Record Wildfire Comes to Kansas, as Do Lifesaving Neighbors
MEDICINE LODGE, Kan. — The towering fire approached Don Gerstner’s house last week with such fury that there was no time to pack. All he and his wife, Carol, could do was scurry to their Toyota pickup and speed past a row of flaming trees toward the relative safety of a nearby road.
When the couple returned, the sturdy old home where they had raised their children had been reduced to a pile of bricks and ashes. Amid the destruction were the ruins of a marble-top coffee table, walnut cabinetry and decades worth of pictures and mementos. Also lost was a beloved English pointer, whose kennel Mr. Gerstner had tried unsuccessfully to reach.
“I’m going to rebuild this house, just exactly like it was,” Mr. Gerstner, 87, a carpenter, said Saturday as he surveyed the destruction.
The Gerstners’ home on the outskirts of Medicine Lodge is a mere speck in the nearly 400,000 acres of land that have burned since early last week. The blaze, which started on Tuesday across the state line in Oklahoma and by late Sunday had not been fully contained, is said to be the largest recorded wildfire in Kansas history and has prompted a vast mobilization of firefighters rarely seen in this state.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/us/record-wildfire-comes-to-kansas-as-do-lifesaving-neighbors.html
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the GMO-glyphosate-pharmaeutical CAFO industrial BORG steadily, relentlessly weakens and then kills microbial life in the soil. As the system destroys life, it USES the inert dirt that is left as a medium through which the industrial chemical inputs can be used to feed man-made PRODUCTS.
All this deliberate IGNORANCE in the service of profit could very well lead to the next Dust Bowl.
"Defenders of genetically engineered crops regularly claim that these varieties cut erosion by encouraging farmers to use tillage practices that enhance soil conservation.
"These claims have been repeated so frequently they are now being taken at face value, but a closer look reveals the opposite: GE varieties have made little or no contribution to cutting soil erosion in the United States, and they pose frightening risks to soil and water quality. This Environmental Working Group analysis clearly shows that it was the conservation provisions of the 1985 farm bill, not planting genetically engineered corn and soybeans, that was responsible for a welcome reduction in soil erosion on cropland..."
http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/blog/2014/oct/10
On top of that, it's in one of the few truly beautiful areas of Kansas - the Red Hills:
Photos courtesy of Kansas Geological Survey.
