Hazy shade of Summer

After a very dry Spring and early Summer, Saskatchewan (and its bordering provinces) has entered a very severe forest fire season.  While the fires are more or less limited to the Northern portion of the province, just about the entire province is suffering in one way or another.

Things took a turn for the worse in Regina late this morning when the smoke from the Northern fires finally began to drift into town.  By my brief lunch-hour walk about my building there was enough smoke that it was irritating my throat and had gone a fair way towards obscuring the sun (that it wasn't over 30 was the only consolation prize).  It wasn't long after the smoke began to move through town that you could even begin to smell it inside.

Of course, as the day/evening has progressed the situation hasn't improved.  Actually, it's bad enough that we are being discouraged from outdoor activities (including things like pet walking).

So kids, if anyone ever asks you can let them know that forest fires can be trouble for a much wider portion of the population than just those individuals put in harm's way by the fire.

The really good news for Dal Profs

Given the uncertainty around the legality of picket line burning barrels in Halifax it's probably a good thing that the Dal profs and the university just reached an agreement that will avoid a strike.

That being said, had there been a strike I do think it would have been pretty neat to see what the architecture profs could have come up with strike-shack-wise had their been a late winter strike.

Good news for Dal profs

As some of you may know, it looks as though the Dalhousie faculty and support staff may both be drawing closer to strikes.  Given the time of year these strikes would be taking place one would expect any picket lines to include strike huts and burning barrels.

Fortunately for future Halifax strikers, as a result of the ongoing transit strike the municipal government has recently agreed to not enforce the bylaw that makes illegal to have barrel fires in Halifax.  Presumably this precedent will carry over to other contemporaneous strikes?

Anyway,  assuming that the transit strike keeps going and the Dal faculty and support staff strike, Halifax could soon become the barrel fire capital of Canada.

I'm also curious about strike etiquette.  If to separate unions at the same employer are on strike at the same time how are picket positions determined?  Seems like there's a chance that the second union to go out could get stuck with dud locations.

Cameron: 36
Neil: 0

Very delayed reaction

A few years ago I posted about a fire that took place near our South End Halifax apartment. The fire, though not particularly large, did manage to damage a few restaurants and some row housing.



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Since the fire in January 2010, at least as far as I could tell, not much had happened with the buildings. Though the adjacent buildings were soon fixed and the restaurants re-opened, the restaurants in the primary fire location did not re-open in the same place.

Well, after almost two years, it seems that the building is finally being torn down.

I guess this means that there will now be space for new development beside Cornwallis park. I would be curious to know if there are already plans in place, or if they will only begin thinking about how to fill the space now that the building has been torn down.

Disaster day in Halifax

As previously mentioned, there was a relatively substantial apartment fire in Halifax's South end this morning. It turns out that at about the same time a water main problem was developing on Prince Street, only a few blocks away from the fire.

This afternoon, after checking out the fire, Neil and I made our way to Prince Street to see what was going on and how bad the damage was. Almost as soon as we reached Prince and Argyle it became clear that the repair job was pretty substantial. As we made our way down to Barrington it was clear that quite a number of nearby buildings suffered at least some flooding. I think that another problem that existed for some period of time was ice build-up on the roads and sidewalks in the area. Fortunately, by mid-afternoon not as much water was leaving the system so there was less water on the roads and sidewalks.

The clip below is a relatively uninformative shot of the repair work in progress. Behind the pile of rubble is a pretty big hole, which is presumably where the rupture happened.



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I guess I should also mention that there was apparently a flare up at the fire at some point this afternoon. When I returned from school at about 6:00 there were still all kinds of emergency vehicles with flashing lights going. Hopefully everything will be under control by tonight.

Close call

This morning, just a little while after 9:00 AM, my printer, without my involvement, seemed to turn itself off and on. Aside waking me up briefly, just long enough to go to the bathroom, I made my way back to sleep and didn't really spend much time thinking about what might have caused my printer to behave so erratically.

When I eventually woke up, about two hours later, one of the first stories I heard on CBC was about a fire in the South end of Halifax (which is where I live). At first I was quite interested as the reporter indicated that the fire was on South Street which runs from near where we live to Dalhousie, and beyond. They eventually mentioned the cross street and the name of an adjacent restaurant, neither of which registered with me, so I assumed that it was on some section of South Street not in the immediate vicinity of our apartment. I then let this fire story slip from my consciousness, aside from the fact that I decided to walk up South to go to school to try to figure out where the fire had taken place.

A little while later, shortly after Rebecca left, she raced back into the apartment to tell us that there was a rather large conflagration just across from our apartment. It seems that the name of the restaurant (Taj Mahal) and cross street (presumably Hollis) really should have registered as they are both visible from some of the apartments in our building.

I was then informed that my printer had turned on because the power had returned, after an outage of about 15 minutes. It was now obvious that the outage had been caused by the near-by fire. Everything started to make sense.

All three of us then decided to head out and see what was happening (and make sure that everything was under control). Fortunately, by the time we figure that there even was a fire, firefighting crews had been on the scene for hours. Amazingly, what we did see, even though there were about 20 fire trucks there, was smoke coming from one of the main doors.



We took a few rather unimpressive video clips of the scene. If these do anything they provide some sense of the scene after more of the flame had been extinguished, but before things had completely wrapped up.



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I guess it is good that my friend moved out of this building about 8 months ago. I really can't imagine how incredibly unpleasant it would be to have to deal with the consequences of a fire in one's building in the middle of Winter.

How easy is it to light hand-sanitizer?

Shortly after making a comment in my last post about a CBC story about a school in Nova Scotia that banned hand-sanitizer because it was flammable I became curious about how flammable it actually is.

I decided to give it a try and see if I could light the stuff. As you will see, it goes up pretty quickly, but doesn't cause a particularly big flame (and it was easy to extinguish, if controlled).



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The key, though, is that you still need a fire of some sort to start it, it doesn't seem to be too susceptible to self-combustion (or maybe I have just had good luck on this front). And, I would say that it isn't all that much easier to start than paper, which has been known to catch on occasion.

A Few Quick Notes 310

-After a few days of relatively nice weather we have slipped into rain and wind. Apparently this type of weather is supposed to be here tomorrow as well. The one major upside of this is that I presume it is helping with the Spryfield fire, so I guess in the long run this is probably a very timely turn of events (though maybe it would have been a little better yesterday afternoon).

-On the subject of the Spryfield/Herring Cove/Purcell's Cove fire that started yesterday afternoon (and that I covered in a few posts yesterday), while listening to the news I have heard suggestions that this may have had something to do with the end of the school year. As the public schools are still in session I presume these references are to universities, though I am not really sure I am following what it is they are suggesting. If these people are trying to suggest that people are going into the woods and having barbecues, or something similar, why not just say that. Instead every comment I have heard is vague and seems to jump around the point. Furthermore, as far as I know, the cause of the fire isn't known (and it certainly didn't seem to be known yesterday afternoon), so why people would jump to such conclusions seems a little strange to me.

-Neil, Rebecca, and Rebecca should be returning from their Saint John New Brunswick conference later today. Aside from them all getting there safely I don't really know anything about the experience. Presumably Neil will have plenty to blog about when he gets back.

-This morning I noticed that the two pots of chives that I had were rather infested with spider mites. Because chives don't have regular leaves with undersides the damage caused by the spider mites wasn't as noticeable. I now presume that these plants where what allowed the spider mites to jump to the bean plants I planted a few weeks ago. Soon after discovering the infestation I decided to get rid of the plants and wash all of the empty pots and trays. At the moment the only thing I have growing on the infested living room shelving unit is the zebra aloe, some dill, some beets, and two African violets. The reason these plants have remained is that they are showing no signs of infestation. I really hope this does the trick.

-I decided to bake a little more bread this morning. At the moment the final two loaves are in the oven. While the bread looks fine, the crust seems to have a slightly different texture than I was expecting.

-It seems that the name 'Swine Flu' has become a matter of some debate. My understanding is that a number of groups, including the WHO and the pork lobby, are interested in having the disease called by another name (ironically they want to call it the same name as the 1918 flu). I have a hard time believing that such a change is really worth the effort. It would seem that the efforts of such organizations might be more reasonably used for other matters relating to the outbreak. More importantly, it seems perfectly reasonable, at least to me, that the name of the disease reflects its origin (the animal not the food). To change the name of this disease helps downplay the significance of animal to human disease transmission, something that has the ability to be quite problematic. If anything we should at least acknowledge this risk, particularly as most of our recent flu scares in recent years have developed in this way (as well as other diseases). This isn't just a safe little thing that came out of thin air, it clearly came from a certain type of animal and other such diseases might come from other animals in the future, and this is something that we shouldn't forget. If this gets us to think about our food sources and farming practices it is probably not a bad thing, hopefully we might find ways to reduce such occurrences in the future. To ignore the origins is this disease is to increase the risk of similar issues arising again.

-A few days ago I started reading a pretty bad biography of G.K. Chesterton, so far I still have hardly any idea who he was or why I should be reading his biography.

A further fire update

Below is a selection of short clips of the fire/smoke that I took at the same time as the photos from the previous post.

Sorry for the shakiness of the camera and the relatively grainy quality of the images. Unfortunately the sun made it a little hard to see exactly what it was I was doing as I was filming.



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More on the Halifax Fire

After making the last post I decided to head to Point Pleasant Park to see if I could get a better sense of exactly where the fire CBC was reporting on was, and how large it was.

Almost as soon as I started upon my trip I was able to see that the fire was certainly pumping out a fair bit of smoke. Actually, given what I know now what I thought were clouds were actually likely smoke from the fire. As you could likely figured out on your own, all of the dark stuff behind the grocery store is smoke.



As I continued towards the park the smoke from the fire continued to be visible, and that the source was across from the park became clearer. From the Young Avenue railroad bridge the smoke is visible.



Obviously once I was in the park and on the trails I had an even better view of the source of the smoke.



As I was approaching the beach I happened to run into two friends who had been on the beach watching the progression of things. They suggested that where I was planning on heading was a great place to get a sense of things. They were hoping that I might be able to provide them with a little more information on the source of the fire. Unfortunately, I didn't really have much more information than they did, though I had heard that at least a few houses had been lost.

As soon as I made it to the beach it was clear that there seemed to be at least two fires. One of the fires was directly across the water from the park. This fire appeared to be behind the a ridge, so the flames were not visible.

A second, larger, fire appeared to be further south. Again, this fire also appeared to be behind a ridge.

















I spent a few minutes on the beach watching the progression of things. One of the most noticeable thing was that there appeared to be a number of planes and helicopters flying around. Some of these were clearly being used as water bombers, others I presume were surveying the fire (and I suspect some may have been removing people given that they kept going up an down).









By the time I left it seemed that the fire directly across from me had either been controlled, or had started to burn itself out as there was much less smoke than when I arrived.

The second, larger, fire seemed to still be pumping out a fair bit of smoke and was receiving the most attention from the helicopters.

All in all, this is quite the fire and disaster. I really hope that they were able to evacuate everyone in time.

I thought I should also point out that when I was in Point Pleasant Park earlier this afternoon this is what the view looked like.

Halifax Fire

It seems that there is a massive forest fire in the Halifax region (Spryfield/Herring Cove), CBC Radio One is providing pretty extensive live coverage.

Unfortunately it seems that at least a few houses have been lost already.

Edit: I just heard one of my classmates interviewed on the subject.

A Few Quick Notes 307

-Eventually today turned into a pretty nice day. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to spend quite as much time outdoors as I would have liked, and when I was outside things were a little less than perfect. Hopefully it will be even nicer tomorrow and I will have an opportunity to head outside (maybe even to Point Pleasant Park).

-Neil and I attended the Halifax Comedy Festival event International House of Comedy last night in the Schooner Showroom at Casino Nova Scotia. Our main justification for going was to see Dave Shumka of the podcast Stop Podcasting Yourself. I was also quite interested in seeing John Wing and Reggie Watts. A number of other comedians were performing along side these three (Natalie Gray was another of those that we saw last night).

Neil and I were particularly impressed with Mr. Shumka, and generally the first half of the show. I am not sure if it was because I was tired or if the performers in the second half of the show generally weren't as good, but I definitely didn't enjoy it as much as the first half. I guess the good thing is that I have learned that I don't quite have the stamina for ten performers in a row (or maybe I was just tired).

-Moments ago I returned from the grocery store. My main justification for the trip was to pick up some chicken that was on sale. I quickly learned that they were out of the particular item that I was looking for. Given that the sale had been on all week and the store was to close in less than half an hour I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Maybe I will eventually learn not to leave things until the last minute, though I think that this is doubtful.

-We had more beans for dinner tonight, this time we went for white kidney beans. I was particularly pleased with this batch. I think that adding a half pound of bacon to the mix really helped things along.

The more we have beans the more Neil and I are of the opinion that we really don't have much reason to stray from black beans. I guess once we get through the 6 or 7 pounds of other types of beans we can stick to purchasing black beans (though I don't think that I would mind white kidney beans once in a while). I also think that we might consider trying navy beans again, for some reason I imagine them to be somewhat similar in texture and flavour to black beans (though I don't know why I might think this).

-A few days ago my sister's school, Brother Rice Junior High, was set on fire by a local arsonist. Though the damage wasn't catastrophic, it was enough to close the school for a month. Obviously they had to come up with a plan for students for the next month.

Just today the plan for the displaced students was announced. It seems that these students will be sent to another school for the coming month. The catch is that the Brother Rice students will be doing the afternoon/evening shift while the original students get the morning shift. This is going to be quite a bummer for everyone involved. I imagine that most of the Brother Rice students will be quite glad to get back to their old school as quickly as possible.

I guess what I find funny about all of this is that when I was my sister's age I can't imagine anything that I would have wanted more than for my school to catch on fire and close for some period of time. Though as my mother pointed out today, there is likely nothing that I would have disliked more than having to be bussed to a new school for a month. As luck would have it, I avoided having to face such a circumstance (though I did mange to luck out and get a multi-week teachers strike for the end of grade six).