Forest Fire threatens Los Angeles' Mount Wilson transmitters

[Deep Thought]

Scott Fybush should be ashamed of himself. Today's Radio Journal email subject line (and top headline) is MT WILSON IS BURNING. Anyone who has been paying any attention at all knows that the bulk of the danger has passed. Is Radio Journal now the Enquirer? Sheesh...there goes his credibility as an information source.

[NECRAT]

The fire is 22% contained. They have regained access to 750,000 gallons of water storage for fire suppression up there.
There are still over 175 fire fighters up there on the mountain.

According to the Mt. Wilson blog, all the Phos-Chek is down around the top, they are finished with the back fires for now.

The mountain top is not out of harms way yet. The fire line is fast approaching the back-fire line. If everything goes as planned, the fire shouldn't reach the top.
However with the incoming hurricaine, meteorologists are concerned about the shift in winds and lightning that could start other fires on the lesser treated slopes, or redirect fires around. The fire line is presently at the closest it has been to the mountain.

I for one am confident there won't be many problems other than minor power loss, etc., up there.

Several broadcasters have all ready switched to auxiliary transmitters, to prevent the transmitter blowers from blowing in smoke particulate into the transmitters, and to prevent outages should they occur.

[Kelly]

I assume that most of the facilities up there must be running on generator by this time, because it looks like the power line trails have been ablaze for a couple days now. If the fire doesn't get the site, I wonder how long generator reserve the broadcast stations have?

On a somwhat related topic, I was channel surfing the other day and ran across the end of a story that seemed to indicate the authorities arrested two out of four people for setting the fires. Anyone else see that? Because I haven't heard much in the news about any particular cause of the fires or those involved.

[Chris from Milwaukee]

I have heard that "natural causes", i.e. lightning, has been ruled out. Speculation now turns to man made causes.

[NECRAT]

The fire blog has moved...

http://www.chara.gsu.edu/CHARA/MWO/fire.php

[NECRAT]

Late word is that broadcast engineers are going to be allowed back on the mountain top, escorted by fire personnel, with the understand it is still an active fire scene.

Sounds like they will be allowed to go up, do the resets , inspections, and then brought back down.

[RFWarrior]

The just released CCG Communicator has more detail on that, including notes on site conditions from the various engineers that went up - I did a fast read and delete this morning, so perhaps somebody else has a copy! Basically, main power feed up the mountain was totally destroyed, sites reasonably okay, some smoke injestion into air filters. On Mt. Disappointment, one of the buildings was a total loss, the rest intact (no word on what that building housed, whether broadcast or not).

Best,

Jeff

[boiseengineer]

Observatory Cam's back up.
Captured this image @ sunset tonight.

towercam.jpg

[rockmanac]

Observatory Cam's back up.
Captured this image @ sunset tonight.

towercam.jpg

They rotated the camera

[eadler]

This morning.

[eadler]

It appears that smoke is continually forming along that peak in the background and the right side of that mountain.

[eadler]

Looks a bit smokey up there today. http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/towercam.htm (mirror: http://avtanski.com/towercam/ )

[Deep Thought]

That's fog...

[NECRAT]

A small update:
The fire was officially declared "100% contained" on October 16, 2009, almost two months after it initially started August 26, 2009.
It was the largest fire in the Angeles National Forest, and the 10th largest in California's history.