Tuesday Tidbits

Yesterday's update by the Hutchinson Fire Chief on the Cottonwood Complex fire east of Hutchinson was pretty shocking.  Homes destroyed:  35.  Outbuildings destroyed:  92.  Vehicles destroyed:  110.  Homes damaged, but not completely destroyed: 2  Outbuildings damaged but not destroyed: 8.  Lives lost:  1. 

Here's something I posted on Facebook yesterday.  This was my comment in response to a comment from someone who grew up here but has lived in Canada for many years.  She is familiar with forest fires, which were especially numerous the past two years.  They have hopes for a less dangerous summer since there was heavy snowfall this winter.  

From Facebook:

These fires occurred in the Sand Hills. Local people will know what that area is like. Longer ago, this area was grazed by cattle, but people have now built homes and established farmettes in the area. When the land is not managed by grazing, mowing, or clearing, the grass grows tall, and brushy sand hill plums and cedar and cottonwood trees move in. Wildlife thrives in it, but this mixed plant material provides challenges to fire fighters--different from how it would be if it were all grass or all trees.

The fire chief referred to the roads as being made of "sugar sand," which can be almost as bad as mud for gaining traction if it's excessively dry. It's very fine and powdery--like sugar. Simply being able to get around proved to be a significant problem for operators of heavy equipment used to fight the fires.

I've heard references to all homes needing a 100-foot defensible perimeter around them. This might be mandated in the future through zoning laws. This would probably mean no (or very few) trees and shrubs, no wood fences or closely-spaced outbuildings, and closely-mowed or green grass maintained to the perimeter line. On March 22 a meeting of the Reno County Commission (or perhaps the Planning Commission) will look at related issues. I believe work on this has been ongoing for some time.

Another now-obvious safety measure would be to simply create roads with no dead ends. If there's only one way out, entrapment is a very real hazard when the winds shift often and suddenly as they did during the high-wind Cottonwood Complex fire event.

One bright spot in the news report today was that arson is being ruled out as the cause of this fire. I don't believe that could be done definitively in the Highlands fire five years ago--which adds a layer of destructiveness against which no zoning laws can be completely effective.

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Did you know that the local fire department has a sawyer crew? The huge cottonwood trees in the recent fire didn't all fall over and burn up completely.  The fire crews on duty at night could see which ones were throwing off sparks that could re-ignite fires later, so they went around and marked each "sparking" tree with yellow tape.  The next day the sawyer crew moved in to cut down the taped trees.  They often needed to cut them apart until they could get to all the hot spots inside the tree.  The fire chief reported that if there was a pond nearby, sometimes they just pushed the burning trees into the pond.  I can see why that seemed appealing at the moment, but it looks like a mess that someone needs to deal with in the future.  

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Danny Yoder from our church is part of VOAD, (Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster).  It's based in Hutchinson, and functions under United Way to provide various kinds of assistance to people affected by a disaster.  This is primarily a coordination effort, to help people find the resources they need.  

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Nisly Brothers has an employee who lost everything in the fire.  The company is offering to match any donations (up to $10,000) given for this employee.  He is a graduate of Kathy Taylor's Charity Christian Academy, which provides services to homeschool families.  

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We have another round of cold, snowy weather predicted for tomorrow night and the next day.  I feel sorry for the firefighters who will need to be on duty outdoors during this time.  The fire is not expected to be 100% contained for some time yet, perhaps this weekend.  

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Yesterday, in the middle of the day, I saw a possum nosing around under the bird feeders, stopping frequently to chomp down on something he had found.  Later, when I walked to the mailbox, I found dainty little paw prints in the snow--too small to have been made by the cat.  I think the possum was to blame.

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On that same trip to the mailbox I spied something very puzzling on top of the snow on the stoop by the front door.  It looked like moist dirt.  When I told Hiromi about it later, he laughed and said "It's coffee [grounds]. I was wearing sandals when I decided to dump it in the flower bed, but I didn't want to walk on the snow, so I tried to throw it into the flower bed, and I guess I missed."  

Ever since I discovered that coffee grounds are high in nitrogen, I've made a habit of discarding them in the bed that has acid-loving Nandina and boxwood in it, along with Balloonflower--all of which also thrive in soil with a little lower pH than our soil usually has.  Since coffee grounds are quite acidic, this works out well.

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I learned today that school bus transportation is not available to students in Hutchinson Public Schools.  I shouldn't have been surprised, but I'm sorry to see children in the Afghan refugee families not have this benefit when they arrive.  Someone will need to stand by to see that they can get to school safely.  

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Hiromi is getting the news on Ukraine from Japan Yahoo News.  What I hear from that source coincides very nicely with what I hear from the media sources that I read.  Some of the rest of what I hear--not so much.  I presume those that have a viewpoint that makes Biden the bad guy in the conflict are the same ones who present everything that's wrong in the world as the fault of Democrats.