Mount Wilson Observatory In Danger From L.A. Fire 125
An anonymous reader writes "Mount Wilson is in danger from the Station fire burning near L.A. Their servers have gone offline, but there's a temporary mirror cam. It doesn't look good. Picture twenty-four on the L.A. Times photo gallery shows the observatory from the air. If anyone has any inside news on the condition of the facility, I'm sure there are lots of people on Slashdot who would love to hear it."
Re:Watching it from home (Score:4, Interesting)
There are many possibilities (Score:1, Interesting)
KPCC (a local NPR affiliate) had a piece on Mount Wilson yesterday. A point that was brought up by one of their experts is that they were more likely to lose electricity and/or T1 lines than suffer serious structural damage. Normally backup power systems would make electricity loss minor, but the air filters for them are not designed to cope with the extreme smoke.
This combined with how much work has gone into preserving the area makes me cautiously optimistic that the damage won't be too severe. We'll know more in the morning.
Time Lapse until dead (Score:5, Interesting)
About 34 hours before the cam went offline, I decided to start grabbing the images for a time lapse in case it did go dead. I put it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-H6awKq9AA
Re:Sounds like it's safe according to this blog (Score:3, Interesting)
Back when they still had steam trains in England, workers would cut down all the trees and bushes growing at the side of the line. If they didn't do this properly, sparks from the locomotive chimney could set the vegetation alight in dry weather.
(They still cut the vegetation back on a line near me, which runs steam trains for tourists.)
However, I don't know if this would scale to a California wildfire (hotter, dryer, windier, and a lot bigger and less predictable, and presumably a lot less accessible than a railway line).
Re:Mod Parent Informative (Score:3, Interesting)
Taxpayers are in no mood to fund that sort of effort.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm under the impression that both the police and fire departments have had layoffs as part of the state's budget cuts, in an attempt to keep the government quasi-solvent during its' current financial crisis.
In "The Trap" (or was is "The Century Of Self"?) BBC documentarian Adam Curtis mentions the phenomenon of John Q. Citizen groaning about taxes, electing a man like Reagan as president, then a couple of years later groaning about the decaying conditions of infrastructure, education, law enforcement, etc, not making the connection between his vote and the consequences. Now, instead of going into a diatribe about fickle and myopic masses unable to wisely govern themselves, I'll just state a fact: you get what you pay for, including a weakened firefighting force.
Unfortunately, I know exactly what these people are going through, I get knots in my stomach every time this makes the news. I live in Baja, and during a Santa Ana event on November 23, 1999 (I'll never forget the date, it was a Tuesday), I woke up to the roar of a brush fire in the canyon behind my rented house, even though it was already daylight, the sun was blocked out by smoke and an orange glow danced in darkness through the curtains, a sight I do not wish on anybody. In an instant I bolted out of bed, made way through rooms thick with smoke like a indoor fog, evacuated my crying cats (a mother and five kittens) and ran barefoot through rocks and shrubs to a neighbor's house to phone the fire department, who assured they were on the way.
Here's the thing, a PVC water pipe that feeds the colony runs through the back of the house, and as it's only turned on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (we're not on the grid), the pipe was dry. This particular morning, it was also charred to a crisp. When the firemen arrived to another house first, the pump was switched on, and as pressurized cold water hit the pipe behind my house, it cracked on top, sending a huge curtain of water upwards, which was then pushed by the wind towards the roof. My gods (BSG, nod nod, wink wink), it was like a waterfall on all four sides! By the time the firemen finally made it to my place, it had already saved itself. The only casualties were my feet (had to use a cane for about a week and a half) and charred whiskers on the mother cat, but we made it through. To this day, there are scars and burns where the flames licked the structure.
Next morning, with a churning stomach I gazed at a huge cloud of smoke rising from the other side of town, so I was baffled to see the previous day's fire truck slowly approach my house. One of the firemen came up and asked if I'd seen his gloves around, as he'd lost them and they were his only pair. Here they were, losing a crucial hour or more, to find a pair of gloves.
This is what happens when a vital department is underfunded and undermanned.
Since then I've gotten married, every year we hire someone to clear out a perimeter of at least twenty meters of dry brush and dispose of it. Still, sometimes when the dry winds hit, I do suffer from mild episodes of PTSD, which makes sleeping a real challenge for a few days, until the humidity returns.