Well, my previous post (go there for more pictures) went rapidly out of date in just an hour or so… The wind is up and blowing the flames in a way that makes them spread rapidly to new areas… and they’re now evacuating people from some of those houses… Electricity is gone from some homes… Gosh.
(Click for larger view.) Shot showing the rapidly moving edge of flames…. Griffith Observatory off to the left there… the flames have since crawled West over toward the last major ridge before the canyon that leads to the Observatory.
Really sorry about the photo quality. It’s just my tiny little canon from about a mile away. I don’t have a digital SLR with a longer lens…
A number of my favourite trails have definitely gone. Dante’s view (a lovely garden/oasis in the park) sounds like it is either under threat or already gone… Apparently there are deer and coyotes running around confused, poor things.
Went out for a walk to see what is going on and met vastly more of my neighbours than I’ve ever met in three years of being here. Strange positive note in all of this.
People are now wondering whether the observatory is as safe as it seemed earlier. There’s only one more canyon (Vermont canyon) for the fire to jump…. With the wind that seems to be able to get going at a moment’s notice, it is easy for embers to travel far… Of course, ther’s a lot of concern about the residences over there. Happily, everyone has evacuated, and they’re putting people up in a school further away.
In a strange twist of circumstance, I was supposed to actually do a shoot for a television show in the park tomorrow. They wanted to interview me on some physics and then shoot some hiking shots for a bit of variety. Doubtful that it will take place now, I’d guess. The park is probably going to be closed for a while.
-cvj
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Eeek, I’ve just come from the Bad Astonomer’s blog and it looked like an inferno. I’m very sorry. I hope the observatory is OK.
Clifford, your lovely walks might well be re-routed for a year or two.
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I am very sad about Dante’s view; it was a lovely place Our usually ebullient council representative, Tom LaBonge, was tearful when he was interviewed on the news about it.
In addition to Clifford’s pictures, the NY Times has a “multimedia” slide show, which shows just how close the fire came to the houses on the edge of the park.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/us/09cnd-fire.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
🙁
Hope all goes well. I remember being out in Arizona four years ago when fire came within a few feet of destroying the telescopes at the observatory I was supposed to be observing at that week… the town on the mountain got destroyed, but the observatory was thankfully unscathed.
Oh dear…there was a small fire when I was there, but nothing like that. I hope it can be brought under control!
Hi Jude and JoAnne,
Looking like there is a bit more control now…. at least of the parts that I can see from here. Not clear if that just means that it has burned out the parts that I can see and moved on… or if they are now more in control. We shall see…
-cvj
Hi Clifford,
Thanks for the updates and the pix. I just saw this on the news and immediately went to your blog for more info. What a nightmare! The weather is supposed to turn cooler now, so maybe that will help.
Griffith Park, the Observatory, and one of the Forest Lawns are the only landmarks I know in L.A. I wish all of you luck. I’m not sure where Colorado stands in the drought–we’ve had a wet April, so maybe it won’t be so bad this year. When I was a seasonal park ranger at Mesa Verde National Park in the 1980s, one of the rangers had the radical theory that the people of Mesa Verde were driven away by forest fires in addition to the other ill effects of the lengthy drought. At the time, most of us thought he was nuts because there wasn’t any direct evidence of forest fires. But since things have been drier and hotter in Colorado, and we’ve been hit by many forest fires (include one which was started when a coal seam fire from an explosion decades ago ignited the dry brush), I now give credence to his theory.