Thursday, October 1, 2020

Californians historically have called the winds Santa Ana winds that come off the desert and onto the ocean at great speed but not Diablo Winds

 However, it is also true that when the winds are moving at higher and higher speeds every year because of Global Climate change it also makes sense that they would change the name in these situations to Diablo winds.

I think how I would typify something like these winds would be that a Santa Ana wind pushing a fire you can run away from in your car if there is a road the right direction and paved but not on foot. So, if you are on foot with a Santa Ana Wind pushing a fire toward you you are just dead and that's all if you can't run away in some direction from it.

But, a Diablo wind might mean that even with a car or truck you are dead in a Diablo wind.

When these kinds of winds (Santa Anas) or (Diablo) winds are blowing firefighters cannot usually fight the fire because they are too busy evacuating people who don't realize they are going to die if they don't evacuate.

Over the years too many firefighters have died trying to fight Santa Ana or Diablo wind fires with no success. So, they've learned mostly you just have to rescue people in the way of these things.

Often when it's smoky you can't see anything so unless you had a live satellite feed of where you live you don't even know you are in danger unless someone tells you you are and even then you might not believe them. And soon after that it might be too late to save them (or for them to save themselves.

This is what life is like many places when we get these really high winds off the deserts heading to the ocean usually. If you don't evacuate when Firemen and police tell you death might be what awaits you soon. You can rebuild your home if you have insurance but you can't get a new body if it is burned up in a fire in the high winds.

I grew up in southern California in Glendale in the Los Angeles area and often my richer friends who owned the fancier homes up in the hills around Glendale would see their homes burned up. So, in school (especially in Junior High school and High School) there would be times in school with kids crying because their homes burned down and they lost everything.

However, these kinds of kids were richer kids so even though their homes were burned down likely they had insurance (their parents) and would either rebuild with that money or buy a house or property somewhere else. These experiences were from about 1960 to1965 for me when the fires were bad then in Glendale.


No comments: