Sometimes, well no…. Most of the time Mitt Romney leaves me scratching my head in complete bewilderment, and this is one of those times.
Last week, Ann Romney’s plane was forced to make an emergency landing due to an electrical fire that filled the cabin with smoke. On Saturday, Mitt was quoted saying the following:
Nearly 104,000 acres have been scorched as of this afternoon, July 1st, 2011. Containment is only 3%. Las Conchas Fire is now considered the largest in New Mexico history, and still growing. Santa Clara Pueblo is hard hit, and their vital watershed is not nothing but flames. Los Alamos National Labs have remained untouched – but considering the labs have been their since WWII… who knows what was buried in the canyons and mountains in decades past when radioactive waste disposal was not what it is today. After all… this is the birthplace of the A-Bomb which was dropped on Nagaski and Hiroshima….
Below are pictures I just took this evening from the north side of Albuquerque, approximately 60 miles as the crow flies to the fires.
Truly devastating.
Click on a picture below to enlarge, then continue to scroll through by clicking on the picture.
The wildfire has destroyed 30 structures south and west of Los Alamos, for many stirring memories of a devastating blaze in May 2000 that destroyed hundreds of homes and buildings in town.
Flames were just across the road from the southern edge of the famed lab, where scientists developed the first atomic bomb during World War II. The facility cut natural gas to some areas as a precaution.
The lab, which employs about 15,000 people, covers more than 36 square miles and includes about 2,000 buildings at nearly four dozen sites. They include research facilities, as well as waste disposal sites. Some facilities, including the administration building, are in the community of Los Alamos, while others are several miles away from the town.
The spot fire scorched a section known as Tech Area 49, which was used in the early 1960s for a series of underground tests with high explosives and radioactive materials.
Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said environmental specialists were monitoring air quality, but the main concern was smoke.
The anti-nuclear watchdog group Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety said the fire appeared to be about 3.5 miles from a dumpsite where as many as 30,000 55-gallon drums of plutonium-contaminated waste were stored in fabric tents above ground. The group said the drums were awaiting transport to a dump site in southern New Mexico.
“The concern is that these drums will get so hot that they’ll burst. That would put this toxic material into the plume. It’s a concern for everybody,” said Joni Arends, executive director of the group.
Arends’ group also worried that the fire could stir up nuclear-contaminated soil on lab property where experiments were conducted years ago. Over the years, burrowing animals have brought that contamination to the surface, she said.
Lab officials at first declined to confirm that such drums were on the property but, in a statement early Tuesday, lab spokeswoman Lisa Rosendorf said such drums are stored in a section of the complex known as Area G. She said the drums contain cleanup from Cold War-era waste that the lab sends away in weekly shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
She said the drums were on a paved area with few trees nearby and would be safe even if a fire reached the storage area.
Los Alamos National Lab was established during the Second World War as part of the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb.
“The hair on the back of your neck goes up,” Los Alamos County fire chief Doug Tucker said of first seeing the fire in the Santa Fe National Forest on Sunday. “I saw that plume and I thought, ‘Oh my god here we go again.’”
Source: MSNBC
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. –Wildfires are burning around New Mexico and it’s getting harder for residents to avoid all the smoke.
Smoke has been so thick in recent days that it’s caused health problems for many residents.
“It can make peoples’ eyes water. It can make their throats burn. It can be a real nuisance for some people that seem to be a little allergic to it,” Air Quality Meteorologist Jeff Stonesifer said.
When a big hot fire throws massive plumes of smoke into the air, the smoke will ride the prevailing winds that typically blow from southwest to northeast. The smoke cloud contains steam, carbon dioxide, compounds of nitrogen, partially burned particles called hydrocarbons, tiny pieces of dirt and ash and small amounts of poison like carbon monoxide.
The very thick smoke over the past few days has brought the poorest air quality in the history of Albuquerque.
“Your nose and your lungs can filter out the larger particles, but they can’t filter out the smaller particles,” Stonesifer said. “I’m not too worried about the carbon monoxide. I’m more worried about the particulate matter and the little bit of toxic stuff in there. You know, cigarette smoke causes health problems too and that has a lot of the same stuff.”
Air quality experts still point to visibility as being the main indicator of how poor local air quality is because you can observe the changes much quicker than monitoring devices can detect and report it.
Source: KOAT News 7 | 1:40 pm MDT June 15, 2011
Here are a few videos taken from my home in Albuquerque of the smoke which has been moving in and out of the city.
These images of Wallow Fire came from a local Albuquerque news station’s website. They were uploaded by a viewer, and here is the description provided by the uploader:
The Wallow Fire on 6-4-2011, Taken from Luna Lake @ fire camp,By my daughter Sarah. We were delivering fire supplies.
Click on the image to view the full size.
If you googled “fire tornados arizona” and came here, that’s what this post was original titled…
Below was my original post. Thought this was fascinating footage. Then a fellow blogger pointed out that the footage was actually taken from Hawaii and is available on National Geographic, and provided the link in the comment. Sure as hell, it is.
It’s one thing to download and reupload a video you wish to share and distribute – as long as you do not take claim of it and provide as much as you know on it’s origin. Sometimes it is hard with so many videos going viral and info not passed on through each uploader. But in the case of this video, this person completely falsified everything about it. They added in their own “redneck” yelling at each other – which is not in the original video. Then claim to have taken the footage in Arizona.
Fake people suck….
Click here to view showing this same video, filmed in Hawaii, with Nat Geo narration on National Geographic website
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UPDATE: Thur. Sept 22, 2011
Just now took a peek at the fake video, and that account has been closed by YouTube for copyright infringement. Imagine that….
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Close-up and incredible footage of tornado fire rising up through the smoke.
Warning: This was taken by a mother and son who are constantly yelling and bickering at each other. I muted the video about 10 seconds into it. You may wish to do the same. It is worth watching… muted.
New fire erupted approximately 8 miles east of the center of Flagstaff. People, homes currently being evacuated. Winds at 19 mph impeding fighting the fire.
One of the volcanoes in the Caulle Cordon of southern Chile has erupted violently, billowing smoke and ash high into the sky. On Sunday, lightning in the rising cloud provided a dazzling display.
For several days now, Albuquerque has been blanketed with a thick layer of smoke originating from the massive fires in Arizona. The city has been on health alert, and hospitals have seen a jump in respiratory-related visits. The smell of burning wood is much like the smell of a campfire and has permeated our both sinuses and homes. The ash is leaving a light layer both inside and out. Normally, the visibility is literally as far as ones eyes can see – which is to the horizon depending upon the view. For the past few days, the visibility has dropped to 3 miles and under. The magnificent Sandia Mountains which border the east end of our city, have completely disappeared under the layer of smoke.
Amidst all the health problems arising from the smoke, the light filtering has created some magnificent photo opportunities. Please remember that in all these pictures, there are no clouds in the sky – which is normal for Albuquerque. All that you see is smoke…
The first picture was taken by me from my backyard tonight at approximately 7:15 PM. The sun was not due to set until 8:20. I did not use any filters, no special settings, nor was this touched up in Photoshop. The red coloring is from the smoke layer filtering out certain color wavelengths. Which is also the reason for the various colors in the rest of the images. The video above was also taken at the same time, same place.
I have never seen such a red sun before when this high in the sky. No filter was used. This is the actual color tonight, Tues. June 7th 2011. You can see the smoke in front of the sun when zoomed in. These are not clouds – today was a cloudless day – just completely covered with smoke off and on all day.
Here is a still shot I took as well.
I live in Albuquerque NM, and the city is completely covered with the thick smoke from these AZ fires. See my posting and footage taken tonight of the smoky skies overhead. When watching, remember, today was a completely clear, sunny day. Not a cloud in the sky.
Posting: Albuquerque NM completely engulfed in smoke from the massive AZ fires
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Arizona’s Wallow Fire began on May 29th, and is believed to have been sparked by an unattended campfire. The fire is named after Bear Wallow Wilderness in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest which is near where the fire originated. It is now one of the largest fires in Arizona history. More…
The richest and most advanced country in the world, the United States, has fallen behind other nations in providing affordable health care to its citizens. Americans spend $477 billion a year MORE on health care than other advanced countries, which amounts to $1,645 per person every year. Our friends at Medical Billing and Coding put together this graphic to show exactly why we pay so much for health care compared to other wealthy nations. Part 1 can be viewed here.
