Nevada declares emergency over out-of-control wildfire

It's on the southwest side of Reno on the hills towards the Sierra's. That's probably 40 miles away from where we live.

I was busy preparing for a demo this morning and didn't even hear anything about it till a friend from Cali posted it to Sharons facebook page. The wind is blowing the smoke away from us.

The winds are just horrible today, so I really feel for those folks. Hopefully they will get it under control and it won't flare up tonight...

It's definitely a scary situation...
 
When I did my Friday trip to town today, I could see three ridges on fire (really could only see the smoke), but they were about a quarter way up the back side of the Sierras. It was weird that the smoke was white (vs. brown or gray) and it kind of mixed with the clouds moving through.

Just have to hope the winds die down soon. They were around 50mph with gusts upward of 90. 10,000+ folks evacuated...that's a lot.

We don't get a lot of natural disasters around, here, but fire is the one we fear the most. I hope that everyone can return home soon.
 
We've got a bit of a break, with the driveway and front yard. We ripped out a bunch of junipers last year that were too close to the house. They call juniper bushes 'green gas cans' around here because of how they go up in a fire.

There's more though that could be done to protect things. We continue to make some progress on it here and there...
 
Here we go again. Big wildfire between Reno and Carson City (about 35 miles south of us in Washoe Valley). Winds were up to 80mph in the area earlier today and still pretty windy. Rain on the way, but may not hit in time before it gets really bad. 4,000 folks evacuated...many structures burnt to the ground. So far 3000 acres and zero percent containment. They can't even let the water helicopters fly because of the wind.

Bob is going to be upgrading our firebreak pretty soon.

And it's not even fire season.
 
Bob is a very timely acquisition. I had a compact tractor with a front end loader it. Came home from church on Sunday morning and found a fire along our road moving fast. I ran for the tractor, Sunday clothes and all, and was shoving dirt on it when the fire trucks arrived. They said, 'Good job. You saved this from becoming very nasty.' That's when I bought the fire goggles and better respiration equipment. My eyes didn't clear for a week. So Brent, buy some fire goggles and get a real good smoke mask. They won't cost much considering. Keep them near Bob. You won't be sorry to be ready.
 
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