California fires
Saturday, June 14th, 2008
If you haven’t heard, there have been several large wildfires in California this week. Governor Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in Butte County where several independently-started wildfires have destroyed homes and forced thousands of people to evacuate. There’s currently no evidence of malice, just a mix of unusually low humidity, high temperatures, and high winds for this time of year.
The largest wildfire in the area, called the Humboldt fire, made its way to the Butte College campus where the Web Devout server is located, eventually nearly surrounding the campus. Luckily, the firefighters had set up Butte College as their main base of operations, utilizing the campus’ firefighter training facilities and the wide open land that easily fit several hundred firefighters and engines from across the state. They also used the bulldozers on site to clear the dry grass in the margin between the college and the fire. Their efforts seem to have been a success: the fire is now receding from the campus, and none of the facilities were damaged.
The worst we suffered was a power outage at 3:35 PM Thursday when a couple of transformers blew. The electric company had restored power by the next morning. The Web Devout site was down during this time.
See the Associated Press article for more information about the fires.