(Very limited photos available, although I shot 109 excellent images – all 10,000% overexposed because the camera was accidentally left set up for the Jupiter & Venus conjunction. I am become Moron, destroyer of photos.)
This afternoon I started having the Watch Duty app on my phone going off like a pinball machine. It gives alerts and updates for brush fires all over SoCal and it’s been doing that pretty steadily for the last week or two. (It’s going to be a really long summer…) I really wasn’t paying attention to the details.
I was in my office and heard the heavy thrumming of a big multi-engine aircraft going over, something like a military C-130. Cool. About two minutes later I heard another one. Cool. And again. And again.
Not cool.
That’s not a series of aircraft that just happen to be going overhead. That’s one aircraft that’s circling. And with no airports or airshows nearby, there’s only one reason for a big aircraft to be circling overhead.
I’ve seen this dance. And there are four other aircraft out there. Ten months here, I’ve NEVER seen five separate aircraft near or overhead at once. Are they…?
Yep, all of them orbiting, all of them with the government.
Ladies & gents, we have a brush fire and it’s close. Down in the Cajon Pass, over the edge of The Mesa, by the train tracks, probably less than a mile away.
Now, I’m not worried. They’ve got a lot of resorces working this one quickly. A quick trip outside shows no smoke visible. The wind is at our back, so even if it spreads, it’s spreading out into the (mostly) empty lands in the Cajon Pass. And even if it does somehow come up over the edge of The Mesa and move this way, our particular tract of homes is surrounded by a LOT of empty dirt lots that will make a GREAT fire break in an emergency.
But we’re getting private airshow!
An air boss, a couple of smaller spotter planes, the big water bomber, all doing passes over our house at about a thousand feet. I’m loving it. Off in the distance where the fire had been, on the far side of those huge water tanks you see over our back wall, a Sikorsky Sky Crane and a couple of smaller Bell Rangers are making smaller water drops on hot spots.
As I said, it’s going to be a long, hot, dry summer. Buckle up and stand by. Now that we’re more or less fully settled here, it might be a good to find time to review the 5-minute, 15-minute, 30-minute, and 60-minute bug out checklists.
Just because.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 