The fire up close -- and from very far away
This photo from the Earth Snapshot Web site -- www.eosnap.com; hat tip to Kevin Roderick at LA Observed -- was taken yesterday from a satellite.
It was taken Sunday afternoon, our time, clearly -- as anyone who was around in the morning knows that we were socked in by the worst smoke I've ever seen in the San Gabriel Valley before the winds finally turned onshore instead of down-canyon.
What a harrowing weekend of fear for friends who live along and in the evacuation zones; mourning for the two firefighters killed up near Acton; memories of the first home I owned, across the ravine from the Angeles National Forest at the foot of Echo Mountain; concerns for the front range, for the damage to the watershed and wildlife, for the mudslides to come. I am extremely worried about the historic telescopes at Mt. Wilson, where the universe as we know it was literally discovered.
The Super Scooper's here -- finally. Why doesn't the state own its own instead of having to import from Canada at the (artificial, clearly) Sept. 1 start of the "fire season"? It's always the fire season, now.
Now that it's blown through, I'm eager to get up into the Arroyo Seco toward Gould Mesa and in Millard Canyon to assess the damage. The upper Arroyo is within the city limits of Pasadena way up above JPL because the stream is a source of city of Pasadena water. It's a trout stream to boot and supports the lives of tons of other wildlife. Millard has many cabins owned by locals as getaways just a few minutes from town.
The firefighters are clearly doing tremendous work -- saving lives, saving stuff -- against terrible odds.
But I will never understand the lack of specificity in saying what's been destroyed and what hasn't on the part of public information officials. Are the dozen or so historic cabins in Millard Canyon just above Chaney Trail still with us, or are they not? The TV coverage -- what there was of it -- was so vague all weekend that we might as well have been talking about the moon, for all the familiarity reporters showed with the terrain. These are real neighborhoods, real streets, real canyons going up. Couldn't we get a bit more specific than "from Altadena to Acton"?
I found the information bureaucracy incredibly frustrating. Nothing compared with the terror of the fire, the deaths of the heroic firefighters and the long-term consequences, of course. But still an absurd lack of candor about what's gone up and where.
Comments
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Posted by: Susan | August 31, 2009 11:33 AM
"Why doesn't the state own its own instead of having to import from Canada at the (artificial, clearly) Sept. 1 start of the 'fire season'?"
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Larry, that's a good question.
I imagine it just got lost among the big government bureaucratic red tape...so, let's advocate for MORE big government bureaucratic red tape, especially in the field of health care.
Oh well, nobody's accountable for it, so what can we do ?
But hey, I bet those bureaucrats in Sacramento don't ever allow red tape to obstruct their self-interested expense accounts from being itemized, all the way down to that jelly doughnut they purchased as they were rushing from their 5-star hotel in New York City, where they were attending a very important convention for bureaucrats from across the country.
Posted by: Olive Oyl | August 31, 2009 12:12 PM
Hopefully, everyone got all their books out of their homes, as they were being evacuated.
There's nothing more important than saving one's books from a fire.
I don't know what I'd do if my autobiography of Bill Clinton got lost in a fire---I guess I'd just have to buy a new one from Amazon.com.
Life is not fair.
Posted by: Arroyo Seco Intellectual | August 31, 2009 8:05 PM
Larry,
I've been as frustrated as you about the lack of information. The TV and radio reporters simply don't know the terrain they're talking about. I want to know if the Millard canyon cabins survived. The Meadows and La Vina did. I stood on Devil's Gate dam wall late this afternoon with binoculars, and it seems to me that the cabin part of Millard is still green, the Sam Merrill trail, Echo mountain and Las Flores canyon are OK, but the Arroyo up from JPL's east entrance looks burnt out - though I couldn't look down to river level. Is Eaton Canyon safe? What about the Bailey Canyon trail, and Rubio? Anyone know?
Posted by: John | August 31, 2009 9:15 PM
thanks, john -- i'm going up into the mountains early tuesday morning to find out. rubio, eaton, clearly are fine. altadena sheriff's deputy i talked to this morning said that he thought, as you saw through your binocs, that the canyon floor of millard survived and that thus the cabins did too -- i'll report back on this blog late morning/early afternoon tuesday and then write a column for wednesday's paper. vaya con dios, larry
Posted by: larry | August 31, 2009 10:24 PM
John and Larry,
Bailey Canyon !?
Bailey Canyon is actually located on the south side of Mt. Wilson, and the trailhead begins in Sierra Madre. There is no fire in that vicinity. I don't understand how anyone would be confused about whether or not there is a fire there---has someone reported a fire directly above Sierra Madre ?
The Station fire is approaching the Mt. Wilson observatory from the northwest...if it reaches the observatory, the fire will have traveled in an east/southeast direction.
Posted by: Grizzly Adams | September 1, 2009 1:49 AM
Yes, I heard one of my neighbors talking about how there is a fire above Sierra Madre.
Posted by: John | September 1, 2009 10:44 AM
John,
There is NO fire above Sierra Madre, endangering Bailey Canyon.
I don't know where you get your info from, but you probably shouldn't be accusing radio/TV reporters of being un-informed, when you are similarly providing inaccurate information on an internet board.
Posted by: Grizzly Adams | September 1, 2009 9:21 PM