Fires damnit everywhere

Here in Norman, we're pretty lucky. There are fires to the E and NE of
us, fires to the S and SW, but none right here. It was, and had been for
some time, Damned Dry, and then we had sustained winds of 30 to 45 mph
with gusts up in the 50-60 mph range. And, of course, there was a big,
hairy-arsed cold front coming through, which added compressive heating
ahead of the front.

Almost all of the state (Oklahoma) had been under a burn ban for quite
some time, but there's always someone who tempts fate -- and loses. We
really don't know how the fires got started near Ardmore in the south,
Stillwater in the north, or Choctaw, Midwest City, and the surrounding
area in the center of the state. We do know, however, that more than 120
homes were burned to the ground last night as a result of those fires,
many more were damaged, several people sustained injuries, and it's
still going on.

We slept with the ham rig turned on and listening to our local repeater,
Just In Case. We had no fires closer than 7 miles, but they were
directly upwind, and 7 miles isn't much time with winds like those.

Friend A called Friend B and asked her to break in to his house (A was
in Tulsa, 100+ miles away) and retrieve jewelery and important papers.
At the time, the fire was less than a mile from A's house. Last word I
had was that A's house was still intact; we can hope it continues so.
Melody tells me that another teacher at her school lost his house to
fire yesterday afternoon.

Its a bad time -- maybe not so bad as the .au fires a few years back,
but certainly bad enough.

--
It may not be nice to fool Mother Nature, but it's stupid to thwart
Darwin.
-- Me, to an unnamed newsgroup, Thu Feb 6 09:05:34 2003
.

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