Ashes on the house

It was a nice normal morning, UNTIL I went outside. I was heading for the spa with a brown cover. Well the cover was white; it was covered with ashes. Then I paid attention to the deck; it too was covered with ashes.

It has been about a hundred years since I had a course in chemistry. But I remembered something about ashes and moisture making lye. Well, I wanted the ashes off of the spa, the car and the etc.
I hosed and washed them all down. THEN I remembered to take pics. If I remember my Hoch Deutsch correctly that comes under the heading of “zu spate” or in English “Too late.”

The largest piece of ash on the spa top was almost an inch long. Lucky for me, it had cooled on its trip from the fire or it would have damaged my spa top---not to mention that it might have caught some of the surrounding trees or bushes on fire. Who would have ever thought, living in the middle of a fair sized city that I would be in danger of a forest fire?

At 11:00 am the temperature is 91*F. The high is predicted for 97*F which is a few degrees lower than yesterday, which was lower than the day before that. The TV said that even a few degrees makes a big difference in the firefighting so the drop is welcome. I was out at 7:15 this morning hosing down the decks and washing down things like the spa. I was sweating. The humidity just plain old isn't; it is DRY.

I assume Carol will be getting on with her report.

Enjoy, I am because all is OK at this location.
JimB
 
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take care jim and i can relate to ashes on the deck in the mourning that was what we had on my first day of a elk hunt in Oregon,, that fire burnt thousands of acres.. but we got our elk and the last camp didnt burn
 
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I find this all to be unimaginable.

I have never seen or experienced anything like that.

To me - it is advertising to the other side of calif life and it does not sound intriguing at all.

Man o MAN - I do hope you all pull through ok
 
........................"The largest piece of ash on the spa top was almost an inch long. Lucky for me, it had cooled on its trip from the fire or it would have damaged my spa top---not to mention that it might have caught some of the surrounding trees or bushes on fire".....................

Damage your spa & bushes? Heck what about your house?
 
Two seasons in California, Leo. The fire season and the rest of the year.

Now you know why Californians generally have no fear of earthquakes. Fire is far more destructive and much scarier. However, not much slows down the migration west to our state. We don't need to talk about immigration from the south.

Smoke around me cleared up a lot yesterday. I don't have any ash pieces as large as Jim's, but everything will need a shower as well. We no longer have continuing TV coverage so I don't have any updates. But that fact alone means structures are no longer threatened as they were a couple of days ago. Banner on TV this morning shows the fires raging now are on Camp Pendleton.
 
Stay safe, Jim! Hope that garbage clears up soon.

About five years ago, we had to deal with a similar situation here in south Georgia. It was a very dry year - everything getting parched. Well, some folks still had it in their heads that it was time to do the annual underbrush burnout. As if it should have taken a great deal of smarts to figure it out, the burnout got out of control. I walked outside and thought it was snowing - in July - in south Georgia! Ash everywhere - smoke getting thicker, etc. - lots of pine and other trees in our yard and surrounding areas. I drove around to see how close the fire was and found we had about three miles of buffer. Firefighters got the main blazes under control and let some smaller areas burn themselves out. And, it's usually so peaceful down here!!!
 
Stay safe guys, glad to hear the fires are getting somewhat under control!

When we first moved here there had been a fire earlier that year up on the watershed where our water comes from. LOML had taken in a water sample to the hot tub chemical guy because she was having some difficulty getting the chemistry right, and he swore up and down that there was NO WAY that water could have come out of the tap. The PH was 9!! :eek: Usually our water is pretty good except when the chlorine valve sticks open (we're on a small couple hundred house system) but the ashes in the runoff area had leached out the lye and wow! Wasn't very good for a while there.

I remember in Maui we'd get "Maui Snow" when they burnt the sugar cane fields you'd get black ash raining from the sky in town sometimes if the wind wasn't right. Really hard on the breathing if you have asthma, we'd usually go around to the other side of the island when that happened and get a thai chili soup this one place had (you'd be in pain from the soup but boy would it clear up the lungs in a hurry!!).
 
Glad things are slowing down. :thumb:

Jim, try to document the ash that accumulates. After the Station Fire near our house in 2009, many homeowners received insurance settlements for smoke and ash damage. I didn't think we had any "damage", but the insurance adjuster felt otherwise, and we received a healthy payout to cover a thorough cleanup.
 
I was reminded that today, May 18th 1980 at 8:32 AM Mt St Helens popped it top. I was up on a lake near my hometown fishing with my two cousins, we heard a really loud bang, and thought someone must be blasting with dynamite nearby. We told my uncle and aunt about it, later that night my uncle turned on the radio just to see what was going on and we heard about the eruption.

We got ash on our cars etc about 400 miles north of Mt St Helens.
 
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