Posted on 08/04/2012 4:10:22 AM PDT by nuconvert
-excerpt-
Hundreds of people were told Friday to leave their homes in at least four counties, while smoke and flames prompted authorities to close parts of Interstate 44, the main roadway between Oklahoma City and Tulsa,
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
All of this is happening in red states (No I don’t want it happening in blue states). However, I find it strange. I know Colorado went blue in 2008 but I still think it is overall a red state. I hope Oklahoma will wake up and allow controlled fires. I think it is awful that the environmentalists are winning on this subject. When controlled fires were allowed, we never had these horrible fires. God Bless Oklahoma and the people who live there.
So sorry to hear this. I am visiting the OKC area and the sky was filled with smoke last night. I don’t see any this morning...I really hope they have gotten the fires under control.
The temperatures and the high wind yesterday really made things hard for the responders, I’m sure.
These fires have nothing to do with controlled burns, etc. The areas burned were not forested areas like back west. These are people’s small farms, ranches, etc.
This is due to: the high temperatures this summer (one more year where Tulsa has repeatedly had the nation’s high temperatures; thanks El Nina!); the abnormal low humidity; and the extreme drought we have had the last two years.
Normally, these fires would just burn off the grass and small brush and move on, but now the trees are starting to catch fire (which they wouldn’t do under normal weather conditions), thus making the fires much more dangerous than is normal.
Some of the video clips looked like forest fires back west in the Rockies (where large swaths of entire trees are engulfed in flames), not the less spectacular, normal grass fires of the rolling hills of central and eastern Oklahoma...
A report on CNN said that police are looking at this as a case of arson. One person reported seeing a guy in a pick up throwing burning wads of paper into a dry pasture.
These are not forest fires. They are fires in grasslands and wooded areas. The areas burned are rural with much of the land used for farming or grazing. Controlled fires would not be effective.
The news was carrying reports that the fire that devestated Luther, OK, was deliberatly set. Witnesses saw a man in a blue or black F-150 driving through the are tossing lit newspaper out his truck window. I hope the police catch him before the citizens of Luther find him.
The rolling hills in Luther are part pasture land and part scrub forest.. nothing much over 30 foot tall mostly Blackjack oak and Cedar. The past few weeks have been extremely dry and hot... it was a tinderbox ready for lighting... and apparently someone did...
I’m so sorry!!! I have family just off I-40 and exit 166.
It’s also dry enough here in Nebraska that my brother has a big bucket of water on the tractor when he rakes hay, afraid that any little thing could set things off.
Whoever set that fire needs to be charged with the theft of everything that was lost. Every home’s value, all the crops lost, everything.
They must have been from central Oklahoma. Northeastern Oklahoma is called Green Country for a reason.
I’m in Sapulpa, the county seat of Creek County. The fires are just to my Southwest. It’s getting difficult to breathe. My lips and fingertips are tingling like when I’m at a really high elevation. I’m about ready to go to the hospital.
Or Northwestern Oklahoma.
When I was a kid we used to go to the courthouse square every Saturday to look at The Tree.
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