I know a lot of feds who were struggling with the shutdown & all the crap they've been put through this year. I know neighbors who depend on SNAP. I know families (ours too) who were in the process of altering holiday plans. No doubt, the shutdown was bad for many. But to cave? Like this? Come on.

Ridiculous. That's my center.

Solid op-ed by my friend Bobbie Scopa: www.deseret.com/opinion/2025...

OK, every weekday in November I'll try to post a fire photo. Here's one of a Shot crew getting geared up and ready to hike into the fire. I can't remember which fire this was, but I'm fairly certain it was in New Mexico.

$69/410 pieces of candy all gone by 7:40. Next year, I'm getting a stack of brochures from the Coast Guard to pass out to the adult trick-or-treaters.

Same. And yes, disasters were definitely on the ballot--and in multiple ways.

Back in the day, I was working a fire near a fancy ski resort. This was when $30 million homes were still unfathomable to me. This guy, who kept bragging that he had the President's personal phone number, came up and said he was going to write a check to pay for all the firefighter meals. 1/

When I do candy corn I only do the Autumn Mix. Got to have those little pumpkins.

The president has still not signed the governors disaster declaration request for Alaska. This is directly keeping funding out of the hands of disaster survivors who need it.

Yikes! I knew this would be a big number, but I didn't imagine it would be THAT big--over one-third of GDP growth since 2000 is recovering from and preparing for disasters. This seems unsustainable. Maybe we should change some things?

Once clutch, always clutch. Once an Astro, always an Astro. The one-time World Series MVP gets a chance to make it two and I'm a Canadian for the rest of the baseball season.

Not only is the shutdown affecting the prescribed fire shoulder season & making it impossible to treat acres, but the longer it goes the more it cuts into the training season & the prep for 2026. Because so much training is set up by the feds, it affects local, state, & private resources as well. 1/

Unfortunately, on federal lands this year we are missing another prescribed fire window because of the government shutdown. We are frittering away opportunity every time we put up additional roadblocks to the use of prescribed fire.

Saddened to see more good people leaving federal service before they should. Institutional knowledge & memory are forever diminished, the mission and culture wrecked irreparably. Just a huge and unnecessary loss that will haunt this country for years to come.

Every new smoke study is nothing but bad news. We'll soon need to use different strategies and tactics that limit firefighter exposure. But can you do that and reduce community smoke exposure too, or will it mean more fire on the landscape longer--and thus more deaths? Another climate quandary.

What can we realistically expect from water systems during urban wildfire conflagrations? We held a recent workshop with on-the-ground experts and have written up some initial takeaways ucanr.edu/blog/conflue...

Sengun, Amen, and the Rockets play basketball today, and boy, do I need the escape that good hoops brings. Oh, that Slim Reaper guy is also playing.

Turned on the heat for the first time this morning. There was enough of a chill in the house that these old bones did not want to get out from under the covers. Thus marks my official start of Fall.

Happy 71st Birthday SRV! Still the coolest cat ever. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLC3...

I'm just a dumb wildland fire guy in SW Oregon, but even I can see this will increase uncertainty & raise risks for my structural brothers & sisters in FDNY-as well as NYPD, State Police, & responders in nearby jurisdictions. Not to mention everyone living in the area, which I'm told is quite a few.

This cool air and rain feels like a season-ending event for wildland fire in the PNW, at least for areas west of the Cascades. My scientific findings support this and by that, I mean I wore jeans instead of shorts yesterday.

Climate chaos is coming for us. Some places face bigger risks than others, but no matter where we live, we're gonna struggle to adapt to events like nothing we've seen before. I'm a climate futurist. Let me level with you about what this means. 🧵 (Img:OldMarshallJailHotel)

I'd like to point out there are still 7,500 wildland firefighters working 19 uncontained large fires and yesterday, initial attack actions were carried out on 236 new starts. A shutdown adds to the stress, reduces capacity, and creates additional uncertainties in a massively complex environment.

Injuries, free agency, & time finally caught up with my childhood team. I'm not sure any team could overcome more than 2,000 games lost to injury but still, the #Astros were in it until the end. 2017-2024 was a hell of an 8-year run & the little kid in me really enjoyed it. Now, let's go Rockets.

In war ravaged Portland, Fort Powell still stands.

Excellent thread about performing during an incident of compressed time and high stress. There are few times in history where the conditions were so intense and the decisions were so critical for all of us. Good job Lt. Col. Petrov.

Infuriating. So many feds have such specialized knowledge that it will be near impossible for them to find a decent-paying private sector job. The worst part is that this was totally predictable and yet nothing was ever put in place to help. We just left public servants to fend for themselves.

Truly impressive number of birds migrating tonight. More than 800 MILLION birds up in the air right now❗ #BirdMigration

ICE has released Oregon firefighter Rigoberto Hernandez Hernandez from federal custody. Hernandez was arrested while working the Bear Gulch Fire in Washington, and his release came as a surprise Wednesday morning.

Hope is not a strategy, no matter how much we want it to be. Placing hope in some possible-but not guaranteed-good outcome that is still over a year away is folly. Show me a plan for now that is based on current risks. Then, show me contingency plans based on predictable bad things happening. 1/

We'll see. Still waiting on details.

Today started off like every 9/12: My wife woke me by yelling, "You stole my youth!" We then exchanged gifts, dressed nicely, & went to a good Italian place for lunch. Tonight, it was a churro place. Reaching the Golden 50 becomes more imaginable each year & I've got the best one to do it with.

As a Rockets fan, I'm looking forward to the season and seeing what Şengün cooks up for this year.

I’d you too are “troubled” (😒😒) you may want to read what I wrote about the Florida Everglades Concentration Camp. open.substack.com/pub/disaster...

Infuriating. Smart, serious leaders put safety first because they value the lives of others. These people are not smart. Or serious. Or leaders.

Update - seems like the IMT collaborated and straight up wrote an immigration raid work assignment into the IAP.

1. Concentration camps are bad. 2. Emergency Managers shouldn't be involved in building and operating concentration camps. 3. Emergency management agencies should not be used for political stunts. 4. Don't follow orders from white nationalists. disasterology.substack.com/p/disasterol...

WTF? This should not happen. At all.

Forests are burning MUCH bigger and hotter in the Western US... annual area burned increased 10-fold from 1985-2022, and area burned severely increased 15-fold! And hotter, drier fire weather is part of the problem (plus fire suppression & fuels buildup, ofc) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Have any EMs felt any impacts to preparedness, response, recovery, or mitigation related to Weather support or programming from NOAA/NWS this year? If so - DM me or email me. Thank you

Smoke Blankets the Iberian Peninsula by @mapsbyw.com & Kathryn Hansen in NASA Earth Observatory earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/15469... #wildfires #incendiosforestales #calidaddelaire #IIFF

I have a one-man LLC. The amount of junk mail, email, & LinkedIn messages I get from companies that think I'm spending tens or hundreds of thousands on IT infrastructure, IT security, insurance, and personnel is astonishing. And there is no way to shut it off. You whack one mole & ten more appear.

Spain continues to battle major wildfires on Sunday, especially in the north-western Galicia region where blazes have torn through parched forests for more than a week. youtu.be/U2m2-OPUodA?...

Even where they are staffed, they are often ill-prepared. Just had to send home a local Fed Type 2 crew because they weren't self-sufficient. Someone (ahem) took away their P-cards, so they can't feed or house the crew.

Every paragraph in this story about smoke exposure is brutal. I'm starting to question how wildland firefighting is any different from Russian soldiers clearing debris at Chernobyl--except it's in much slower motion & we all keep doing things to make it worse. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2025/08/17/u...

MODIS and VIIRS are critical for wildland fire. It would be an act of malicious ignorance to take them down. That would increase risk for firefighters, depriving them of key info. Not to mention the increased risk to communities.

I’m teaching a GIS course Fall 2025 on wildfire activity mapping. This class will be offered through the Prof and Continuing Edu program at Eastern Washington University and you don’t need to be an EWU student to enroll! Email or DM with questions or if you’d like the syllabus!

New Mexico Magazine recommends THE JEMEZ MOUNTAINS by @firescar.bsky.social!

When you see these pictures, remember that the exiting civil servant Chair of the UK Climate Change Committee said, not long back, that 2050 would be very much like today As I said at the time, utter, irresponsible, bollox www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

This 👇👇👇 I’ve taken a deep dive into insurance documents and insurance wildfire models over the last few weeks (more on this in future post). Climate change is a BFD to the insurance industry. It’s crazy the US gov’t is in denial while the insurance industry is trying to better understand the risk