Post by barryl on Jun 28, 2012 18:24:23 GMT -5
It seems I have always had a knack or should I say a curse for putting my self in harm's way. I lived in Ft. Wayne during the blizzard of "78" as well as the flooding of 78 & 79. I lived in Monticello for 20years and watched people scatter like cockroaches every time the sky turned gray. Vacationed twice in Florida during both a major tropical storm and the coldest recorded week ever. I worked in and around Delphi in 2000 when the levee broke and just happened to be monitoring the water levels of the Tippecanoe river in Jan. 2008 when a 100 year flood hit. Oh! yea there's that ice storm thing too.
Well now I'm living in Colorado, I never really understood the full impact of a fire storm until now. The Colorado Springs fire is making national news, but that is only part of the story. We have fires to the north near Fort Collins and in Boulder as well as some smaller ones on the western slope. The devastation from these fires will linger long after they are extinct. Erosion run off into the rivers (of which many are effected) will make for bad water supplies that the front range depends on. Not to mention poor fishing conditions for the next few years. (fishing in Colorado is a 2 billion dollar industry).
The one thing you don't see on the news is the exhaustion on the faces of the men and women who are fighting these fires. This string of fire events has been going on since April, yes April. The rotations in and out of the fire zones are brief at best. We have a friend who is a Denver City fireman. He hasn't seen the fire house for more than a month.
Denver is normally very sunny, it has had a haze off and on for the last few days. Temperatures are way above normal and what rain we do get is minimal at best.
The Rockies look more like the Smokies only a bit more ominous.
I have a fishing trip scheduled for July 8Th, we were suppose to stay close to Denver. That's north going to happen and finding a route west or north is becoming more and more difficult.
A float down the Tippy is sounding pretty good right now.
Well now I'm living in Colorado, I never really understood the full impact of a fire storm until now. The Colorado Springs fire is making national news, but that is only part of the story. We have fires to the north near Fort Collins and in Boulder as well as some smaller ones on the western slope. The devastation from these fires will linger long after they are extinct. Erosion run off into the rivers (of which many are effected) will make for bad water supplies that the front range depends on. Not to mention poor fishing conditions for the next few years. (fishing in Colorado is a 2 billion dollar industry).
The one thing you don't see on the news is the exhaustion on the faces of the men and women who are fighting these fires. This string of fire events has been going on since April, yes April. The rotations in and out of the fire zones are brief at best. We have a friend who is a Denver City fireman. He hasn't seen the fire house for more than a month.
Denver is normally very sunny, it has had a haze off and on for the last few days. Temperatures are way above normal and what rain we do get is minimal at best.
The Rockies look more like the Smokies only a bit more ominous.
I have a fishing trip scheduled for July 8Th, we were suppose to stay close to Denver. That's north going to happen and finding a route west or north is becoming more and more difficult.
A float down the Tippy is sounding pretty good right now.
