Good morning everyone,
I'm glad to read that most if not all of the forum members are Ok, after Irma caused such a tremendous amount of damage. Some of the pictures I've seen it really devistated various areas. My heart goes out to those that sustained much of any damage as most seemed too, unfortunately!
I didn't go back to see who asked about me to thank each personally but I do thank Sherrel for alerting me that several of you asked about me. As he stated, I've been going over to Chukchansi Casino daily as the temperatures were extremely high and my evaporative cooler isn't working but probably wouldn't do too much good anyway when the Humidity was high.
I just go there to hang out and talk with friends I've made, many of whom also are there for the same reason as it's a nice cool place with high ceilings and a very good ventilation system to suck all the cigrette smoke up and out. Oh Pepsi and other soft drinks plus coffee are free. It's only 5 miles from my home so fairly close.
There was a very bad fire that started at the Yoemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad that has #10 & #15 Shays there. The first local reports I saw of the bad fire said it burned down every thing. Well that just wasn't true. The engine house and both Shays as well as other structures such as the ticket office & gift shop are still there as they had their own fire equipment as they are at about 5,000 ft. elevation with lots of large Sugar Pine Trees as well as Ponderosa & Cedar trees. The fire was started by a tree service that was supposed to cut some limbs off some trees that were over hanging some power lines. They did just that, but screwed up big time by not waiting for PG&E, 'Pacific Gas & Electric' to turn the power off in those lines first. I'm sure the fire burned 5,000 acres and I think it approached 6,000 + acres. The fire was quite intense and borade bomers loaded with fire retardant were coming in every 15 minutes to try and get a handle of the fire. The main reason it was so bad was that there was a lot of under brush and dead limbs laying on the forest floor that had built up over the past many years. I live approximately 18 miles from that area an at one point, the winds carried very tiny little burnt branches all the way to my location which I found on the sun roof of my car which sits outside.
Even though the name says Yosemite Mountain, it is still outside and South of Yosemite Nat. Park Entrance by about 4-5 miles. There were also 4 other fires burning in other local locations too!
Hope all have a very good day and week.