Mon 31 Aug 2009
Sixty Minutes In The Life Of Death
Posted by Will under environment, news
[5] Comments
There is something about rampaging unstoppable wildfires and the literal and figurative pall they cast that both agitates and depresses me to marked degrees. It’s like such disasters create an internal tug-of-war wherein I want to got to irrational extremes — on one end I want to seek out destroy anyone even remotely resembling a past, present or future arsonist, and on the other I want to move to a place of permafrost and ice wherein there’s no chance of such disasters happening to me.
Because they do happen to me. Sure I’m not someone in the inferno’s path who’s lost property or suffered injury, but however indirectly and from whatever distance I am from the devastation I am nonetheless deeply affected by it.
As the following timelapse video of the Station Fire shows, I’m physically far away. From the roof of our Silver Lake home I set up the camera and captured the footage, condensed down to four minutes from an hour that passed last night beginning at 5 p.m.
It’s not very dramatic from a visual level, but with the spewing white plumes that power up above the hanging haze of ash and smoke, it makes me imagine gargantuan steam locomotives unseen behind a curtain of poison, destroying everything in their predatory paths. And it breaks my heart.
5 Responses to “ Sixty Minutes In The Life Of Death ”
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[...] Watch local cyclist Will Campbell’s video of the Station Fire, which condenses an hour of smoke down to 4 minutes: “with the spewing white plumes that [...]
I’ve seen several videos and pictures of the fires, yours, as you said is not dramatic, but it does give us an almost ethereal sense that this is just nature . You are so right at how sad this is to watch for those of us who grew up looking at those mountains.
One question—what is that flashing rectangle of white-ish light near the center of the screen a ways off? Flashing ad board? Or? If it were inconsistent, I’d have said reflection of the sun, but it is pretty consistent thru the video.
Good eyes, Kaleb! Indeed that deathlessly flashing rectangle you’ve found in the center of the frame is the electronic billboard that looms over Spaceland on Silver Lake Boulevard.
For a little more drama I’d invite you to check out this other timelapse of stormclouds I made two years ago from the same spot. If nothing else it provides something of a before/after comparison:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ6hkCxm9-o
On AP they are showing a bicyclist hit by a lawmaker:
http://video.ap.org/?f=wasee&pid=zBESVJbpqugODiUM8uyQDq7Bygc7_isC
I much prefer the cumulo video—so much less destructive in that mode.
the billboard reminds me of staying at a friend’s house—the billboard was 2 miles away was blinking so brightly it lit the room I was sleeping in.
there is a billboard on hwy 101 in NorCal outside of IKEA that had to be turned down to something like 23% because it was blinding people off the road.