Bisbee wrote: Sat Sep 19, 2020 6:15 pm
As the Bobcat Fire now threatens the community on the “other” side of the mountains (Palmdale). But the amazing sight of blue skies and seeing Mt Wilson completely clear if smoke and fires was truly uplifting this morning.
In my area yesterday winds blew from the southwest and pushed the smoke north, hazy blue skies but it was much nicer than it's been in a long time. Looks like the Pacific Northwest has cleared some, but the CA Central Valley is still bad.
https://aqicn.org/map/northamerica/
The Bobcat Fire is still roaring north.
Roland Pagan on Saturday stood knee-deep in swirls of smoke on a mesa where the two-story home it took him nine years to build once offered commanding views of the desert flatlands below. Almost exactly 24 hours earlier, Pagan, 80, stood on a nearby hill and peered through binoculars, watching his house in Juniper Hills collapse in flames. “The ferocity of this fire was shocking,” he said, shaking his head in sadness. “It burned my house alive in just 20 minutes.”
As of Saturday, the fire had burned more than 93,842 acres and was threatening some desert communities along Highway 138. The fire lines stretched across 30 miles of rough terrain on the northern flanks of the San Gabriel Mountains.
“Yesterday and through the night, the fire made a dramatic push due to the windy conditions,” Capt. David Dantic, public information officer for the fire response effort, said Saturday morning.
Several homes in the remote foothills community were lost, Dantic said. The extent of the destruction wasn’t immediately clear. “We’ll get a better assessment once our teams go out, but we were in an active firefight yesterday,” he said. He said firefighters were continuing to work to protect homes on Saturday.
Though the fire approached the high desert community of Valyermo, a Benedictine monastery there appeared to have escaped major damage.
The fire has more than doubled in size in just a few days, growing nearly 20,000 acres from Friday to Saturday alone. Officials said the fire has been so challenging because it is burning in areas that have not burned in decades, and because the firestorms across the state have limited resources.
There are now more than 1,600 firefighters on the lines. They have relied upon helicopters and water dropping airplanes to deal with heat, erratic winds, low humidity and flames sweeping across vast swaths of inaccessible mountain terrain.
Compounding problems for firefighters trying to defend lives and property in sparsely populated areas has been what L.A. County Fire Department Capt. Sam Bashaw described as a lack of responsibility among some residents to prepare for fires. “The price of living in a rural area comes with responsibility — be prepared for the worst,” he said. “Do they take that to heart? Absolutely not.”
Crews are trying to stop the blaze from marching east of Highway 39 and, to the west, working to protect Mt. Wilson, topped by its namesake observatory as well as numerous communication towers. Firefighters have put a containment line around part of Mt. Wilson but are “still not out of the woods” because hotspots could flare up, Dantic said.
The North Complex fire, which has killed 15 people and damaged or destroyed more than 1,450 structures in Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties, was at 289,951 acres and 58% contained. Fire officials said they expected an increase in fire activity Saturday due to dropping humidity and warmer temperatures.
To the south, the 22,071-acre El Dorado fire was burning in San Bernardino County along Highway 38 and in the Angelus Oaks area, officials said.
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... eavy-winds
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