Earth, wind, and fire

CHADRON (AP) -- A number of homes sustained damage Friday night as a wildfire burned across the south side of this Panhandle community.

“I can’t tell you the amount, but it is clear it’s significant,” said Aaron Sanderford, a spokesman for Gov. Dave Heineman.

Conditions deteriorated rapidly in this town of 5,600 on a day when as many as five wildfires, fueled by temperatures in the 100s and low humidity, charred portions of three counties in northwestern Nebraska.

While the majority of the damage was sustained from Tenth Street and south, Chadron residents living from Sixth Street and south were evacuated and the American Red Cross was setting up shelter operations, Sanderford said. The state Health and Human Services System was sending workers here Saturday to assist people in need.

The town was filled with smoke late in the evening, and fires continued to rage in the hills south of the city limits, Sanderford said.

Firefighters were patrolling the south side of town putting out spot fires, Sanderford said, with an emphasis placed on keeping flames away from the Chadron State College campus.

Nebraska State Patrol officials were traveling in vehicles to the west and north of town in an attempt to spot the flames. Aircraft used earlier in the day to spot fires was grounded because of heavy smoke.

Some residents on the east side of Chadron were evacuated early in the evening. Sanderford said it was possible all people would be ordered out of Chadron.

An update (Sunday morning) on the above story posted last evening (Saturday evening):

Early this morning I finally smelt it; the odor of smoke and fire, but perhaps emanating from the fire that devastated Valentine, Nebraska (population 3,000) two weeks ago (and which is still burning).

Others around here had detected the odor of burning prairie more than two days ago, but I assume that because I smoke (cigarettes), my own sense of smell is somewhat, uh, delayed-reaction.

I do not have a map of Nebraska handy, but anyway, I live circa 200 miles east of the fires currently ravaging Chadron, Nebraska, and other towns in northern Nebraska. I am in the Sandhills, in the same sort of terrain where these fires are burning, but about 200 miles away.

If one looks at a map of Nebraska, and finds Norfolk, well, I live west of there--I wish I could be more specific, but I have to be vague, because Fat Che, the sensitive lad, the Bostonian Drunkard, and Darth Dean might still be entertaining thoughts of coming out here with baseball bats, and I'd just as soon they have to look for me.

Civilians in Chadron, Nebraska (population circa 5,600), as of 6:00 a.m. central time Sunday morning, have been ordered to leave the town, because the winds are picking up--but there have been instructions the past 48 hours, leave, no, you don't have to leave, leave, no, you don't have to leave, leave......instructions that change with every change in the direction of the winds.

For those who have never been to Nebraska, our outstanding characteristic is that the air never stands still; the wind, anything from a gentle breeze to 100 mph gusts, is omnipresent and ubiquitous--it never stops, and perhaps is the reason Nebraska enjoys some of the best air in the whole world.

Last night (Saturday night), I spoke with a National Guardsman who has already seen it all--Valentine burned, then the nearby Black Hills of South Dakota, and now the northwestern corner of Nebraska. He is not from Nebraska, and what has impressed him the most is that no one is panic-stricken, everybody is laid back and mellow, everybody is taking care of everybody else.

Of course; this is Nebraska.

Nobody is sitting around whining because George Bush isn't coming in to carry them out to safety.

The tallest building in Chadron is an 11-story-high college dormitory; according to this National Guardsman, the flames are higher than that.

There have been no missing persons--everybody all accounted for--no injuries, not even a skinned knee, no squalling infants, no frightened children, no disoriented elderly. And it appears there has been no expenditure of the public treasury for civilian "evacuation."

Nor any need to set up soup-kitchens or temporary shelters for the "refugees."

And, as the National Guardsman told me, what is even more remarkable is that there is no organized "plan" for evacuation; it is just one of those things that seems to happen, naturally and instinctively, without the interference of "experts" and bureaucrats.

Pretty much the only people still in Chadron, for example, are healthy able-bodied adult citizenry; no children, no aged, no ill, no crippled, among them, those all having been borne away to other towns.

The population of Chadron however remains circa 5,600, because there are hundreds of firefighters from seven states replacing the civilians who have left--people who have come on their own time and expense, to help.

No one has been "left behind" in Chadron; no one has forgotten the reclusive family-less Old Lady Gubbelhaus, or the town drunk Johnny Parker--even the shut-ins, the feeble-minded, the recluses, the lonelies, the solitaries, have all been taken away (and accounted for), usually ending up in a private residence in another town.

Even the local DUmmie was not forgotten, despite his unpopularity because of his lousy body hygiene; carrying his most-precious possession, a globular marijuana bong with a circular KERRY-EDWARDS sticker stuck on it, he hitched a ride out of town with an ancient retired county sheriff.

He was given haven in the Roman Catholic rectory at either Gordon or Merriman (I forget which), and this morning, Sunday morning, he was conscripted by the local priest to serve at Mass as altar-boy.....

Sunday night update:

As of late Sunday afternoon, the situation is that while the National Guard has been spraying water (or whatever it is they are spraying), there appears to be a lack of manpower on the ground.

I was not aware those guys up there needed ground support; something like 100 men on the ground, for every guy in the flying vehicle.

Apparently the guys on the ground are used to "follow up" after the helicopter flies by--I don't know for sure, knowing nothing about fire-fighting.

And apparently what the helicopters do, no matter what or how much they do, it's useless without substantial "ground support."

Because of this, the fires are expected to burn 2-3 weeks more yet; the winds keep changing (and of course prairie fires generate their own wind, or increase the velocity of winds already existing).

It is too bad, because there are now fire-fighters from 12 states there; nobody asked them to come, they just came.

In convoys, in single vehicles, on motorcycles, hitch-hiking--and all on their own time and expense. Thus far, no one has spotted a DUmmie or an environmentalist among their number, just the salt of the earth.

I wanted to post photographs this morning, but none of them--amateur or professional--give credit to the size and energy of the prairies fires as they were last night (Sunday night) and this morning.

This afternoon (Monday afternoon), the forecasts are for a change in wind-direction, forcing the evacuation of another town.

The odor of smoke permeates the air here, 200 miles away on the opposite side of the Nebraska Sandhills.

According to the newspapers, with circa 1200 "qualified" men fighting the fires, one could reasonably expect the fires would be extinguished in 2-3 weeks. There are currently 678 "qualified" men there, but that does not include the hundreds of "extras," there but not "officially" recognized by bureaucrats.

I have to emphasize--and perhaps this is the reason this is not even a blip on the national news--that Nebraska is a very small state in population in any instance, but here we are talking about a part of the state where the number "per square mile" is usually larger than the number "per capita" (such as "1 person per 4.27 square miles").

It is reasonable to assume that most members here have more people in their immediate neighborhood, than do some--a great many, in fact--entire counties in Nebraska, some of which have only 400 or 500 residents.

Thus far it appears nearly 100,000 acres, or more than 140 square miles, of prairie and forest have been destroyed. And none of the fires, including the earlier one that devastated Valentine, Nebraska, more than two weeks ago, is considered anywhere near "contained."

Two days ago, I had asked a Nebraska state trooper, if he had the time and inclination, to spot-check bumpers on motor vehicles in the area (since they do this anyway), to see if any happened to be sporting bumper-stickers KERRY-EDWARDS or EARTH FIRST or SAVE THE PLANET or other tree-hugger and DUmmie slogans.

The latest report was from yesterday, early Sunday evening; nope, no DUmmies or environmentalists spotted helping fight the fires; not even an ACLU sticker on any vehicle.

On the other hand, the state trooper did not spot any BUSH-CHENEY bumper-stickers, either, but as "more than three-quarters" of the vehicles "seemed" to have those SUPPORT THE TROOPS magnetic ribbons, it is reasonable to assume who all these volunteers--there on their own time and money, remember--voted for in 2004.

And besides, Republicans tend to take stickers off after an election anyway.

The local drunk Johnny Parker, who had been evacuated from Chadron on Friday, had been first housed with a ranch family. The ranchwife, circa mid-40s, is the sort who makes "womyn's studies" professors and other femme libbers look helplessly feminine and dependent in comparison, decided, well, she has had to deal with all sorts of things in her life, and this guest would be no problem.

Johnny Parker needs description; try to imagine a 60-year-old "William Pitt," the Bostonian Drunkard, with some new chub plastered atop his never-disappeared baby-fat; usually unshaven, black "cowboy hat," verboise and incoherent, and with wretched body hygiene.

The ranchwife put Johnny Parker up in a spare bedroom, outfitted with clean crisp sheets, and a vase of flowers freshly-cut from the garden. And she prepared for him probably the first decent meal he had had since he was a lad, home-made, home-cooked, and all that.

It seemed fine.

But then on Saturday morning, the ranchwife told her husband, "He has to go."

Apparently Johnny Parker is incontinent, and extravagantly so.

"I've got a lot of things to deal with, and I don't want to be troubled with a grown man who wets the bed," the ranchwife told her husband.

So Johnny Parker was taken to a nearby town--in his condition not particularly caring about the quality of accomodations--and at first, it looked as if the only thing suitable was in the service-bay of a now-closed gasoline station, but then the local jail took him.

Johnny Parker is not locked up or anything; the deal is, when he wants to catch some slumber, he has to go there.

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