Although I know nothing of the Rim fire specifically, fire fighting operations have good logistical support and the basics are pretty well handled. Keep paying taxes - they will be used effectively.

I added the current hot spot data to the online map link that I posted earlier. This likely shows the areas where the fire is trying to expand.

See the "About" link in the upper left corner of the map for more information.

http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/fires/2013_rim_fire_map.html

Joseph, the Gmap4 guy

Apparently the federal budget for fighting wildfires has already been depleted--again. I'm not sure how much state agencies like CalFire depend on Federal support. Anyway, that means funds from other US Forest Service programs have to be diverted to support fire fighting activities. Almost a billion dollars have been spent by the Feds for fire fighting and the season is not over yet.

Since the consensus seems to be that wildfires will continue to be bigger and more frequent for the foreseeable future, the budget shortfall will continue to be an issue. The population will continue to expand and push further into wildland areas going forward, increasing the situations were fire suppression will be called upon.

SOCAL has all of September and October to go. The Cedar Fire in San Diego was late October 2003. The fuel conditions are very similar now as then...

As I understand it, the US Forest Service budget has been depleted already. Other agencies (NPS, BLM, and others) apparently still have funds, although they are probably close to depletion.

Congress could appropriate more money, but that would require action.

According to this article, authorities are rapidly trying to fill up reservoirs away from the wildfire region with water from Hetch Hetchy before it becomes more contaminated by ash from the Rim Fire. The intake valves are down about 300 feet from the surface, and ash has not really reached that level yet.

Not an immediate threat of impatcting the city's water supply in any way since these outlying reservoirs already store many months of water for San Francisco. At some point, the water coming from Hetch Hetchy might require some additional filtering for ash and later on, from post-fire sediment.

Will also need some clever pH rebalancing, ash pulls way alkaline.

There's nothing quite so shocking as seeing the massive amount of deadly chemicals needed to make water safe to drink at mass scale.

http://www.valleywater.org/services/TheWaterTreatmentProcess.aspx

Cool stuff.

This is the first article I have seen suggesting a cause for the massive Rim Fire. In this case, possibly an illegal marijuana grow operation in the rugged terrain west of Yosemite.

Also, winds have finally shifted to push smoke towards the heavily visited Yosemite Valley area.

Wow that's tough if that fire was caused by an illegal drug operation. I wonder if the authorities should pay a bounty for info leading to the illegal growers or the locations of their sites..

I was up in the southern Sierras about 3 weeks ago. I was thinking that there is a LOT of dead brush and old dry pine branches in those forests. The amount of combustible dry stuff is a lot. There are not many campers and not many people gathering the dead branches for firewood. The danger is high.

Pete2

Just reading that the Rim Fire is now 75% contained. It has burned 369 square miles so far, and even in such a remote region, burned 111 structures (but "only" 11 homes).

Good job to everyone involved with the suppression effort! Feels like the end is in sight.

Doesn't appear that San Francisco water quality will be affected, at least now. Ash has been falling onto Hetch Hetchy reservoir but I assume that the bulk of the water supply to the city during the fire has been coming from alternate reservoirs, away from the ashfall.