First it was wildfires, then it was unprecedented flooding, and now it is earthquakes. In the past two weeks alone, more than 400 earthquakes have shaken San Ramon – a small city that sits approximately 45 miles east of San Francisco. Never before have so many earthquakes been recorded in that area in such a short span of time. Standing alone, that earthquake swarm may not mean that much. But when you stand back and look at all of the unusual events that have been happening since late September, a very disturbing picture begins to emerge.
But first, let’s talk about this earthquake swarm. All over the planet, seismic activity seems to be increasing. According to Volcano Discovery, dozens of volcanoes around the world have recently erupted, and Afghanistan was just hit by a massive 7.5-magnitude quake. It was one of the worst earthquakes that Afghanistan has ever seen, and it is going to take months to deal with all of the damage. So that is why it is so alarming that right now there is record breaking earthquake activity just outside of San Francisco…
San Ramon, California, appears to have broken a new earthquake record over the last two weeks: A total of 408 small quakes have shaken the East Bay city, almost four times the record set in 2003 in half the amount of time.
“I’ve not felt so many tremors in decades,” Mark Stone said outside a San Ramon Starbucks on Tuesday morning. “My dog, Gimmel, she’s the first one to know a couple of seconds before.”
And his dog has been extra alert lately.
The state of California has been seeing a lot of disasters lately. In late September, tremendous wildfires in the state were making headlines all over the planet. In fact, Barack Obama formally declared the Valley Fire to be a “major disaster”, and federal funding was released to help fight it. The following is from an NBC News article that was posted on September 23rd…
Obama’s has been doing his best to worsen the wildfire problem.
That sounds like a joke, but it’s not. In the summer of 2011 the Obama Administration abruptly canceled the contract for the U.S. Forest Service’s use of P-3 Orion firefighting planes, “the backbone of the aerial firefighting arsenal.” That irresponsible action gutted the U.S. Forest Service’s aerial firefighting capability.
The Administration’s reasons are mysterious. They claimed it was due to safety concerns, but the planes, though old, had excellent safety records, they were up-to-date on their maintenance and inspections, and they were much cheaper than getting new planes.
The USFS was left with eleven smaller P-2 Neptunes. They went shopping for other planes, mostly BAe-146 jets, but the Orions are still sorely missed.
The company which operated the Orions was called Aero Union. The Obama Administration’s action put them out of business. Their six big four-engine P-3 Orion tankers (plus a 7th that was scheduled to enter service on the very day the contract was cancelled) were the core of America’s aerial firefighting capabilities. They were the “big boys,” with about twice the payload of the two-engine P-2 Neptunes, and 1.5x the payload of the new BAe-146 jets. I think the USFS also has access to a few Canadian CV-580s, but they’re smaller yet.
Putting Aero Union out of business not only deprived the USFS of most of the large firefighting planes they used, it also jeopardizes the maintenance of the MAFFS systems that Aero Union built, which are used on other firefighting planes.
The loss of the P-3 Orions drastically reduced the aerial firefighting capability of the USFS, and increased the risks faced by firefighters on the ground. I expected that problems with wildfires out west would worsen as a result. To my surprise, that didn’t immediately happen.
Glenn Beck post eliminated?
https://ncrenegade.com//editorial/glenn-beck-a-storm-is-coming/ is still up.