Today quickly switched from a pleasant Sunday to a little too exciting when my wife arrived home from grocery shopping and yelled “Fire!” At almost the same instant, I could smell smoke and there was a helicopter flying over the house. Once my heart started beating again, I saw that the fire was south of us and that the helicopter was fighting it with water drops. We walked to a hillside sort of above the fire as the smoke enveloped us and ash fell. Before long, we returned home in case we needed to evacuate. It turned out that the helicopter was refilling on a ridge near us, so we got some amazing views of the thing roaring over us. A newspaper report details the fire: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/fire-371632-beach-brush.html
I took a bunch of pictures and here are the best ones:
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- Our first view of the smoke
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- We couldn’t directly see the fire, but it was behind that ridge
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- The fire attack chopper made many runs
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- Here it is flying into the smoke
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- And here it is coming back out to refill
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- Getting closer
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- And right over our heads!
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- The smoke was really thick, so those pilots had to brave terrible conditions
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- Yes, if you look carefully the chopper really is in there
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- Flying to the ridge for a refill
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- Just about at the refill spot
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- Coming straight at us after another pass on the fire
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- Getting closer
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- Just about to fly over us!
I also took some movies.
This one shows the chopper flying up a canyon on its way to refill.
Here it is on the way back to the fire.
Flying over us on the way to refill:
A close view of it approaching us:
