Horse Fire XV

Last night at 6 PM the roadblocks on Lyons Valley Road came down. We were the first ones through the roadblock on the south side, waving to the CHP officer who had been manning it, and now looked very relieved to be done with this duty.

The photo above right is a panorama I made by stitching together seven individual photos. I took this while standing on the eastern edge of the “helispot” that’s along Lyons Valley Road, a mile or so south of the intersection with Japatul Road. Interestingly I saw no evidence that the helispot had been used — even though it was built (at considerable cost) for the express purpose of providing a place to load, unload, and refuel helicopters in an emergency. I could see several other places that did appear to be used for air support, including the large parking lot just south of the helispot. Go figure.

Anyway, you can see (if you click on that panorama) the Secret Canyon area, to the northeast of the helispot, under the clouds. This is in the Pine Creek Wilderness, some very rugged and inaccessible territory.

The leftmost photo below shows the Barrett Honor Camp — it’s an oasis of green amidst the burned area. I’m sure there’s a story there about how they saved that camp…

The next photo is taken from the helispot, looking up Horsethief Canyon. Just out of sight, over the next ridge, is an area full of homes — the firefighters stopped the fire before it got there.

The last two photos show some of the “mop up” operations going on last night (and continuing today). The truck is wetting down a dirt road; the helicopter is looking for hot spots that might flare up again.

We drove all the way to the north end of Lyons Valley Road, where it tees onto Japatul Road. Despite the satellite data and verbal reports to the contrary, our eyeballs tell us that the fire never crossed to the west side of Lyons Valley Road — so the eastern flanks of Gaskill and Lawson Peaks are still green. There’s a lesson in there about how to read the satellite data, though I’m not entirely sure yet what that lesson is…

The piece of good news in all this, at least for Lawson Valley residents, is that a roughly 45 degree swath of our risk aperture (for Santa Ana driven wildfires) has had the fuel removed. It’s the same effect that would occur from a controlled burn, though I can’t imagine any government agency approving a controlled burn of this magnitude. This is a significant reduction in our risk of wildfire…