🎧 ‘The Daily’: The California Wildfires | New York Times

Listened to 'The Daily': The California Wildfires from New York Times

What was once a seasonal concern has become a persistent, year-round threat across the state.

Henninger Trailhead / Eaton Canyon Wild Fire Coverage in Altadena, CA

A helicopter buzzing a palm tree

At roughly 4:09pm I noticed an incredibly low flying Los Angeles County Sherrif’s Office water drop helicopter buzz our neighborhood nearly missing the neighbors’ 50ft palm tree. There had been helicopter noise for about 10 minutes prior, so this got my immediate attention. I went outside to see a copious amounts of white smoke coming from the neighborhood just about 2 blocks north of the house.

I put on my shoes to see where the fire was originating and walked up the street.

View North from Harding Avenue and Berendo as I walked toward the fire

A satellite map of the exact location of the blaze.

Arrival at the Scene

I walked up to the rough scene (or as close as I could get given the situation and the smoke) at about 6:22. Traffic is being stopped on Altadena Drive from roughly Canyon Close Dr. up past Roosevelt Ave.

Firefighters are connecting hoses at Canyon Close Drive and running them up the street. I suspect this is to potentially defend the homes on the top side of the street because the fire and certainly the smoke are close enough to warrant it.

Water drops in progress

As I was walking up to the scene until about ten minutes later there were about 4 or 5 water drops by LA County Sheriff’s Helicopters.

Scene on the street

Ground Troops Arrive

Water drops seem to have stopped for the moment and groups of firefighters are arriving to descend down into Eaton Canyon to finish off the blaze. By rough count there were about 50-60 firefighters down in the canyon and roughly another 30 or so additional firefighters and other first responders up on the street providing support.

Clean up time

It’s now 4:43 pm and water drops have stopped for the past 10 minutes or so. It’s now roughly 45 minutes after the firefight started. Here are some pictures from the vantage point just above the location of the fire just a few feet away from the canyon edge. Based on my guestimate the fire took up approximately 2-4 acres of space which was primarily dry scrubbrush and several trees in the middle of the arroyo.

Reporting live from the scene

With things beginning to look like they’re winding down, and with a clearer view of the scene now that the smoke has abated significantly I take a moment to do a quick video recap for the viewers at home.

Heading home

Things appear to be under control by about 5pm, so I headed home. Stopping to ask local police how long the street is likely to be closed through rush hour.

I arrive at the house and toss in the coordinates of the fire into Google Maps to discover the center of the fire was 2,426 feet from the house (roughly 2 blocks away.) It was easy to get exact coordinates given the size of the trees in the fire zone and the specificity of the images in Google’s satellite view. We definitely dodged one today, particularly given the dryness of the last year and the high winds we’ve seen all afternoon.

It also dawns on me that I took a hike through this exact portion of Eaton Canyon yesterday morning. My checkin at the time captures a photo across the canyon almost 30 hours before the incident. I’ll try to get another sometime this week to provide a direct comparison.

Mismanaged road closures on 210 Freeway for the Creek Fire (and others)

I’ll note at the outset that there are larger, potentially more pressing problems relating to the current fires in Southern California, and I have every hope that they’re mitigated as quickly and smoothly as possible, particularly for the large numbers of displaced residents. But I also know that this is not our “first rodeo”, and therefore there should have been better planning and be a better coordinated response from state and local officials.

Apparently in a fit of poor thinking, the California Highway Patrol and the fine folks at CalTrans Distric 7 have closed almost all of the East and Westbound exits on the 210 Freeway from roughly Glendale to past Sylmar. This includes exits for areas that aren’t under immediate threat, nor, based on reports I’ve seen, for areas that are expected to be threatened.

While I understand that they’re evacuating much of the proximal area for the Creek Fire and public safety, they’re potentially causing not only undue burden on people moving around or through the area, but adding stress to resources needed to abate the issue. In particular, while it may be advisable to close several on/off ramps nearest the fire, it is neither smart, nor helpful to have all of them closed for miles and miles in all directions, particularly those closures at the furthest ends.

Because the Westbound Pennsylvania and Lowell freeway ramps were (unnecessarily) closed this morning on the Westbound 210, I and thousands of others, including countless parents taking their children to one of the several dozen schools in NorthWest Glendale, were unnecessarily forced to spend an additional hour or more this morning driving on the 210 through the worst of the smoke out past Sylmar only to need to turn around and drive back through the heavy smoke to return to our original destinations. After almost a day of issues, there is still no signage on the 210 Freeway indicating any closures. Easily one of approximately 20 CalTrans vans I saw blocking exits this morning could have been better used to pull a trailer with closure signage.

I get the need to evacuate the area and close roads, but why not close them at the surface street level? This would allow travelers to turn around and reroute instead of being unnecessarily forced to spend one or more hours in both heavy traffic and heavy smoke. If there aren’t enough resources to do this at every exit, why not at least one or two of them to alleviate the additional and unnecessary back and forth?

I noticed at least four accidents–which I’m sure is at least 3 standard deviations from the average–on this stretch of freeway, which I hope were small fender benders. I would posit that these were all caused as a result of (frustrated and distracted) people simply trying to exit and turn around. This stresses the EMS system further by requiring the additional response of police, ambulance, fire and other first responders. I saw at least one firetruck at such a scene this morning, which I’m sure could have been better deployed against low containment numbers in highly populated areas being threatened by fire.

I saw people attempting to go the wrong way down on ramps simply to access surface streets to turn around. I saw dozens of cars (far more than usual) pulled over on the side of the road attempting to figure out the predicament. At least one driver in a similar situation this morning was forced to cope with running out of gas as the result of lack of communication. I stopped at at least two exit ramps in an attempt to get information from CHP officers, none of whom had any information about where or how to turn around. They literally knew nothing except that they could not let me pass at that point. (To me this is painfully inept communication at a time when communication could be saving lives, and multiple hours after these issues should have long since been anticipated.)

If they’re going to pull the public safety card, local and state government should simply close the entire 210 freeway from the 2 North to past Sylmar. If they can’t do this they should do local street closures to allow constituents to exit the freeway to turn around and find alternate routes back and around instead of simply being stuck (due to the lack of zero signage) and put further in harms way.

Additionally, if CalTrans hasn’t figured it out yet, there’s also a very frequently used traffic app called Waze that can be quickly edited to indicate road closures that will drastically help to mitigate traffic issues in and around the area to prevent a lot of the problem. Because Google owns Waze and shares data, it also means that Google Maps, another popular navigation application, will also further mitigate the traffic and ancillary public safety issues. I don’t think that any of the closures I saw this morning were marked on either platform. (Nota bene to Waze/Google Maps, in high traffic areas like Southern California, I’m surprised that your systems don’t intuit major closings automatically given the amounts of data you’re receiving back.)

I hope that from an executive standpoint state and local systems will have their resources better deployed for this evening’s commute. I can’t help but note that these aren’t the first large fires in the Southern California area, so I’m shocked that the response isn’t better managed. Better managing small seeming issues like these could allow resources that have to be deployed to remedy distal issues like them to be better deployed to the proximal issues.

If they can’t manage to fix these issues in the near term, I hope they’ll at least file them into their future emergency plans for what are sure to be future incidents.

Wilson Fire in my front yard

Apparently the forest fire started around 4 am on Mount Wilson and has been burning relatively steadily since.

This isn’t the closest fire to the house–that award goes to a medium sized brush fire about 8 doors down when I lived on Adams Hill in 2012, which was out in just a few hours–but it is the closest and the largest thus far. While it would take me about 3.5 hours to hike to the location of the fire, it’s because it’s located on a mountain and would take some winding mountain paths as well as a 4,700 foot climb. Sadly, most everything between us and the fire is all dry brush.

Fortunately today it’s not as hot or as windy as it has been here for the past month. Typically the winds have been to the North West this month, which would potentially serve to protect the house. The fire isn’t very close to residential neighborhoods (ours is the closest though), but there is an estimated $500 million in infrastructure and assets at the top of the hill as it is the home of the Wilson Observatory as well as a multitude of broadcast equipment for all of the major LA television and several radio stations.

Since at least 9am, I’ve been seeing a rotation of at least three helicopters and a large plane (747?) doing water drops on the hillside to battle the fire. Some of the photos above have these aircraft visible.

I still vividly remember the massive Station Fire in this area from August 2009 that still stands as one of the nation’s largest and significantly threatened the Observatory at the top of the hill above us. I was in San Diego the day the fire started and still remember the massive pyrocumulus cloud that I could vividly see the entire drive back home to Los Angeles.

Sadly, site deaths (thanks FriendFeed) have not preserved the photos, but here are a few tweets almost a week apart about the original:

Updates

4:00 am Fire reported
8:00 am 26 acres burning and 0% contained
9:00 am the blaze had burned about 30 acres and and was 5 percent contained, according to the U.S. Forest Service
4:00 pm No visible smoke apparent from the Pasadena side facing North, but the fire is still blazing
9:00 pm No visible fire from the Pasadena side still, but fire is still at 30 acres and 25% containment

News articles

Santa Clarita brush fire is going to make a yellow sunset tonight

Santa Clarita brush fire is going to make a yellow sunset tonight

Santa Clarita brush fire is going to make a yellow sunset tonight

Instagram filter used: Normal

Photo taken at: Glendale, California of the Sand Fire in Santa Clarita

Santa Clarita Brush Fire Explodes to 1,500 Acres via NBC

Purple and brown sunset from the smoke out of the Calabassas fire today

Purple and brown sunset from the smoke out of the Calabassas fire today

Purple and brown sunset from the smoke out of the Calabassas fire today

Instagram filter used: Skyline

Photo taken at: Glendale, California