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Apple Donating to Wildfire Relief Efforts in California

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Apple is planning to make a donation to help wildfire relief efforts in California, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced this afternoon.

creek_fire.jpg
Image Credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press. Creek Fire near Fresno, California​

Fire season in California kicked off earlier this week when a lightning storm ignited fires across the state. Over the last 72 hours, California has experienced close to 11,000 lightning strikes, which have sparked 367 known fires. Governor Gavin Newsom declared a statewide emergency yesterday.


Amid the fires, California is also battling an ongoing heat wave that has seen high temperatures and low humidity, conditions that contribute to fire spread. Many Californians in the Bay Area have been forced to evacuate their homes and air quality near Apple's headquarters in Cupertino has been affected by the fires.

California regularly experiences fires between August and November due to high winds and dry conditions. Apple has previously donated to wildfire relief efforts in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

Article Link: Apple Donating to Wildfire Relief Efforts in California
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/19/apple-california-wildfire-relief-donation/
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That photo of the Hennessey Fire in Napa is just incredible !

Looked up the location of the fire & had NO idea it covered so much territory North East of Napa !
 
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Right now the smokey air in the SF Bay Area is awful. And my car was coated with a layer of ash particles this morning.
 
what’s going on in California? It seems every season now there is wildfires and all are to a level of dangerousness that leads to evacuations of towns. The 80’s the worry was of the BIG one hitting, yet wildfires are the clear and present danger.

can anything be done?
a different way of plants being arranged?different plants that could help the temperature or humidity under better control? Silly thoughts but I’m just wondering since irrigation has big limits.
 
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Realityck said:
Currently we have air quality somewhere between for San Jose at this moment its 193, and Redwood City at 146. Smoke came up last night at about 7:30 PM PST from the CZU August fire. Stay safe.
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I'm living in Illinois now, but used to live in Brentwood (the Bay Area one). Do you have any info on the Deer Zone fire? I tried looking, but all I could find was that the Deer Zone was lumped in by CalFire with a bunch of other fires in other counties and only showing 5% containment overall. I'm sure each of those fires individually were each more or less contained than that.
 
DeepIn2U said:
Agreed and seen the sources.

pretty sad citizens are suffering and only companies help out.

what’s going on in California? It seems every season now there is wildfires and all are to a level of dangerousness that leads to evacuations of towns. The 80’s the worry was of the BIG one hitting, yet wildfires are the clear and present danger.

can anything be done?
a different way of plants being arranged?different plants that could help the temperature or humidity under better control? Silly thoughts but I’m just wondering since irrigation has big limits.
Click to expand...
I'd say there's a lot of factors. When I was living there...a common attitude was that it was always PG&E's fault. No matter what went wrong...it was PG&E's fault. Even if it was something they couldn't possibly have done 😂 I don't live in California anymore, but have heard that some of the biggest fires in the past years have been traced back to PG&E equipment. If that's the case, I don't think plants would prevent it. PG&E needs to maintain their equipment as well as the land around it. For instance, where I live, our power company needs to maintain the equipment to ensure safety (obviously), but they also maintain the trees around their equipment for a certain amount of feet in all directions. I'm not sure if it's actually a requirement that they do it...but they do. For the high voltage lines, it isn't an issue since those are all above the tree lines. But for lines that are on wooden poles (and therefore closer to the ground), you will notice that the branches are always cut so there is a gap between them and the lines. You won't find any lines around here that go "through" the trees. Thanks to that...we rarely have power outages due to downed branches/trees. If it's a particularly nasty storm that blows an entire tree down, that's another story. But any old windy day won't do it. We live in an area susceptible to severe wind events (the derecho we had recently is a good example), blizzards, the occasional ice storm, and because it's prairie/farmland...we do have an occasional fire risk. Maintaining equipment and the things around it goes a looooooong way.
 
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So is this the next threat to humanity now that people are tired of Covid? I’m sure California will overreact to this and go off the reservation as they do with everything.
 
DeepIn2U said:
what’s going on in California? It seems every season now there is wildfires and all are to a level of dangerousness that leads to evacuations of towns. The 80’s the worry was of the BIG one hitting, yet wildfires are the clear and present danger.

can anything be done?
a different way of plants being arranged?different plants that could help the temperature or humidity under better control? Silly thoughts but I’m just wondering since irrigation has big limits.
Click to expand...
I live in CA, and I’m about 11 miles away from what looks to be the biggest fire right now. I can tell you the worst problem is it’s so dry here. We deal with droughts about 10 months out of the year. All it took was a night of a thunderstorm (which is incredibly rare, I have heard thunder maybe 5 times in the last 10 years) to set off these fires. Thanks for your concern, though. We need more people like you putting their brains together to help stop this mess.
 
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DeepIn2U said:
what’s going on in California? It seems every season now there is wildfires and all are to a level of dangerousness that leads to evacuations of towns. The 80’s the worry was of the BIG one hitting, yet wildfires are the clear and present danger.

can anything be done?
a different way of plants being arranged?different plants that could help the temperature or humidity under better control? Silly thoughts but I’m just wondering since irrigation has big limits.
Click to expand...

Controlled burns (especially at certain times of the year), cutting back of undergrowth, not building in certain areas. Plus poorly maintained electrical infrastructure/vegetation around it has also contributed to some bad fires. You can't irrigate the problem away.

Same reason Australia has been having it bad recently.
 
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One night here*, it was very hot and muggy, and I woke up to an intense thunderstorm *without* rain in the middle of the night. That must've started at least one of the fires.

* South Bay
 
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iOS Geek said:
I'd say there's a lot of factors. When I was living there...a common attitude was that it was always PG&E's fault. No matter what went wrong...it was PG&E's fault. Even if it was something they couldn't possibly have done 😂 I don't live in California anymore, but have heard that some of the biggest fires in the past years have been traced back to PG&E equipment. If that's the case, I don't think plants would prevent it. PG&E needs to maintain their equipment as well as the land around it. For instance, where I live, our power company needs to maintain the equipment to ensure safety (obviously), but they also maintain the trees around their equipment for a certain amount of feet in all directions. I'm not sure if it's actually a requirement that they do it...but they do. For the high voltage lines, it isn't an issue since those are all above the tree lines. But for lines that are on wooden poles (and therefore closer to the ground), you will notice that the branches are always cut so there is a gap between them and the lines. You won't find any lines around here that go "through" the trees. Thanks to that...we rarely have power outages due to downed branches/trees. If it's a particularly nasty storm that blows an entire tree down, that's another story. But any old windy day won't do it. We live in an area susceptible to severe wind events (the derecho we had recently is a good example), blizzards, the occasional ice storm, and because it's prairie/farmland...we do have an occasional fire risk. Maintaining equipment and the things around it goes a looooooong way.
Click to expand...
The Camp Fire last time was confirmed to be PG&E's fault. I don't know about the others. Everyone hates PG&E. Last year, they cut power for weeks to massive numbers of customers because they were afraid of starting fires during especially hot weeks. And yes, they have a problem with brush buildup around their power equipment. Now they're cutting power (though so far at a smaller scale) because they don't have the capacity during heat spells when everyone runs AC, which is a more understandable problem, but still. They charge some of the highest energy prices in the US.

I consider them incompetent and don't buy the excuse that the switch to renewable energy is causing these problems, and I think most agree. Some wealthier homeowners are even investing in solar panels with batteries to guard against outages. That's how bad it is.
 
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How to quickly extinguish forest fires
Just use a network of infrared satellites, seaplanes and helicopters to both extinguish fires in a few minutes after starting and catch pyromaniacs. Couple that with severe punishments. End of problem worldwide. But it seems that we are much more interested on communication satellites for basically 99% useless social networks.
 
hot-gril said:
The Camp Fire last time was confirmed to be PG&E's fault. I don't know about the others. Everyone hates PG&E. Last year, they cut power for weeks to massive numbers of customers because they were afraid of starting fires during especially hot weeks. And yes, they have a problem with brush buildup around their power equipment. Now they're cutting power (though so far at a smaller scale) because they don't have the capacity during heat spells when everyone runs AC, which is a more understandable problem, but still. They charge some of the highest energy prices in the US.

I consider them incompetent and don't buy the excuse that the switch to renewable energy is causing these problems, and I think most agree. Some wealthier homeowners are even investing in solar panels with batteries to guard against outages. That's how bad it is.
Click to expand...
Wow, so they actually confirmed it was them?! That must have ended up costing you all a pretty penny. That's how it always worked! Everything's PG&E's fault...but YOUR wallet always suffers!

So they're doing rolling blackouts again? I remember the last ones! What has Newsom done about all of this? This situation is starting to remind me a little bit of the lead up to when Governor Davis was recalled...
 
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