Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Three wildfires have erupted in the greater LA metro area driven by the Santa Ana winds, which has registered gusts of up to 99 MPH. Fire fighters are doing their best, but over a thousand structures have been lost in Pacific Palisades alone, and at least two people have died. The number of injured is currently not reported but obviously very high.

From the article: "The three fires currently blazing in the L.A. area now include the Eaton Fire near Pasadena at 2,200 acres, the Hurst Fire in the San Fernando Valley at 500 acres, and the Palisades Fire at over 5,000 acres." Palisades have lost their public library, it's completely gone.

The LA fire chief reported “Our firefighters always have a primary plan, a backup plan, contingency, and emergency plan. So oftentimes, just so that the public is aware, in large brush fires, water supplies are normally limited,” Crowley said. “So with that, our apparatus do have that ability to draft water if we need to out of pools, ponds, any type of water resource. We also utilize the water tenders…” So decidedly an insanely serious situation.

https://gizmodo.com/fire-hydrants-in-l-a-stop-working-as-firefighters-battle-historic-blazes-2000547550

There was an article on the CNN site this morning.

There are two fires threatening/in Ruidoso, the South Fork Fire at 15,000 acres and the Salt Fire on the Mescalero reservation at 5500 acres, almost 21,000 acres involved at this time. In less than 48 hours.

They've shut off electricity in Ruidoso and ordered a complete evacuation of the village and the surrounding areas, people are being told to not attempt to save their properties or possessions. Over 500 buildings, including residences, have been damaged or lost. All roads in/out of Ruidoso except 70 leading to Roswell have been closed. With no power, there's no cell service.

This is basically about 40 miles or so more or less north of us in a straight line, but there's lots of mountain and valley between here and there and it would take a radical wind shift to send it in our direction. The wind is pretty solidly from the west this time of year.

Tomorrow I'm planning on taking water/Gaterade/etc to the reservation as it's accessible. As I left a doctor appointment this morning, I saw a plane flying across the valley, apparently towards the fire. It was towing a black round-appearing object, I believe it was probably a water bucket, I'm guessing they reloaded at the Alamogordo airport. Roswell had an Air Force and missile base back in the '40s, I don't know exactly when it closed down but it's been used as a refill point for water bombers for a number of years now. I expect it's quite busy and Alamogordo's a lot closer than Roswell, though I expect a former Air Force base to be larger than our little municipal.

An old friend of mine texted me to see if we were safe (second such text I received today) and told me about an RV fire that closed the interstate near them: RV had quite a stock of ammunition inside! I think about how many people have guns, how red this state is in the rural areas, and the odds of people stockpiling ammo and the potential danger it could represent to firefighters. *sigh*

This afternoon's report sounds pretty optimistic.

"47% contained, 96 acres, the entire area is at Ready level. Crews continue to monitor lines and look for hot spots and are completing hose lays around the perimeter of the fire." Also "We are retaining all resources on the scene at this time."

And this is the best part: "Night shift monitoring will no longer be conducted, however crews will remain camped within 1/2 mile of the incident."

Sounds to me like they are fairly optimistic they have the fire pretty well beat and it won't be spreading.

The weekend is projected to be windy, though the wind is expected to maintain westerly (blowing east) until Monday when it might start blowing easterly. Hopefully they'll have full containment by then, but if it flares before then and breaks containment, that's when Cloudcroft could be in serious danger.

I think I'm going to be moving a few more things down to the storage locker this weekend. I'll try to take Russet down so she knows where it is and how to access it.