The wildfire that started Sunday in the little Texas panhandle community of Fritch has destroyed 225 homes, 143 out buildings and 118 vehicles. The fire marshall said they were able to save 241 homes - so I guess almost half of the homes in the town are gone. Thursday evening news reports the fire is 90% contained on day 5. 300 people worked to control the fire. The photos are devastating.
One bright spot is that people are donating prom dresses and a florist is donating flowers so the high school Jr & Sr's can still have a prom this coming weekend.
When my son living in Seattle calls and tells me about the rain up there it just blows my mind. We just don't get rain very often. On the way to take care of my grandchildren I pass by this field and I wonder if anyone from Washington state would recognize what this piece of equipment might be....
It is an irrigation system (a giant moving sprinkler). I pulled over to the side of the road and took the photo out of my car window yesterday (May 14th). That is a barb wire fence you can see at the bottom of the photo. To grow any kind of crop here you have to get water to it since we don't get much precipitation. You can clearly see the difference in this field of watered and unwatered vegetation. I wish I had some way of getting accurate information but I am going to guess that this irrigation system shown is probably 1,000 feet long, maybe a 100 ft tall. That may be way off as a guess so let me show you an aerial view. This field is across from a children's home campus so I went to Mapquest, put in their address and got this satellite map....
http://mapq.st/1ov3bxt
If you click on that link the irrigated acreage is the big green circle on the left. The vertical line in the field would be the irrigation system. When I took the photo the system has moved to the south portion of the field. The white vertical line to the right of the field is the road I drive down. The purple bubble with a white dot is indicating the building to the right. That building is a two story campus building, almost 7,000 sq ft so in relation maybe that can help you see what size this field might be.
Devastating about all the out of control fires. I have soon those irrigation systems in my travels, but not quite on that huge of a scale.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I saw one of those irrigation things in a field I thought it was a moveable pedestrian bridge.
ReplyDeleteLOL! You are so funny!!
DeleteWe had them in Florida also. Amazing to see them in action.
ReplyDeleteHow awful about those fires and how unfair Nature can be spreading her wealth about. I sure hope those fires weren't arson. That might be a hanging offense.
I hope it is not arson too. Still under investigation but they know it started in a yard storage shed.
DeleteWe have those "crop circles" in Eastern Washington, where the rainfall is much less, and in fact, in Western Washington we have summer drought, going through most of July and August and into September with very little rain. We have to irrigated on the west side too. And that is our wild fire season. Every year we lose many acres timber on dry forest land.
ReplyDelete