Talk:Texas wildfires push public resources to the limit

Interview Transcript

• I video recorded this interview, but the camera work was a little wonky, so I'm just going to put a few written excerpts here.

9-10-11 11:03am CST

• Q: Would you please say your name for the record?

A: "I'm Wes Johnston; I'm a captain with the Chandler Fire Department."

• Q: So, over the past two weeks, how many fires has the Chandler Fire Department been involved in, particularly wildfires --

been involved in fighting?
A: "5 - 6."

• Q: And how many of those have you been involved in?

A: "All of them."

• Q: Anything, specifically like injuries, any injuries firefighters have sustained?

A: "There been some minor injuries -- twisted ankles, minor burns, heat exhaustion."

• Q: What was the longest single fire your department was involved in?

A: "7 straight hours."

• Q: And approximately where was that located?

A: "It was on FM-314 South in Brownsboro."

• Q: And about when was that?

A: "Last Saturday."

• Q: From a financial standpoint, have the excessive outbreaks of fires, has it taxed the fire department financially?

A: "Yes. Most volunteer fire departments run off of donations completely and donations have been down, due to the economic conditions. So, extended fires -- we burn a' lot of gasoline, a' lot of diesel, a'lot of wear-and-tear on the equipment that has to be repaired."

• Q: Have you heard any other firefighters in the larger area complain about the finanical aspect of fighting the fires?

A: "It effects everyone. Even the cities have a set budget, for the paid departments, so they don't factor in a' lot of the variables for these types of incidents."
*and that's everything - audio version to follow (much, much) later. Bddpaux (talk) 03:25, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Video query

Just really a point of curiosity...

How "up" are you on getting video into the required Theora format for use on WMF projects?

I've done this in the past (but, with transcoding a YouTube stuff). One issue is there isn't the spare cycles on the WMF farms to re-render video to appropriate resolutions. So, if you get a 640x480 video clip - yeah, upload that to Commons. But, you'd also probably want to render a 220x165 version which can be embedded and will take less bandwidth when streaming (otherwise the 640x480 is streamed and resized in-browser).

However much of the video you've still got, it might be worth dabbling with the above stuff (I can send you relevant info on FOSS to use - mostly command-line stuff). Knowing ahead of time you just fire off a couple of scripts, start writing, and upload video when it's ready would probably be really useful. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 20:32, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

• Created an ogg-format audio version of the interview....and did a bunch of editing to take out laughing etc. etc. ........not sure where I'll post that when its finished, but it'll go somewhere.....I'm just tired tonight. -- Bddpaux (talk) 02:50, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

...and, worked on it a bit more again tonight. --Bddpaux (talk) 02:55, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Verification

Unfortunately, I can't verify the OR part of this from the excerpts above. (Not even the sentence in the article about those injuries; maybe in the context of the interview it becomes a valid inference, but I don't see 'have been common' from the excerpt.) --Pi zero (talk) 21:05, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, what can I say? Maybe I stretched it a bit.........'tis why we have reviewers. --76.4.37.75 (talk) 01:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm still missing "who is also an accountant", and from "He went on to describe" on to the end of that paragraph. --Pi zero (talk) 03:14, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, and that might be a bit of a sticky wicket.....from about 60 previous discussions, I happen to know that he's an accountant, but I didn't get him to say that during the interview. --Bddpaux (talk) 03:19, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Hm. We do now have documentation on the talk page of where the information comes from. Given the nature of the information, I choose to take that as sufficient. --Pi zero (talk) 04:21, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Review of revision 1287614 [Passed]

Revision 1287614 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 04:25, 15 September 2011 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: None added. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 1287614 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 04:25, 15 September 2011 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: None added. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.