Douglas
Contacting Douglas
Federation handle:
@douglasvb@mastodon.social
Douglas's Information
Douglas's Bio
I mostly post about #DinkeyCreek, the #Sierra, #Monterey, #beavers, #forests, and #meadows. Quite fond of #motorcycles, #scuba diving, #nudibranchs, #hiking, 4x4ing/rock crawling, seeing new places, #AmateurRadio, retro technology, #trains, and cats.
Douglas's Posts
Douglas has 20 posts.
Douglas
In response to this post@ai6yr that's pretty gnarly. I wonder how high the death count will be when these fires are done and the cadaver dogs have finished their work.
@douglasvb I am afraid it is going to go up significantly, I need to see if the FEMA GIS expert I know has deployed (which is generally bad bad news). Or how many cadaver teams were ordered. I will go look at the FEMA briefing, it's in there.
by AI6YR Ben ;
Mentions: @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org
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Douglas
In response to this post@ai6yr charge all of the things!
Mentions: @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org
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Douglas
@chris_bloke @ai6yr a bunch of the cams around the greater LA region have similar last images 😬
Mentions: @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org
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Douglas
In response to this post@ai6yr last night the observatory cameras caught the fire overwhelming the Mt Harvard comms site and cameras. I'm surprised it's taken this long to make it to the observatory.
Mentions: @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org
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Douglas
In response to this post@ai6yr my friends who somehow got lucky and didn't have their house burn in Altadena said about 75% of the town is gone. I can't think of another fire in the last 40 years in this country burning into a major metro area and basically wiping a city of 40+k people off the map.
@douglasvb @ai6yr My officemate’s house was about dead center in that image, and the photos he shared certainly looked like a total loss towards the mountain
by Colin Warren ;
@douglasvb @ai6yr
I remember the Tubbs Fire burning through Santa Rosa; the Camp Fire burning into Chico; and far too many smaller fires in the San Gabes.
There are so many such disasters happening that I had to think through the list...
by Michael Busch ;
Mentions: @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org
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Douglas
In response to this post@me_valentijn @evilotto @argv_minus_one @ai6yr it's a bit challenging to understand the scale of what's happening but this photo from Wednesday night gives a good idea for Altadena. The fire went a couple miles into the town and burned out the downtown. Trying to remake all of that in concrete will be difficult and concrete is not great for CO2 emissions 😬
Mentions: @me_valentijn@m.ai6yr.org @evilotto@sfba.social @argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org
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Douglas
In response to this post@sarae @ohmu @cR0w @ai6yr @laureenf.bsky.social so what you're saying is there can be a rather spectacular explosion from time to time
Mentions: @sarae@ecoevo.social @ohmu@social.seattle.wa.us @cR0w@infosec.exchange @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org
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Douglas
My friends' house survived the #EatonFire as did one immediate neighbor but the rest of the block is just foundations and chimneys. They shared a video with me of a walk through the neighborhood and it's straight up apocalyptic. It'll be weeks or months before they'll be able to live there. Plus dealing with the smoke damage and all of the toxic crap around them. Plus years of construction to rebuild all of the houses around them.
I wouldn't be surprised if they sell and move.
Tags: #eatonfire
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Douglas
In response to this post@evilotto @argv_minus_one @ai6yr buildings are hella flammable in the USA. And all the contents are, too.
@douglasvb @evilotto @argv_minus_one @ai6yr
Yeah, concrete construction and roof tiles should be required for people who want to live right next to a giant pile of tinder in a dry climate 😬
It's also great for temperature insulation.
by me_valentijn ;
Mentions: @evilotto@sfba.social @argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org
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Douglas
In response to this post@cR0w @ohmu @ai6yr @laureenf.bsky.social I watched them mark the plastic water pipes in our street over the summer when there was a leak upstream of our water meter. I think they might bury a metal wire with the water pipe similar to all the plastic gas pipes?
@douglasvb @cR0w @ai6yr @laureenf.bsky.social
They're *supposed* to bury conductive warning tape on top.
I'm dealing right now with a facility with a 3 inch buried plastic water main. My Transmission Crew Chief pulled me aside last week: no tape. Grrr.
by Weird Socks ;
Mentions: @cR0w@infosec.exchange @ohmu@social.seattle.wa.us @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org
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Douglas
@ai6yr @ohmu @laureenf.bsky.social lol whoever thought those pipes were a good idea ...
All the cast iron sewer pipes in the buildings and underground on the campus I work at are getting replaced with plastic because we went to zero water urinals and that pretty much instantly caused all the old metal pipes to fail until enough water was in the pipes to dilute the urine.
Good times having sewer water fall through the ceiling every few months 🙄
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Douglas
In response to this post@cR0w @ohmu @ai6yr @laureenf.bsky.social the plastic was installed when they increased the diameter of the pipe serving his house. I'm not sure why they need a bigger service though. Maybe low pressure?
@douglasvb @ohmu @ai6yr @laureenf.bsky.social Interesting the city used poly but I've heard some do too safe money. They suck to locate now that no one seems to know how to witch anymore. The larger diameter increases the volume available without a pressure drop.
by cR0w :cascadia: ;
Mentions: @cR0w@infosec.exchange @ohmu@social.seattle.wa.us @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org
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Douglas
In response to this post@cR0w @ohmu @ai6yr @laureenf.bsky.social my buddy in NE Portland just had the pipe from the main in the street through the meter and into the house replaced with plastic. And he's been slowly replacing all the ancient lead soldered pipes in his house with PEX.
@cR0w @ohmu @ai6yr @laureenf.bsky.social the plastic was installed when they increased the diameter of the pipe serving his house. I'm not sure why they need a bigger service though. Maybe low pressure?
by Douglas ;
Mentions: @cR0w@infosec.exchange @ohmu@social.seattle.wa.us @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org
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Douglas
@ohmu @ai6yr @laureenf.bsky.social I haven't run into any copper water mains but I have seen wood, asbestos impregnated asphalt, clay/terra cotta, and various rock water mains.
@douglasvb @ohmu @laureenf.bsky.social We have asbestos impregnated asphalt sewer lines here... burst all the time in a brown poop disaster
by AI6YR Ben ;
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Douglas
In response to this post@ohmu @ai6yr @laureenf.bsky.social pretty much all in-ground water pipe is plastic unless it's really old.
@douglasvb @ohmu @laureenf.bsky.social We have a lot of copper mains here, which fail spectacularly and a lot because of the mineral content of the soil here. The water company folks talk about how copper was a mistake.
by AI6YR Ben ;
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Douglas
@ai6yr @laureenf.bsky.social it's really fascinating how quickly the misinformation machine is spinning up on the water thing.
Unless we're going back to steel pipes, plastic is going to melt.
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Douglas
@ai6yr
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Douglas
@ai6yr isn't this a pretty flagrant anti trust violation?
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Douglas
@ai6yr oh no this is a HUGE deal! The USA has spent a lot of money to keep screwworms out of the USA for many decades after eradicating them here.
Here's an interesting story about the effort to hold the screwworms at Panama.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/889348557
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Douglas
In response to this post@sarae @arclight @ai6yr ambient weather has several options for wireless thermometers that have probes to reach into freezers and fridges, and that can push data to the Internet where you can setup auto alerts for temperature being out of bounds and also use an app.
Either it comes as an accessory to a weather station or I think they still have one stand alone base station that doesn't have the weather station but that still pushes data to the Internet.
@douglasvb @arclight @ai6yr yeah, we're in the midst of installing something so we don't repeat the catastrophic freezer failure we had last spring
by Sara ;
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