another update on Mill Fire in Weed CA

[Peteri Szerlagi]

per nicc sit rep from thursday - Mill Fire - 118 structures lost - $12
million cost to date - 3,900 acres

I think the way they figure the $12M cost is - they start a tab as
soon as the fire starts (or as soon as the fire is declared to have
escaped initial attack and goes into extended attack mode) - every
person and every piece of equipment assigned to the fire has an hourly
rate per the various written agreements - so they just keep a tally of
those expenses and record it as the CTD (cost to date)

of course it is not a real representation of the firefighting cost -
all of those units would be on duty and getting paid even if it was
raining - but this is the accounting and reporting scheme that they
use - no structural FDs use a scheme like this - (lol someone will say
- but Joes FD in Montana uses this scheme - whatever)