EISPIRATEN

Sean wrote: ↑With so many fires raging at once, and so many communities under threat of being burned, the firefighters are being stretched thin and worked to exhaustion. Without getting too political, I'm thankful for the brave men and women on the lines doing the hard jobs of keeping people and property as safe as possible, and I blame politicians and arsonists and careless firestarters more than climate change for the terrible scale of this destruction.

Think I have a response...this came up before with the Aussies. Boiled down to the question from them of why is a professional fire service so important. Little was it known back then that these types of questions would be rather common. They had all volunteer, 4 planes for the isle. Rah-rah-rah,heros, etc. Our guys sat in the offices, while our guys called here to get organized firefighting sources over. "What is an incident commander?"

Big plane(foreign aid) comes over, press takes a photo. Aussies flying, drop phoshek. True the town was on fire in spots. And maybe the woman who got splattered red in the crosswalk shouldnt have been there? 100% response was rah-rah-rah our heroes. I thought the photo was fake..but thats the Aussies I guess. As an end, at least the Aussies went on a fire fighting plane buying spree.

You could answer the question by mentioning a perspective on fire, or something like that...but that was american arrogance etc...probably a trump supporter. But the thing is, the answer is what does it mean to you? And thats their real answer. Some people think Runyon is hiking. I know Garcetti demanded that the outdoors were solely for..'exercise'.

So, what is the point of a professional firefighting service? Still 15.75 miles away. But for all you 'its not that bad cause you have the covid mask', its closed.

Fire gets to Observation territory....lets not get too alarmed, but yeah. Flames in final approach.

AV News has live/raw coverage on FB from Juniper Hills.

The fire is cresting PVR.



Dozer, after scraping a line.

In....one of the buildings on fire

I feel like I'm watching a train wreck.

Yikes!

The flames are starting to migrate into the West camera as well...

If it crosses the Harvard/Wilson saddle, I shudder to think.

It could go around the back of the observatory and attack from both sides

this is really sad. in the west camera, it's almost to the road leading to the observatory... if it crosses over to the north, seems like it cuts off access.
no air assets around the observatory atm... last night there were a lot of night flights

which seems to be happening:

Maybe they've sent air support off to protect homes in juniper hills area

Its weird...not only you got the multiple attacks on Wilson, but you have the other fires. Wind speed lowks slow.
You got a type of nuclear bomb that went off on the north side (this is an edit..have to remember to check the map they always move the lens on alertwildifre on me).Has to be high desert residences on the right.
You got a raging fire at Pine Mtn/Rincon
You got the fire seen from Wilson north, which is not small...maybe the bobcat/hwy 2?
And sunset pk cam shows inferno in the SG wilderness.

MtnHigh

After the Station Fire, we were fortunate to have the area from Chilao to Wrightwood relatively unscathed. There were scars around from past fires, but the area really survived a close call, and it was beautiful wilderness. Now, unfortunately, this fire appears to be covering all the rest of these areas that the Station Fire didn't get to - so very sad. I guess we're just going to have to start appreciating the new look of this area when we are allowed to go back into it.

Etch-a-sketch time...

Just devastating. Much of the mountains will be closed for years, and it won't be the same for decades/in our lifetime - if ever. Temps are too hot for much of the evergreens to regrow.

Don't want to start a new thread but the Snow Fire started this afternoon at Snow Creek on the north side of San J.

We really might lose everything this year, for years to come.

On a positive note, here is a hopeful PSN story about efforts to save structures.

The crews saved Camp Trask and the nature center in Monrovia Canyon Park.

Of course we've been closely watching the struggle to save Mt. Wilson for the last few days. It appears that all of the major scientific infrastructure still stands, though last night the blaze was threatening some buildings on the southern perimeter, as it skirted around the edge of the large summit area.

A cabin in the Kratka Ridge/Snowcrest area was also saved.

Resources are now shifting to the north side of the fire, to protect houses in Juniper Hills.

This morning I don't see any more smoke out of Upper Winter Creek (or anywhere in that area). It was like a smoking chimney the last 2 days. Looks like last evening's run up the head wall to Harvard/Wilson Saddle was it's last gasp. It appears that they stopped it from jumping the saddle into Eaton Cyn. drainage. Along with saving Observatories, etc. this is a big win if ya ask me.

I don't know if the fire is needed in this area or not, but I'm really bummed to say the least. I suppose we just have to be thankful that we had the chance to explore the SG and PVR wilderness areas before the fire.

I've been trying to understand the complex nature of fire and our response to it by reading this book. It's really good.

http://ws-na.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/cm?l=as1&f=ifr&o=1&t=tapatalk02-20&asins=0520255771

9/18/2020 am

If you watch the west camera time lapse from last night you can see fire trucks on the road right next to the flames to give you a sense of the scale of what they were facing:

My understanding is that the Wilson fire on the cam was a backfire set. The whole middle San Gabes looks like it is going down. The San G from Angelus to the fire scar from Lake is toast and we have the Snow Creek fire creeping up the ridge currently at 5,000 feet with nothing to stop it. We may have a clear clean out of the three major wilderness areas of untouched area in one year, fucking depressing.

Sunset cam..

Thats the Rincon/Pine Mtn west fork side fire flaring from the evening winds..pretty much winds in the Angeles are at 15+ with 25 gusts for this wind 'event' this evening.
People want to know about the Camp Williams fire/Glendora evac mention, but thats not it.
Its been quiet on the social medias on Williams. NBC put out the evac notice recently.
Nothing from LACoFD since. Should be resolved soon?

Is Newcomb's in the line of fire (again)?

Is there a new fire now east of where Bobcat is, down by the foothill cities? I can see a huge dark plume and a pyrocumulus cloud from my balcony in Silver Lake. Hard to tell exactly where it is, except it is pretty far east of Wilson, but maybe not quite as east as Baldy, and burning very low in the front range. Maybe above Glendora or Claremont.

HikeUp wrote: ↑Is Newcomb's in the line of fire (again)?

Yup. But resources are around has been said. Last time it was a bit of a surprise as Station moved fast, so this time it looking good chances.
You've got resources for Chilao and Caltrans as well in place.

davidwiese wrote: ↑Is there a new fire now east of where Bobcat is, down by the foothill cities? I can see a huge dark plume and a pyrocumulus cloud from my balcony in Silver Lake. Hard to tell exactly where it is, except it is pretty far east of Wilson, but maybe not quite as east as Baldy, and burning very low in the front range. Maybe above Glendora or Claremont.

Looking on Caltopo, it looks like it's burning by San Gabriel reservoir.

It's burning homes in Juniper Hills now.

Day ending....MtEmma cam on the west and on the east MtHigh
MtHigh....edit: La county incident commander..'we are going to wrightwood tommorow .all hands on deck'