Letter from the Rim

Thank you to Vince Goble for providing us with this vivid dispatch from his Uncle Rod regarding the Rim Fire (which is now 32% contained) engulfing areas near Yosemite National Park.

The ladies have flown back to Wisconsin today . This rim fire shit is affecting people we know... Hanna has a friend who's dad has a cattle ranch up by Groveland ... He's telling her they have lost about 100 head of cattle, most of them by way of fire, some just run through fences in a stampede fashion !! pretty sad...We also are hearing reports of old growth forest burning like matches in parts of west Hetch Hetchy .
       East Sonora is on evacuation alert as of 4:oo pm. Some of our friends are starting to pack their valuables now!! Jerry's dad is on alert as well so he might be staying at our house...thank God they don't have any pets.
      Berit was sent some live footage from a client's husband who flies for Cal fire as a survey pilot and he's never seen a fire this bad in his 32 years of service. The footage is scary to watch Don ,the flames are shooting up the mountains with such force there's no way man can even get near them!! Reports of people's horses not being able to out run some of the flames are burning to death while trying escape .It's fucking insane!!!!  Our good friend Robert who also flies for the district has been texting Danika & Jerry saying the media is only being told about half the truth about the severity of this fire , cause they don't they want to create a panic to the public.
       I look out over Sonora High school and see this giant nuclear smoke cloud hovering over the sierras unlike anything I've ever witnessed .The fire burns so hot and fast the moisture from the vegetation is blown into the air forming its own type of thunder storms causing lighting and acidic rain making it even more dangerous for the fire fighters on the ground to do their job , so they have to evacuate their positions allowing the fire to rage on ...while the storm induced lighting starts more fires in its path! It is the perfect fire storm .
     We should be safe in our area so don't worry about us .  I'll keep you posted cause things change fast....rod

8/22/13 satellite image of the Rim Fire from NASA Earth Observatory:

And some aerial footage:

Comments

[N8]

That is unfortunate for all of the people in that area. I only listen to the news in the morning before I leave for work and I almost never hear anything about the fire.
Thanks for posting this.