As of now, Mt. Wilson is still hanging on…amazingly. Thank yous to the local firefighters and the Canadians who let us borrow some DC-10s that can drop 12,000 gallons of flame-killers in 8 seconds. The most recent news from the LA Times doesn’t look very hopeful, however.
The LA Times aside, I’ve been pretty disappointed in the lack of coverage of this outrageously huge fire (it doubled in size overnight to over 85,000 acres), and have instead relied on social media networks like Twitter’s real time updates and blogs.
The station fire is now over 130 square miles (or about 350 square km). The word on the street (read: blogosphere) translation is that the Station fire is 1/3 size of Hong Kong or 1/8 size of the whole state of Rhode Island. It’s also about the same size as the Gaza strip.
As Jeff pointed out in his comments, it is seriously threatening crucial communication lines for Southern California. You’d think the traditional media would have more to say about this, since it could drastically affect their ability to transmit news. Oh well.
Here’s what Doc Searls had to add about the Old Media #FAIL:
“The five zillion channels I get on my Dish Network TV system have nothing I can find on the fire. The locals here in Santa Barbara are running network shows. CNN and HLN are covering two dead guys. CNN has Larry King interviewing Ted Kennedy, and HLN has junk news coverage of Michael Jackson’s creepy autopsy results. As a news environment, TV is a slo-mo suicide victim.”
Intense photo slideshow here and photo of apocalyptic-looking cloud over the LA Skyline here. (Photo above from Altadenablog.com)
http://www.mtwilson.edu/
wow.
From that site:
“Monday, 31 Aug 09, 1:10 pm PDT – My day has been preoccupied with press inquiries, all of whom want to know what the situation is on Mount Wilson. The bottom line is that we don’t really know…The information fog is demonstrated by contradictory statements within a single article in the LA Times, and I fear it will remain that way for the near term.”
http://www.mtwilson.edu/fire.php
From that site:
“Monday, 31 Aug 09, 1:10 pm PDT – My day has been preoccupied with press inquiries, all of whom want to know what the situation is on Mount Wilson. The bottom line is that we don’t really know…The information fog is demonstrated by contradictory statements within a single article in the LA Times, and I fear it will remain that way for the near term.”
http://www.mtwilson.edu/fire.php
one thing i love about the Northwest is less fires
Jim – No kidding! I was in the Olympics last September when a fairly busy lightning storm passed through. Saw about three or for fires started from it, but they died out within a few minutes, even after a long dry summer.