California fires

[Ohio Buckeye]

I saw on the news about the fires in CA and know some of you
live in CA and wondered if they are near you.  Hope not.

[okarol]

It's not close to me - but its a big fire and moving fast. So very sad that 4 firefighters were killed due to a senseless act by an arsnoist. Here's a fire map - you can click on it to see the current status http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/fireplots/cgb2006300_0700.jpg.

[vandie]

I'm 60 miles west of the fires.  Lots of smoke and ashes.  Heartbreaking story.

[Joe Paul]

Arson?     

[kitkatz]

The fire department says when they find the person who started it, he is in for murder charges. They also said "You can't run far enough and you can't hide. We will find you."  Four firemen were caught in their firetruck trying to survive the rampaging fire.  It ran right over them burning their truck up.  Two made it to the hospital, but one died and one is 90% covered with burns on his body. They were trying to rescue people and get them out of fire danger. 
     I live about 60 miles or less away from the fire.  It is between Palm Springs and Cabazon blazing its way up the mountains toward Idyllwild, a small mountain community.  It was something to watch our news feeds and see this fire just going to town on buildings and everything in its way. Still no containment as of this morning.  And those firemen are something, they run into the blaze instead of away from it.  I watched as a news van was following a fire pick up up the mountain to see close ups of the fire, the news van stopped at the edge of the flame area, and the fire pick up drove right up between the flames and kept on going to go help some firemen who were stuck in the fire.
Our heroes are on the line!

[Rerun]

I'm way north in Sacramento.  Very dry here, but no big fires that I know of.   My heart goes out to the families of the 4 firefighters.

[okarol]

DC10 fighting the fire today http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/061028/480/8a28a84582cc4b51a0f9644e07fb228f

[kitkatz]

I watched a fire newscast and they showed the DC-10 coming in from Victorville to drop fire retardant on the flames.  It made a very low, slow glide into the fire area, dumped one half of the load, then returned in a glide path again low and slow and let go the other half.  Amazing to watch.  It put down quite a few of the flames when it dropped its loads. It takes a hour for it to make a run from load time through flight time to being back to load again.  Victorville is the closest runway to the fire area that will take plane of its size and had the equipment to fuel it and load the fire retardant. The pilot flew right into the smoke close to those 6000 foot mountains.  The plane just disappeared into the smoke, then made its way back out of it.  It is amazing to watch it fly!