Posted on 08/30/2009 10:42:25 PM PDT by BAW
The fire burning in Angeles National Forest is approaching the historic solar observatory and television transmission towers atop Mt. Wilson, according to Los Angeles County fire officials.
The communications towers house transmitters for every major television station in Los Angeles.
“We expect it to get there in the next two to four hours,” said county fire Capt. Mark Savage.
Crews were clearing brush around the structures, but fire officials were not sure if they could leave personnel on the mountain to fight the flames because of the danger and limited escape routes. The fire is less than two miles away.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/towercam.htm#imagetop
From my point of view, it looks like something from Dante’s Inferno.
dude I’ve never seen a fire so large and devastating. I was listening to the evening news and they said there is like 20 television stations antennas up there.
News story shows 5:42 PM. The blaze 4 hours away? It would have hit by now.
click on the webcam - the blaze is creeping over the hills
Tried twice, timed out. I really don’t want to bog it down. But I hope all those antennas and the observatory are not going to go up in smoke!
Wow, the networks are literally about to go up in flames.
I just had it up, but the time said it was 12:15
Try it now. I just got on again after timing out 2x.
Something looks like fire at the extreme left and right.
Oh boy, that will cause a panic. In a locale so notorious for its wildfire, why site all those antennas so close together? It is stupid.
That’s a real time link to the cam. Future readers won’t see it as of the time of the blaze. Can someone do a screen capture and host it somewhere else?
Here’s a two-hour time lapse shot from the observatory
http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/towercam+large.gif
That’s because there has been no fuels management in the Angeles National Forest for, oh, 30 to 40 years. There’s a huge build-up of scrub, understory and dead trees waiting for the right conditions to light it up.
I used to go up to Mt. Wilson on weekends in the mid-80’s. Even then, I was amazed that they allowed the trees to get so large, so close to that much valuable equipment. Were I running the show, I would have had the top of that mountain denuded for at least 200 yards around that entire site in every direction, for personnel safety if for no other reason. A fire starting on the slopes below could trap people up there with no way out very easily.
As bad as the situation is on Mt. Wilson, the situation on Mt. Harvard (just south of Mt. Wilson) is even worse, with more fuel coming right up to the electronics sites.
Burning behind the hills
It’s hard to believe how fast they can move...
Because the area is controlled by the US Forest Service, and if you want to get “high real estate” in that area, you need to negotiate with the Feds.
One of the issues when you’re seeking to site some electronics or antenna up on a mountaintop is “is this a pristine area?” If there is no one else already there, then your application will likely face a much tougher road than if you’re applying to site your antenna on a mountaintop where someone already has an antenna, power and buildings. In many cases, the stations might be using their own antennas, but their equipment is all co-located inside the same building, with the same power feed and backup power generation systems.
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