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About The Bulletin. (Bend, OR) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 21, 2021)
Th e Bul l eTin • SaTur day, a ug u ST 21, 2021 A3 TODAY LOCAL, STATE & REGION It’s Saturday, Aug. 21, the 233rd day of 2021. There are 132 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: In 1991, the hard-line coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev collapsed in the face of a popular uprising led by Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin. In 1831, Nat Turner launched a violent slave rebellion in Virginia, resulting in the deaths of at least 55 whites; scores of Blacks were killed in retribution in the aftermath of the rebellion. Turner was later captured and executed. In 1911, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. (The painting was recovered two years later in Italy.) In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order making Hawaii the 50th state. In 1986, more than 1,700 people died when toxic gas erupted from a volcanic lake in the West African nation of Cameroon. In 1992, an 11-day siege began at the cabin of white separatist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, as government agents tried to arrest Weaver for failing to appear in court on charges of selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns; on the first day of the siege, Weaver’s teenage son, Samuel, and Deputy U.S. Mar- shal William Degan were killed. In 1993, in a serious setback for NASA, engineers lost contact with the Mars Observer space- craft as it was about to reach the red planet on a $980 million mission. In 2000, rescue efforts to reach the sunken Russian nuclear sub- marine Kursk ended with divers announcing none of the 118 sailors had survived. In 2013, an Army private now known as Chelsea Manning was sentenced at Fort Meade, Mary- land, to up to 35 years in prison for spilling an unprecedented trove of government secrets. The sentence for the former in- telligence analyst was commut- ed by President Barack Obama in his final days in office. In 2014, Gov. Jay Nixon ordered the Missouri National Guard to begin withdrawing from Fer- guson, where nightly scenes of unrest had erupted since a white police officer fatally shot a Black 18-year-old nearly two weeks earlier. Ten years ago: Euphoric Libyan rebels raced into Tripoli and took control of the center with little resistance as Moammar Gadha- fi’s defenses collapsed and his four-decade regime appeared to be crumbling. Five years ago: Shaking to samba and sharing reflections in uniquely Brazilian words, Olym- pians and fans said goodbye to the Rio Games with one last big bash inside Maracana Stadium. One year ago: Michigan’s ap- peals court said Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s emergency declarations and orders to curb the coronavirus clearly fell with- in the scope of her legal powers. Today’s Birthdays: Actor-di- rector Melvin Van Peebles is 89. Rock-and-roll musician James Burton is 82. Singer Jackie De- Shannon is 80. College and Pro Football Hall of Famer Willie Lanier is 76. Actor Patty McCor- mack is 76. Actor Loretta Devine is 72. NBC newsman Harry Smith is 70. Singer Glenn Hughes is 69. Actor Kim Cattrall is 65. College Football Hall of Famer and for- mer NFL quarterback Jim McMa- hon is 62. Actor Cleo King is 59. Figure skater Josee Chouinard is 52. Actor Carrie-Anne Moss is 51. Rock musician Liam Howlett (Prodigy) is 50. Actor Alicia Witt is 46. Singer Kelis is 42. Olympic gold medal sprinter Usain Bolt is 35. Actor Carlos Pratts is 35. Actor-comedian Brooks Whee- lan is 35. Country singer Kacey Musgraves is 33. Actor Hayden Panettiere is 32. Actor Maxim Knight is 22. CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES THE WORST MAY BE AHEAD BY BRIAN MELLEY Associated Press LOS ANGELES — Smoke from California’s wildfires choked people on the East Coast. Flames wiped out a gold rush-era town. The acreage burned would dwarf the state of Rhode Island. Images of homes engulfed in flames and mountains glowing like lava would make it easy to conclude the Golden State is a charred black landscape. That’s hardly the case, but the frightening reality is that the worst may be yet to come. California has already sur- passed the acreage burned at this point last year, which ended up setting the record. Now it’s entering a period when powerful winds have of- ten driven the deadliest blazes. “Here we are — it’s not the end of August and the size and distribution and the destruc- tion of summer 2021 wildfires does not bode well for the next months,” said Bill Deverell, a University of Southern Cali- fornia history professor who teaches about fire in the West. “The suggestion of patterns across the last two decades in the West is deeply unsettling and worrisome: hotter, bigger, more fires.” More than a dozen large wildfires are burning in Cali- fornia grass, brush and forest that is exceptionally dry from two years of drought likely ex- acerbated by climate change. The fires, mainly in the northern part of the state, have burned more than 1 million acres, or 2,000 square miles. Firefighters are witnessing extreme fire behavior as em- bers carried miles by gusts are igniting vegetation ripe for burning in rugged landscapes, where it’s hard to attack or build a perimeter to prevent it from spreading. The Dixie Fire, the largest currently burning and second biggest on record, wiped out the historic town of Green- ville and continues to threaten thousands of homes about 175 miles northeast of San Fran- cisco. The Caldor Fire, burning about 100 miles to the south, blew up since Saturday, torched parts of the hamlet of Grizzly Flat and is chewing through dense forest. John Hawkins, a retired fire chief for the state and now wildland fire consultant, said he’s never seen such explosive fire behavior in 58 fire seasons. A fire 50 years ago that torched 100 homes and killed Ethan Swope/AP In a long-exposure photo, embers fly from burning trees Aug. 17 as the Caldor Fire grows on Mormom Emigrant Trail east of Sly Park, California. two people near Yosemite Na- tional Park once had the record for fastest expansion, covering nearly 31 square miles in two hours. But that kind of spread is becoming more common today. ‘Something has changed’ “The Harlow Fire of 1961 was one of a kind in its day,” Hawkins said. “As we draw a comparison today, it’s not one of a kind; it’s one after another. Something has changed.” Hawkins said he saw simi- larly rapid growth in the Cal- dor Fire. Dramatic time lapse video showed a massive plume grow- ing above thick forest. The col- umn rose up and dark smoke poured across the sky before the cloud erupted in flames shooting hundreds of feet in the air. “It wasn’t a slow deal,” Haw- kins said. “When you see one of those develop that fast in heavy timber and already see another dozen fires in Cali- fornia running crazy it doesn’t take much to light your light- bulb or ring your bell.” Ten of the state’s largest and 13 of the most destructive wildfires in the top 20 have burned in the last four years. The largest of those fires, the August Complex, a group of lightning-sparked blazes that merged, began a year ago this week. The deadliest and most — Associated Press Check out our Cottages! All the Amenities & Conveniences of Home & So Much More. 541-312-9690 2920 NE Conners Ave. Bend, OR 97701 www.whisperingwinds.com Call today to schedule a tour! destructive, the Camp Fire, killed 85 and destroyed nearly 19,000 buildings in November 2018. In the past, forest fires have been dominant in late sum- mer, and fires in the fall have burned in chaparral and wood- lands, driven by powerful dry winds created by high pres- sure over the Great Basin, said Malcolm North, a researcher with the U.S. Forest Service. The offshore winds, known as Diablos in Northern Califor- nia and Santa Anas in South- ern California, usually have powered some of the worst blazes as they sap vegetation of moisture and pick up speed as they squeeze through moun- tain passes and canyons, be- coming warmer and even drier. Erratic infernos like the Creek Fire last year, the fifth-biggest ever, could be blamed in part on a 2012-16 drought. It is estimated to have killed more than 100 million trees in the Sierra Nevada, the state’s largest mountain range and the setting for many of the fires, North said. North was co-author of a 2018 scientific paper that pre- dicted Sierra wildfires could burn at the intensity of blazes lit by fire bombings in Dres- den, Germany and Tokyo during World War II. “I do think that’s what we’re seeing,” said North. “The cur- rent models we have for how fires are going to behave don’t cover this because it’s just off the charts. It’s hazardous to firefighters and hard as hell to predict what it’s going to do.” North and others said they worry about the firefighters who have been working long hours for over a month on the Dixie Fire and move from one blaze to the next.
