In the winter Chopper Chick flies helicopters for TV stations and police departments in southern California. She also does “lift jobs”, using a long line to lift objects like air conditioning units to the tops of buildings. But in the summer she flies helicopters on fires. Her blog has some behind the scenes information about what it’s like to fly a Sikorsky 58T over smoke-shrouded, pot-garden-infested, Mendocino County in northern California.
Check out the size of that exhaust pipe just above her head in the picture. And click on the photo to see a larger version.
Firefighter Blog always has good information about the world of wildland fire. Recently he has been covering the Gap fire west of Santa Barbara.
The Piute fire, south of Lake Isabella and Kernville, made some significant runs in the last 24 hours on the east and northeast side. The fire is 16,626 acres and 18% contained.
The Fire continues to move east towards the Kelso Valley area and slowly down slope on the western perimeter in the Thompson Canyon area. Increased dozer work taking place on the southwest corner is designed to tie old roads together and give firefighters suppression options. Crews continue to hold constructed hand line and dozer line on the southern perimeter to protect the community of Claraville. Approximately 100 firefighters added over a mile of line and conducted burn out operations to strengthen the southern fire line during the night. Steep terrain on the western and northern portions of the fire is hampering efforts. Three strike teams of engines are on stand-by for initial attack over the holiday weekend.
The map below was updated at 9:15 a.m. today, Friday.
It’s always fun to see the local fire engines in the 4th of July parades.
Wildland engines from the State of South Dakota led the fire truck portion of the parade.
The Hot Springs Fire Department brought out their finest antique apparatus.
It was a hot day and the kids enjoyed being wet down by the remote controlled front-mounted nozzles.
I’ll thank Firegeezer for the idea, but if you have photos of engines, preferably wildland, in your 4th of July parade, send them to me. I’ll try to post a few here. To email me, scroll down to the bottom of the column on the left, to the “About Me” section, and click on “View my complete profile”.
The Basin fire at Big Sur took out another three homes late yesterday, which brings the total to 20. The fire was very active on the north side in the Puerto Suelo Creek drainage, on the east side near Tassajara, and on the northwest side around Big Sur where it has burned across some dozer lines and is within 1/2 mile or less of the coast highway.
There is also a lot of fire activity on the south side where firefighters are attempting to hold the fire at dozer lines from the ridge down to the coast, and along the North Coast Ridge Trail where they conducted a firing operation, hoping to hold the fire north of the trail and tie it in with the Indians fire using the Rodeo Flats Trail.
The evacuation order has been extended from Andrew Molera State Park north to Palo Colorado Canyon Road. The fire is 64,304 acres and 5% contained.
A Forest Service spokesperson said:
Offshore winds have caused the fire to make a substantial advance along the coast toward Big Sur. The fire spotted across numerous locations from Ventana Inn north to Manuel Peak and burned actively downslope through the night. This is causing major control problems in protecting the Big Sur community.
Some residents are refusing to evacuate.
Kirk Gafill, general manager of Nepenthe, said he and five employees were up all night trying to protect the cliffside restaurant his grandparents built in 1949. Wearing dust masks, the crew scrambled to stamp out embers, some the size of dinner plates, that were dropping from the sky, he said.
“We know fire officials don’t have the manpower to secure our properties,” Gafill said. “There are a lot of people in this community not following evacuation orders. Based on what we saw during Katrina and other disasters, we know we can only rely on ourselves and our neighbors.”
Greg Ambrosio, who lives next to Nepenthe, signed a waiver Wednesday night to stay in his house. But his plans to stay were disrupted when he was awoken by a neighbor in the middle of the night who warned of the approaching inferno.
“Then there’s a knock on the door, and we go outside and the fire had just expanded. It was Armageddon,” he said. “Just yellow smoke and ash mixed with fire. It was just raining down.”
Ambrosio said he and his wife grabbed their cat and drove to a relative’s house for the night.
The map below was current as of late yesterday, Thursday. Click on it for a larger version.
The map below shows heat, in red, orange, and black, detected by satellites last night, with the red areas being the most recently burned. The yellow lines are the perimeters uploaded by the incident management teams yesterday. Click on the map to see a larger version.
Have a great 4th of July. The 30,000 folks watching the fireworks at Mount Rushmore last night got an early start on the holiday.
Usually the fireworks at Mount Rushmore, set in a ponderosa pine forest, start a few small fires, sometimes as many at 10 to 15, which are put out by the dozens of firefighters staged around the monument. But it has been a wet early summer and the heavy growth of grass has not cured yet… it’s pretty green right now, so it is unlikely that any fires would have any potential.
Here is a pretty good 5 minute video of the Martin Mars air tanker dropping on the Motion fire near Shasta Like north of Redding, CA. It has a musical sound track that is only a little obnoxious. (I don’t know why, but the media keeps insisting on calling it a “water bomber”.)
