West TX Fires
I wish I had more info about how to help elsewhere, but this post is about the fires nearest to me. There's since original posting been fires ALL OVER down here- including more in West Texas just not so close that I could actually see the flames outlining the mountains at times (photo actually taken by my friend Alex, but that's the view on the night of the 10th from town):
Folks who follow me on Twitter and Facebook got possibly more updates than they wanted- didn't mean to leave LJ-only folks out of the loop, just sort of forgot to post here, since while things were happening, brains were in short supply in me due to anxious.
But yeah. Starting last Saturday, 400 or more square miles in my area burned over the course of five days or so. The biggest of the several fires that sparked on Saturday is known as the Rock House or Rock Shop fire. There's even NASA pics of the fires http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/usa/tex-20110411.html ( http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/usa/20110417-texasfires.html is the more recent image )
My town was spared entirely- winds never shifted hard enough to bring it here, but the town of Fort Davis, and most of Jeff Davis county had some serious damage. 50 structures burned may not sound like a lot, but we're dealing with communities and rural areas where there's not a whole lot of people and structures to begin with, also with an area that's not exactly well off overall- and really the worst might be the ranches, some of which lost a LOT of livestock who couldn't outrun the wall of fire. The descriptions are ones out of nightmares, with panicked, burning animals even spreading the fire around.
It was NOT a good few days here. The community rallied- neighbors saved each others' homes in the stricken town with garden hoses and buckets of swimming pool water and wet towels, the volunteer fire crews (and the crews that came in from across the US THANK YOU ALL) worked without stopping, and people dropped off food, and bottled water, and then everything else they could think of at the VFW stations and other points. Hotels in my and other untouched towns opened up all vacant rooms to evacuees, the local phone company's loaning of heavy equipment helped make firebreaks that kept an eastern fire (the Roper Fire) out of my town, and the utilities companies also had crews out repairing poles and lines almost 24 hours, their men working sometimes still with smoldering hotspots in the fields around them.
Miraculously, there were no human deaths, and only faily minor or moderate smoke inhalation victims needing treatment.
But it was rough, and while FEMA's here, there are needs still that are pretty immediate and not prone to waiting for full assessments to be made.
There's a relief fund up at http://www.westtexasfirerelieffund.com/ If you want to be sure your funds go to specific rancher needs like feed and fencing (there's NO graze left on many ranches that had cattle spared) put it in a memo with donation. Trigger Warning on that page's video- there are a few images of a small herd of horses that died. Otherwise, that page's video is actually TAME compared to some of the pics on the Facebook page linked below in terms of viewing the inferno and aftermath.
(editing to note, I was wrong if I said fires were out, as of 4-16-2011 there is still burning happening with the Rock House Fire, and the mountains/sky are so hazed from smoke if you replace them with buildings you'd think it was LA or Atlanta on a BAD pollution day)
(editing again: as of 04-18, still burning, though 'mostly contained' it actually came back to re-threaten ranches around the Boy Scout Camp. Also I will note, this isn't even the only fire in TX, just one of the biggest in terms of sheer territory it covered large areas of the state are burning, including near Dallas/Ft. Worth. I don't have help out links for those fires alas, I just.. don't have the heart or energy to trawl news right now for them. And while one fire was 'accidental arson' there's suspicions of a serial arsonist behind others and another man has been arrested as a possible arsonist for a Midland county fire. OVER ONE THOUSAND firefighters from around the US have come into TX to fight these fires.)
http://tinyurl.com/43wf82z is the FB photo album full of pics taken over the weekend by people, I think people not on FB can see it.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fort-Davis-Fires/166184330102232 is the actual Facebook Community Page about the local fires
http://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150158232344123.293278.16147034122 is a Facebook gallery of photos taken from around the MacDonald Observatory
http://tinyurl.com/6h8f9xr is a new aerial view of PART of the "Rock Shop Fire" burn area, the bits that involved Fort Davis. Fort Davis is the tiny little star-like bunch of streets in the center, and that's not even the entire burn area, which is the blackened bits as one may guess.
The best sources of news I've even found for our fires are local ones, the national/AP articles seemed to be very scarce, and a few had misleading information:
The Big Bend Sentinel: http://www.bigbendsentinel.com
Marfa Public Radio: http://www.marfapublicradio.org (they had equipment damaged by fire but did emergency repairs, they probably could use some donations, and have been one of the big lifelines for local folks along with the Alpine radio stations)
EDIT:
My friend, who works in hotels, pointed out some folks may want to help reimburse the hotels that opened their doors free to evacuees. I do not have a full list of the hotels that did this perhaps, but these are the ones that were listed on KRTS:
The Paisano in Marfa- 432-729-3669
Thunderbird in Marfa - 432-729-1984
El Cosmico in Marfa - 432-729-1950
Marfa Guest Quarters - 432-729-4599
Eve’s Garden in Marathon - 432-386-4165
Antelope Lodge in Alpine - 432-837-2451
Highland Inn in Alpine - 432-837-5811
Also for people really extra wanting to help out critters, Grand Companions is an area shelter that's helping with displaced pets and the like. http://www.grandcompanions.org/
And the Ft Davis Pet Shelter also is doing this http://www.facebook.com/notes/pet-spotters/fort-davis-pet-shelter-needs/179335665450920
Folks who follow me on Twitter and Facebook got possibly more updates than they wanted- didn't mean to leave LJ-only folks out of the loop, just sort of forgot to post here, since while things were happening, brains were in short supply in me due to anxious.
But yeah. Starting last Saturday, 400 or more square miles in my area burned over the course of five days or so. The biggest of the several fires that sparked on Saturday is known as the Rock House or Rock Shop fire. There's even NASA pics of the fires http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/usa/tex-20110411.html ( http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/usa/20110417-texasfires.html is the more recent image )
My town was spared entirely- winds never shifted hard enough to bring it here, but the town of Fort Davis, and most of Jeff Davis county had some serious damage. 50 structures burned may not sound like a lot, but we're dealing with communities and rural areas where there's not a whole lot of people and structures to begin with, also with an area that's not exactly well off overall- and really the worst might be the ranches, some of which lost a LOT of livestock who couldn't outrun the wall of fire. The descriptions are ones out of nightmares, with panicked, burning animals even spreading the fire around.
It was NOT a good few days here. The community rallied- neighbors saved each others' homes in the stricken town with garden hoses and buckets of swimming pool water and wet towels, the volunteer fire crews (and the crews that came in from across the US THANK YOU ALL) worked without stopping, and people dropped off food, and bottled water, and then everything else they could think of at the VFW stations and other points. Hotels in my and other untouched towns opened up all vacant rooms to evacuees, the local phone company's loaning of heavy equipment helped make firebreaks that kept an eastern fire (the Roper Fire) out of my town, and the utilities companies also had crews out repairing poles and lines almost 24 hours, their men working sometimes still with smoldering hotspots in the fields around them.
Miraculously, there were no human deaths, and only faily minor or moderate smoke inhalation victims needing treatment.
But it was rough, and while FEMA's here, there are needs still that are pretty immediate and not prone to waiting for full assessments to be made.
There's a relief fund up at http://www.westtexasfirerelieffund.com/ If you want to be sure your funds go to specific rancher needs like feed and fencing (there's NO graze left on many ranches that had cattle spared) put it in a memo with donation. Trigger Warning on that page's video- there are a few images of a small herd of horses that died. Otherwise, that page's video is actually TAME compared to some of the pics on the Facebook page linked below in terms of viewing the inferno and aftermath.
(editing to note, I was wrong if I said fires were out, as of 4-16-2011 there is still burning happening with the Rock House Fire, and the mountains/sky are so hazed from smoke if you replace them with buildings you'd think it was LA or Atlanta on a BAD pollution day)
(editing again: as of 04-18, still burning, though 'mostly contained' it actually came back to re-threaten ranches around the Boy Scout Camp. Also I will note, this isn't even the only fire in TX, just one of the biggest in terms of sheer territory it covered large areas of the state are burning, including near Dallas/Ft. Worth. I don't have help out links for those fires alas, I just.. don't have the heart or energy to trawl news right now for them. And while one fire was 'accidental arson' there's suspicions of a serial arsonist behind others and another man has been arrested as a possible arsonist for a Midland county fire. OVER ONE THOUSAND firefighters from around the US have come into TX to fight these fires.)
http://tinyurl.com/43wf82z is the FB photo album full of pics taken over the weekend by people, I think people not on FB can see it.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fort-Davis-Fires/166184330102232 is the actual Facebook Community Page about the local fires
http://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150158232344123.293278.16147034122 is a Facebook gallery of photos taken from around the MacDonald Observatory
http://tinyurl.com/6h8f9xr is a new aerial view of PART of the "Rock Shop Fire" burn area, the bits that involved Fort Davis. Fort Davis is the tiny little star-like bunch of streets in the center, and that's not even the entire burn area, which is the blackened bits as one may guess.
The best sources of news I've even found for our fires are local ones, the national/AP articles seemed to be very scarce, and a few had misleading information:
The Big Bend Sentinel: http://www.bigbendsentinel.com
Marfa Public Radio: http://www.marfapublicradio.org (they had equipment damaged by fire but did emergency repairs, they probably could use some donations, and have been one of the big lifelines for local folks along with the Alpine radio stations)
EDIT:
My friend, who works in hotels, pointed out some folks may want to help reimburse the hotels that opened their doors free to evacuees. I do not have a full list of the hotels that did this perhaps, but these are the ones that were listed on KRTS:
The Paisano in Marfa- 432-729-3669
Thunderbird in Marfa - 432-729-1984
El Cosmico in Marfa - 432-729-1950
Marfa Guest Quarters - 432-729-4599
Eve’s Garden in Marathon - 432-386-4165
Antelope Lodge in Alpine - 432-837-2451
Highland Inn in Alpine - 432-837-5811
Also for people really extra wanting to help out critters, Grand Companions is an area shelter that's helping with displaced pets and the like. http://www.grandcompanions.org/
And the Ft Davis Pet Shelter also is doing this http://www.facebook.com/notes/pet-spotters/fort-davis-pet-shelter-needs/179335665450920