#tw wildfires

[bom-bombon]

Goddamnit i hate living in California

Every fucking year and I'm so sick of constantly being threatened with wildfires

[billieconway]

Full name: Sybil "Billie" Alba Soto-Conway

Nicknames: Billie

Age: 34

Star sign: Leo (August 5th)

Hometown: Macon, Georgia

Occupation: Paramedic

Pronouns/Gender: She/her, cis female

Time in town: 10 years

@aurorabayaesthetic

(trigger warning: this intro contains mentions of wildfires and spousal death, proceed with caution)

-born Sybil Alba Soto, birthday August 5th, Leo to a fault

- goes by Billie (rarely tells anyone her given first name)

-raised in Macon, Georgia and has a distinctive southern accent to this day in spite of the fact that she’s been in Aurora Bay for seven years

- has four brothers, is the only girl, big loud family (mostly republican, she doesn’t wanna talk about it)

- her mother, excited to finally have a daughter, put her in several ‘toddlers in tiaras’ sort of pageants (but got freaked out by the JonBenet Ramsey case, and never put Billie in a pageant again)

- had a very normal and happy childhood, was kind of a tomboy in her earlier years due to the amount of brothers (she is grateful for it, it made her very tough)

- was very miss americana and popular in high school; cheerleader, homecoming queen, most likely to suceed etc

-originally pursued a career in nursing, moving to los angeles to complete the nursing program at UCLA 

- during her final year, she veered into paramedic training after doing a week-long shadow of a paramedic for a research paper (she moved to Aurora Bay after graduation)

 - she met her future husband, Logan Conway (who was a firefighter), on a call during her first full week of work

- after two years of dating, the two of them had a small wedding in los padres national forest (billie was 26 at the time)

- by the time they were married, logan was working as a hotshot firefighter, specifically working in wildfires across the state

- almost five years ago, in a dry california summer filled with wildfires, logan lost his life while fighting a blaze in the los padres national forest after a freak wind shifted the fire and he was overcome by it 

- widowed at 30, billie remembers very little of the immediate aftermath of logan’s death -- only that she started laughing hysterically when the funeral director asked if she wanted him cremated (she did, but god, the irony)

- she took a year off of work after logan died, spending some time back in georgia with her family and spending some time in montana with his

- once she returned to being a paramedic (roughly 3 years ago) she joined the team at aurora bay fire department as their resident paramedic/ambulance driver, so she’s usually out on calls with them 

personality

- georgia peach all the way, billie is sweet but takes no bullshit (whiskey in a teacup sort of gal)

- feels and cares deeply from the heart, which is why she’s so good at her job (but can also be a downside because everything becomes personal)

- once you’re in her life, you’re there for good. she’s the kind of gal who remembers birthdays, your mama’s name, and what kind of dessert is your favorite and will always send thank you cards and read that book or watch that show that you told her about 

- she’s done a pretty effective job at trying to move her life through the loss of her husband, finally feeling like she’s making headway and going forward. has a morbid sense of humor about the whole thing. her heart still seizes up when she sees fire fighters running towards a blaze. very tough, but absolutely has her vulnerable moments and can be caught crying in the back of her ambulance from time to time

wanted connection:

- for the love of god this girl needs friends and people to lean on when she needs it, someone come drink wine on the back deck and look at the stars with her 

- maybe someone she met through a grief support group? 

- the one poor guy who has been/will be her first date since “getting back out there” 

- friends of her late husband (he was a Montana native but lived in Aurora Bay from the ages of 20-32)

- people she’s met from her college days 

- hiking buddy

- baseball game buddy

[gryphonlover]

Whumptober 2023 Day 10

Prompt: stranded

Victim: Wind

Words: 510

Notes: We're doing Wind again.

Wind didn't know how he'd ended up in this situation. He was a pirate, for crying out loud, he had absolutely no reason to be in the middle of a wildfire!

And yet… and yet here he was, stranded in Wild's era, trapped by flaming trees on one side and flaming grass on the other. He didn't think that he could really do anything about it with the wind waker, since all the air was just going up in the flames and he kind of needed that air to breathe.

So the wind waker was out of the question, and he didn't have anything else on him that he thought he'd be able to use. He didn't have his things with him, since he'd gone to wash up for the night in the river.

Thank Hylia he wasn't very far from the river when the fire had reached him.

The problem was that he now didn't have anywhere to go, the smoke and heat taking its toll on his body.

He knew a little bit about fire, but he'd grown up on the ocean, not here. He curled up a little smaller, crouched in the river water. He could smell the thick smoke through the bit of his shirt that he'd pulled over his nose and mouth. There was so much smoke in the air that even the cloth of his tunic couldn't keep it out. 

A particularly large flame swelled in front of him and he choked on the smoke that it pushed in his direction. It got in his eyes, too, stinging. Blinking didn't even help, it just made his eyes run with dirty tears.

He didn't know how long he hid there, struggling to breathe and desperately trying to prevent his skin from blistering due to the heat, but it felt like forever before the fire finally started to die down. If he strained, he thought he could hear a soft melody over the breeze, and then the rain came.

Out of nowhere, water burst forth from the sky, drenching everything. He shivered from the abrupt change, the cool water soothing his overheated body.

He was exhausted, his legs trembling as he fought his weakness to stand and walk. With a splash he found himself back on the ground, but through sheer determination dragged himself back up to slowly wade across the shallow river in the hopeful direction of safety.

He was greeted with the faint sight of a familiar blue scarf waving in the wind in the distance. He collapsed in relief on the bank of the river. 

"Warriors!" He cried, his voice cracking painfully from breathing in smoke. 

His brother pivoted at the sound, then ran over, falling to his knees to embrace him in a tight hug. 

"Wind– oh thank Hylia you're safe." 

Wind clung to Warriors, squeezing his eyes shut against the tears that threatened to break free as he was scooped up like a kid in his brother's arms, protected from the dangers of the world. 

"You're safe now. I've got you." 

[willtheweirdrat]

man i'm genuinely kinda scared right now. the sky outside is yellow and i smell smoke everywhere. wildfires have started again and just. idk. i fucking hate summer and wildfires. i dont know what to do.

[gemsofgreece]

How much of Greece has burnt in the last 20 years?

The video has Greek subtitles and if you select auto-translate mode, you can get solid English subtitles.

[eldestsiblingsyndrome]

Turkey is BURNING

tw distressing footage, wildfires

As a result of the forest fires that broke out and continued in different parts of the country, as of August 3rd 2021 8pm (GMT+3), an estimated total of 157,860 hectares of land, 2397 buildings, 1082 households, and 5922 people were affected.

credit: radicalized_faghag on instagram

(look at the first reblog for links)

captions under the cut

Here's some context on the #helpturkey posts that have been circulating bc without context these posts run the risk of being emptied out as pray4turkey virtue-signaling.

Turkey is the Mediterranean country hit the hardest bt wildfires not bc of any natural reasons but bc of the negligence and corruption of the ruling party. Even though global warming definitely worsened their intensity, wildfires are always expected in a heatwave.

Of the affected countries Greece owns 20 firefighting planes, France 26, Spain 17, and Italy 19, whereas Turkey has 0 functional ones and had to lease 3 planes from Russia for 1.3 million liras per day. (The presidential palace boasts 13 planes and AKP officials use private jets for everything so this is not a matter of not being able to afford planes.)

The funds and facilities of the responsible institution (Turkish Aeronotical Association) have been plundered for years. And now state officials, while admitting there's not a single extinguishing plane that can be used, are trying to shift the blame to Turkey's eternal scapegoats, the Kurds, implying that the cause of the fires could be terrorist "sabotage". The murder of the Dedeoğlu family was a direct consequence of this rhetoric and there are reports that ultranationalist gangs are patrolling villages and attacking people they suspect to be Kurdish.

Pro-gov media claims everything's under control but mayors of the burning cities are going on camera to beg for helicopters and planes because the flames are unstoppable and the wind is blowing strong.

In the past days the goverment selectively accepted aid from countries like Russia & Azerbaijan but not others. AKP doesn't want to appear weak and instead of focusing on putting out the fires, they're fuiling their propaganda machine with the hope they can score a few votes by fearmongering.

Municipalities are helpless because under the presidential system, many of their funds and operational powers have been taken away and centralized. Locals and volunteers are left to their own devices.

So people in Turkey took it upon themselves to ask for international help and pressure the goverment to accept help from the EU and others. Because otherwise no air support is on its way and everything will burn.

[gemsofgreece]

It’s the burn crops and force mass starvation and hunger alongside inflation theory for the arson.

Possibly but not so much for Greece. The fires rarely start from crops here. It’s almost always close to forests / Natura 2000 areas or inhabited areas…

The prevailing theory in Greece is that they do it to expand illegal building (ie get permission to build hotels in naturally beautiful or formerly protected regions) or to establish wind parks.

But, like, it’s been soo organised this year… almost as a whole. I wonder if they did have arson findings in the other countries too.