Video Captures Harrowing Escape From California Drought Fires

JaredJones

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Video Captures Harrowing Escape From California Drought Fires


As widespread wildfires continue to sweep across California, one brave soul decided to film his journey through the flames.

It's an image that brings to mind a "Hell on Earth," as many have accurately described it. Scorched wilderness. Downed telephone lines. Incinerated homes. Flames shooting upwards of forty feet in the air. And to top it all off, an ominous archway ripped straight from Polanski's The Ninth Gate.

This is no scene from a gothic work of fiction, unfortunately, but a very real picture of what many California communities are dealing with in the wake of devastating series of wildfires that have been tearing apart the Golden State in recent weeks.

Fueled by high winds, higher temperatures, and a record-breaking drought, two of the state's thirteen currently active fires alone have burned nearly 140,000 acres of land since Wednesday, claiming the life of at least one person and injuring nine over the weekend.

They are known as the Valley Fire and The Butte Fire. The first has grown to 61,000 acres and is 5 percent contained. The second has burned 71,000 acres and is 30 percent contained. And now, a Youtube user going by MulletFive [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3E4MqED0BDgtNxlafHTjYg] has captured the harrowing footage of his close encounter with the former as he fled from his home in Anderson Springs around 7:30 p.m Saturday night.

The footage is shocking to say the least, and according to Daniel Swain, a climate earth system scientist at Stanford University, it is only a glimpse of the true horrors caused by these massive fires.

"It's a true firestorm - extremely fast moving, generating its own weather conditions, and burning literally everything in its path," said Swain.

"The Valley Fire is breaking all the rules in the midst of a fire season that had already rewritten the rulebook. What's going on in Lake County is a direct manifestation of California's record-breaking drought, and it's pretty sobering."

MulletFive claimed the fires reached his house quickly and without warning, and had to drive some nine miles before he was clear of the destruction.

"We got no phone call, there were no sirens, no ash falling, no smoke, no air support. As far as we knew the fire was still far away," he wrote.

"But it turns out it was very close to our home, there was simply not enough firefighters to tend to our area. The lesson: evacuate EARLY! It is hard to do when you live in a rural area and wildfires are just a part of life, you get used to seeing smoke way up in the sky occasionally. I don't think we will make this mistake again!" he said.

Unbelievable stuff, and a true reminder of nature's awe-inspiring power.

Source: USA Today [http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/09/14/california-fire-video-driving-youtube/72255722/]

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Desworks

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This video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvPa_yEEd4E] shows what it's like inside a wildfire. Really gets across how these things are basically fast hot storms that power themselves as long as they have something to burn.
 

shintakie10

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Wildfires are scary as shit, not the least of which is because of how quickly they change directions. One second you're safe, the next its gone the opposite direction.

I'm honestly amazed only one person has died to this one.
 

Ambitiousmould

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That's mental. And people complain about British weather. "Oh dear," we say, "the British weather is so miserable and changeable". At least it's not likely to kill anyone.

Seriously, every time I see some extreme natural disaster or weather, it makes me grateful that we get none of that. Snow's barely a foot deep at the worst, we don't get big storms and the closest thing we've had to a natural disaster was when that little earthquake knocked over a chimney pot in Kent.

Seriously, my condolences to anyone losing their homes, livelihoods, and anything else in all this.
 
Sep 14, 2009
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wow that is just nuts, sad to say but I'm surprised with wildfires of that magnitude only one person has died.

Hopefully they can contain it quickly and no one else gets hurt.
 

iblis666

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as a Californian I can honestly say earthquakes are not something to fear in California since we rarely get them and they usually cause no more destruction than a angry cat pushing things off the counter. On the other hand fires in California should be feared since we have basically been on fire permanently since 2000.
 

Leg End

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Commiefornia: Where Fire is a weather status.

Fun aside, my home was near one of the fires about two months ago and the entire sky just looked like Mars. Shit was cool yo.
 

mysecondlife

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iblis666 said:
as a Californian I can honestly say earthquakes are not something to fear in California since we rarely get them and they usually cause no more destruction than a angry cat pushing things off the counter. On the other hand fires in California should be feared since we have basically been on fire permanently since 2000.
Which part of California do you live in? I live in S. California and I know that having wild-fire nearby is just not fun. Not to mention we're currently going through record-breaking drought...

LegendaryGamer0 said:
Commiefornia: Where Fire is a weather status.
wut
 

Leg End

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mysecondlife said:
LegendaryGamer0 said:
Commiefornia: Where Fire is a weather status.
wut
Fire and the effects are now as casual in this state as saying it's going to be cloudy, though the clouds are just red and the air is somewhere between moderate pollution and China.

Actually damn, I missed a joke about the sky being as red as the state and I don't mean republicans.
 

Dwarfman

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I remember the footage shown of the Bush fires that raged through rural Victoria a few years ago, you could see the fire advancing up a hill in real time at a speed that you couldn't outrun! The driver of this vehicle is very lucky he made it out unscathed.
 

iblis666

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mysecondlife said:
iblis666 said:
as a Californian I can honestly say earthquakes are not something to fear in California since we rarely get them and they usually cause no more destruction than a angry cat pushing things off the counter. On the other hand fires in California should be feared since we have basically been on fire permanently since 2000.
Which part of California do you live in? I live in S. California and I know that having wild-fire nearby is just not fun. Not to mention we're currently going through record-breaking drought...

LegendaryGamer0 said:
Commiefornia: Where Fire is a weather status.
wut

i live in san jose but have seen my fair share of fire even if mostly we just get brush fires in the bay area or smoke from regional brush fires. Then again i do a fair bit of traveling such as i drove through the fire last year by crystal lake or the fact that my parents 14 acres up by nevada city keeps almost burning down (several times while i was there)