Mount Wilson Observatory In Danger From L.A. Fire

An anonymous reader writes "Mount Wilson is in danger from the Station fire burning near L.A. Their servers have gone offline, but there's a temporary mirror cam. It doesn't look good. Picture twenty-four on the L.A. Times photo gallery shows the observatory from the air. If anyone has any inside news on the condition of the facility, I'm sure there are lots of people on Slashdot who would love to hear it."

Comments

Don't worry

[moosesocks]

The observatory's going to be fine according to some of the people who work there.

I guess there's no such thing as a 100% guarantee, but the observatory appears to be very well protected.

Re:Don't worry

[JWSmythe]

I used to live out there, and loved the drive to the observatory. Well, it's a treacherous and exhausting drive, but still fun especially if you have a performance car. I used to joke that the speed limits aren't there as a suggestion. They're just about as fast as you can go and survive. :) It's all fun and games until you fall off a cliff, which happens fairly regularly.

    From what I recall, they do have provisions to protect the observatory equipment inside the building (like, covering the lenses), so I'd suspect they'll be ok.

    For those who haven't been out there, which I would guess would be the majority of readers, the whole area is heavily forested in very steep mountains, so in the dry season, it's easy to presume it could be easily engulfed by the seasonal wildfires. The mountains make it damned near impossible for teams to fight the fires. The idea of "cut a fire break, and send some trucks out to fight it" are out. I have seen the reports of burning the surrounding area to prevent the hot fire from getting too close, and repeated drenching by aircraft, which is their best bet. There is no option of "it won't come here". If the fire gets close enough, it'll be a nightmare to suppress.

    Good luck guys, you'll need it. Hopefully I'll get out there again someday, and the facility will still exist.

Map; thoughts from Pasadena resident

[FleaPlus]

The LA Times has been maintaining a Google Map showing the fire perimeter, location of landmarks like Mt. Wilson (it's the volcano shape on the lower-right side of the fire perimeter), and the direction the fire's been spreading. It's the best way I've found to quickly get an idea of what's going on:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&gl=us&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=117631292961056724014.0004720e21d9cded17ce4

I've been living in Pasadena for a while, and this has been quite an interesting experience. My brother just moved out here from Florida, and he arrived at our house the other night telling me how huge the fires on the mountain looked. I thought to myself, "Oh, he's just impressed because he's never seen this sort of thing before" -- I've seen wildfires on the mountains north of here in the past, and even if they cover a huge amount of area they still look fairly small from ~13 miles away. I then walked to the middle of our street where I could get a view of the mountains, and then exclaimed, "Holy crap, the mountain's on fire!" That was shit was insane.

Friends of mine have had to evacuate already, the air perpetually smells like smoke, and a lot of people are wearing breathing masks. This is crazy. I really hope the historic Mt. Wilson observatory can be saved, and that the loss of life/property can be minimized.

If you haven't seen it yet, I'd suggest the wikipedia article for the fire, which has things like satellite photos of the fire and more information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2009_California_wildfires