ]
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I am only one. But still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something; and, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
Posts: 5438 | From: The gun-lovin', gun-friendly wild, wild west | Registered: Jan 2003
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Leonard
HMFIC
Member # 2
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posted December 23, 2021 11:57 AM
That's quite a report, Lance. I don't know what to say, but I was completely unaware of the situation. Never saw anything on the news? Seems like an odd time of the year for fires?
Good hunting. El Bee
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EL BEE Knows It All and Done It All.
Don't piss me off!
Posts: 31459 | From: Upland, CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Cdog911
"There are some ideas so absurd only an intellectual could believe them."--George Orwell.
Member # 7
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posted December 23, 2021 02:25 PM
We've been in a drought for many months. Big cold front impacted Gulf moisture in western Kansas. This was a typical spring setup (tornado machine) in December and it did not disappoint.
Doesn't surprise me. Flyover country is invisible to the media until someplace like Kansas lights off a Civil War.
I'm waiting to be banned from Facebook for posting an excerpt from my book. Fiction writing is a blast when you get to write what you wanna see.
This is from Chapter 25. The working title is "Ashes, Ashes...". Just audited the completed manuscript today and it's 100,645 words long, longest things I've ever written except for a few posts here. LOL The setup, Muslim extremists were in our government until Patriots assassinated them. Now, those same patriot forces are taking back the Republic. Two of my characters are walking home after an EMP event takes the grid down. In this scene, they're being briefed about what's been heard via HAM radio about what's going on along the East Coast...
“And, not just in D.C.. I’ve heard reports from states all over the country of governors and state legislators, local officials and wealthy business people funneling money into these efforts being rounded up and taken into custody. Trials are being held at breakneck speed and those found guilty are being executed almost immediately. These bastards didn’t want a Constitution, so for now, there is no Constitution. Be careful what you wish for. Due process no longer exists, and those sons of a bitches were so blatant in what they were trying to do that they effectively made the cases being used against them.”
“California has no representation in DC as of yesterday. The entire bunch were chained together and marched to a freeway overpass and hanged. New York has two people left - both Republicans with pro-America records. Mid-level military officials took possession of military bases all across America where military tribunals are being held without even allowing those charged to have a lawyer to be present on their behalf. If they can’t justify what they’ve done without help doing so, they’re being tied to a post and shot. Turns out that there were a lot of brass, most non-commissioned officers, and almost the entirety of the enlisted ranks who’d already secretly and covertly developed contingency plans to deal with this level of dissension in their ranks. Almost all of our weapons assets remain in patriot hands.”
“The media is a story all to itself. Amazing how many of those bastards tried to save their own asses by claiming that they were only doing their jobs. The CNN headquarters in Atlanta was a primary target for patriots. Doors and exits were chained shut trapping their entire staffs inside, then the buildings were brought down around them using commandeered military-grade explosives. Since comms were down all over the country - all over the continent, actually - none of their compadres had any information on what had happened back at the hive and it was just a matter of days, if not hours, before American loyalists took matters into their own hands.”
Fun to write!
[ December 23, 2021, 02:35 PM: Message edited by: Cdog911 ]
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I am only one. But still, I am one. I cannot do everything, but still, I can do something; and, because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
Posts: 5438 | From: The gun-lovin', gun-friendly wild, wild west | Registered: Jan 2003
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Leonard
HMFIC
Member # 2
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posted December 23, 2021 04:10 PM
Yea!
Go Wolverines!
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EL BEE Knows It All and Done It All.
Don't piss me off!
Posts: 31459 | From: Upland, CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Kokopelli
SENIOR DISCOUNT & Dispenser of Sage Advice
Member # 633
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posted December 23, 2021 05:15 PM
Is there room for a chapter about 'President Greg Gutfeld' ?????
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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And lo, the Light of the Trump shown upon the Darkness and the Darkness could not comprehend it.
Posts: 7579 | From: Under a wandering star | Registered: Apr 2005
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