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Santa Barbara Burns Again...
My wife and I took a trip to Santa Barbara for dinner out on the Santa Barbara Wharf last night. The power went out and outside was a huge wildland urban interface fire... I had my camera with me and snapped a couple of shots. I'll know more tomorrow when I go into work but for now, I have photos of the incident t, taken within the first hour of the incident. Considering that I was off shore at the end of the pier, the visual was amazing.
On our way home, we stopped and took a couple of pix looking across Santa Barbara city. This incident in one evening burned over 300 acres and destroyed over 80 homes. Tomorrow will reveal more damage... Four people were burned, two critically requiring burn center admissions in Irvine, CA. More to follow once we get first light.
Two helicopters from Los Angeles County Fire Department have FLIR capabilities so they are doing night ops, dropping water on the house fires. We did see them dipping their Bamby buckets into the ocean. It's going to be a long night for firefighters...
TCSS, Santa Barbara Mike
On our way home, we stopped and took a couple of pix looking across Santa Barbara city. This incident in one evening burned over 300 acres and destroyed over 80 homes. Tomorrow will reveal more damage... Four people were burned, two critically requiring burn center admissions in Irvine, CA. More to follow once we get first light.
Two helicopters from Los Angeles County Fire Department have FLIR capabilities so they are doing night ops, dropping water on the house fires. We did see them dipping their Bamby buckets into the ocean. It's going to be a long night for firefighters...
TCSS, Santa Barbara Mike
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Melanie11782 on
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the pics are awesome.. but so devestating
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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Simply put, the Dandenongs could go up again. Parks have been able to do a bit of strategic fuel reduction burning - but have now stopped due to the dryness of the trees. People preparing their houses? Some yes, but others moved up there after Ash Wednesday and must have the 'it won't happen to me' syndrome. I've seen houses up the top that don't have guttering - they have windrows or leaf litter...
145 tonnes/hectare? I don't even want to be within sight of that load! Last time I drove over the Macedon Ranges was in 2003 - the fuel load was nasty. I don't think that Parks have been allowed to do anything. The ranges north of Melbourne are terribly overgrown. The catchment area to the east is where my friend estimated the 45 tonnes/hectare. And we look at the Dandenongs from our shed, 5 minutes drive. One advantage we have ove some areas is that there are a lot of Brigades in Region 13.
I got the standard question this morning from a civilian. "Will it be a bad season?" I gave him the standard answer "Ask me next May". The fuel is there. Will the weather? Lightning? Arson?
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Permalink Reply by Bill Muehsam on
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Mike, I don't know how you guys out there on the West Coast do it???? To you and all your fellow firefighters, please be safe and good luck with the recent fires. Thanks goodness we don't have wildland to that extent here in Arkansas.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
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I wish... Nope, I'm still on administrative light duty, going back to the doctor on 11/24... : (
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What an awesome learning curve it's been for me doing the temporary light duty position in our Logistics Section. I'm not sure if you caught the factoids on these fires four days into them now but in four days, we have lost 1.24 million acres and 800 homes so far in all the combined fires that are burning right now. The fire here in Santa Barbara is now 80% contained. The fires down South are starting to die down as well with one intentionally set burnout operation working quite well. What's going to be a real issue for us and others is the rains, should they actually come. Runoff from our mountains have been predicted to be 1700% above normal.
PS: What would you call these things that are saving our butts? The big ones carry 12,000 gallons of fire retardant. Hint: They are not called Air Tenders...
TCSS, Mike
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