I need a Station Fire tag

From Inciweb:

"Today the fire continued to move west toward Mount Wilson. Currently there is a large contingent of fire engines, hand crews, and water tenders in place to protect and defend the valuable assets on top of the mountain. Aircraft were also called in to drop retardant on the west slope of Mt. Wilson to slow the fire's progress. Thanks to the hard work done over the past few days Mount Wilson's defensibility has been greatly improved."

The director moved his blog again, but he's hoping to visit the mountain over the next few days (he's based in Georgia, apparently) so there won't be any more updates there for a while.

Waitaminute, move west? Considering that the bulk of the fire seems to be heading eastward, that doesn't sound good. Let's hope it's just a slip of the fingers.

More Google-earthable satellite fire data available from a slightly different branch of government, here. Extremely coolimpressive. It doesn't seem to be showing any activity very close to Mt Wilson today, but the sort of wisps of smoke I noticed this afternoon, when one of the local TV stations had parked a camera where the Towercam used to be and CNN.com Live was briefly streaming it, would hardly show up at 1km resolution. If I'd known about that one a few days ago I'd be spending far too much time making animations.

Fire blogging

From Inciweb, this afternoon:

"The situation at Mount Wilson has continued to improve."

[...]
Plans are also in action to continue water and retardant drops near Mount Wilson. Crews have done a tremendous amount of work prepping the mountain top against the fire."



Time-lapse YouTube video of the Station fire, from the now-offline Towercam at Mount Wilson.

Station Fire was Arson (LA Times)

Stony Ridge Observatory also under threat.

Firefighters wave five-day battle to save Mount Wilson Observatory (LA Times)"

Mt. Wilson Observatory escapes serious damage
... but the mirrors on the 60-foot solar tower might have been left exposed to smoke and ash in the hasty evacuation.

The Chicago Tribune blogger finds a local angle; Chicago architects had a part in the building of the observatory.