"Wild" Fires

This smoke filled sky is one of the clear ones. There were so many amazing smoke filled skies I would have love to have taken photos of to show everyone how eerie the skies looked, but it's impossible to try to photograph everything I see out there.

At the end of my first day dropping water on fire in Engine 58

Buckets fly differently than those a/c units and electrical boxes that go on roof tops.



The local Willits Fire Dept. Engine posed with our Sikorsky for a group photo.

Wild doesn't even begin to describe the things I've seen while fighting fire in Northern California. So many things that words cannot describe out here. The first few days I was mostly amazed at how many back yards grow "pot" in their yards. Pot up here is like rose gardens where I live. Every one's got one. It's pretty cool to see from above. Most of the dip sights(where I get water from for the bambi bucket) are sources of water for most of these little pot gardens.

For those who don't know, it's legal to grow pot with a doctors note up here. It's all out in the open, fenced in according to law, completely visible to anyone who flies over. Here are the rules....http://www.mendocinosheriff.com/services/prop215/index.html

Today, I was in awe of the one house that I was dipping from. First, on the way out to this one of hundreds of fires I flew past many many fires and thought to myself, wow, it looks like the world is coming to an end, every where you look there is a fire. It had appeared that mother nature bombed the earth with her lightning. Smoke filled the skies to the point where you almost can't see. You adapt to flying it the low visibility. It's strange because at first, I'd say no way am I flying in this, but then you do, and somehow it just works. It's wild! Anyway, I arrived to this one fire near the coast, it was as if that was where the wall was for the smoke to stop going south, it opened up and it was clear, it was crazy and beautiful and strange because the marine layer covered the entire ocean for as far as the eye could see, and the smoke lifted from the earth and went thousands of feet up into the sky to create a layer high above that extended south and east and west, and of course north for who knows how far, pretty much past as far as the eye could see. It was wild again. Anyway, this house sat atop this mountain, all by itself, on a vineyard, a beautiful little rolling hilltop vineyard surrounded by tall tall tall pine trees, hundreds of feet tall. The house had a 360 degree view and a little pond, my dip sight. The dip sight was in between all those tall trees, so that added to the excitement and challenge. From flying in smoke and flying up and down super steep terrain, this flying I've done these past few days has been some of the most technical flying I have done that I can remember. Even one of our Helco's(helicopter coordinators) said this is some rugged terrain. Some areas are too steep for handcrews to hike into, that's where we come in with our buckets and help out.

Currently we are based at Ells Field in Willits, CA. It's pretty much the middle ground between all of the fires in the surrounding area. After flying in the hundreds and hundreds of miles of thick smoke today, the satellite photo I had posted days ago looks like a clear day. I believe at this point, you can't see Northern California from space with all the smoke.