Photo: Brett Lewis
Sent to friends today:
What you see in this photo is a place in town I go regularly, the local lumber yard on the right, yesterday. I’ll be there today, in fact. What you see above is an air tanker from Grass Valley Air Attack Base, flight path goes right over my house so I know when there’s action, anywhere in a large portion of N. CA. It’s dropping retardant, the red stuff, on a fire that started behind the lumber yard and an RV dealership, on the left. The fire never got too big because, as you can see, they take them very seriously.
Thought you might be interested in what goes on, day to day, in my world.
PortMoresby
Later today, after I’d posted this photo, I was watching the local 6:00 news, Sacramento. A fire had started in Lincoln, NE of Sacramento, a yard full of trucks engulfed and spreading into grass, moving toward a subdivision. A spotter plane left the Grass Valley Base, flew over my house and I looked to see what it was. About 10 minutes later the news helicopter showed it arriving low over the fire to inspect it. I went out again to watch the next plane, a retardant tanker, possibly the one in the photo above, fly over my house and the newsman said a tanker was on it’s way. I watched a few minutes later as again the plane was shown on the news, releasing the red retardant with fantastic precision at the front of the wind-driven grass fire and stopped it in it’s tracks. Quite remarkable.
Currently estimated at 32,00 acres in size, the Butte Fire is now burning 1 mile from Mokelumne Hill. While I have no doubt the tiny town will be saved, your best view of it at the moment may be here, on TravelGumbo. More details on the CalFire site.