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

Sounds like it's safe according to this blog

[im_thatoneguy]

There is a link to a blog on the Webcam page:

http://joy.chara.gsu.edu/CHARA/fire.php

Chief Powers expressed his absolute confidence that they will save the Observatory. He said that while it may have appeared over the last day or so that the Observatory was being neglected, that they never lost sight of the importance of Mount Wilson's preservation and it is now their highest priority.

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

[MarkRose]

Of course the observatory will be fine; they're prepared. I would be very concerned if they didn't see it coming!

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.

Re:LA is full of Jews

[Tablizer]

Gee, that explains all the taco stands.

Big Bang

[Tablizer]

"I can see the Big Bang! We finally got enough power to peer back in time and....what? fire? hill? Daaaah Shit!"

Watching it from home

[bughunter]

I live in Altadena and have a good view of Mt Wilson. Most of the flames are on the North side of the ridge today, and are therefore beyond line of sight. Smoke completely obscures the mountains in the morning hours as well. The press has been reporting for two days now that the fire was "hours away" from the observatory, but the ground crews and helicopters have been successful in protecting it and the antenna farm.

This afternoon, however, we were treated to the impressive sight of a Martin JRM Mars aerial water tanker dropping 7,000 gallons of water at a pop on the Mt. Wilson blazes, and seeing the black smoke turn to white steam. Better images here (scroll down 1/3rd of the page).

I'm confident that the firefighters will be able to prevent any serious damage to the assets on Mt. Wilson, both scientific and commercial. The worst appears to be over.

Re:Watching it from home

[FleaPlus]

From the link you posted, I swear these folks in a cabin near the fire seem to be begging for a Darwin Award. I'm actually kind of pissed that the Fire Department has to waste some of their limited resources on these people:

Some residents in the fire's path continued to ignore orders to evacuate.

Five people at a cabin near Big Tujunga Road and Gold Creek were reportedly safe for the moment, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

Sheriff's deputies ordered the four men and one woman to evacuate Sunday, according to Whitmore. They refused. The fire advanced on their cabin and they later asked for help, Whitmore said.

Flames were too dangerous to allow sheriff's crews to go in to rescue the group. Luckily, flames shifted and missed the cabin. Since then the people have been visited as many as six times and refused to leave.

They have signed releases provided to them by the sheriff's department acknowledging the danger they still face.

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

Time Lapse until dead

[Anonymous Coward]

About 34 hours before the cam went offline, I decided to start grabbing the images for a time lapse in case it did go dead. I put it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-H6awKq9AA

Re:Probably will be fine.

[techno-vampire]

In case you haven't noticed, the observatory is at the top of a steep, rugged mountain. Not only would what you suggest be very difficult, it would be useless. You see, fires move up hills very easily, because heat rises. And, of course, burning embers have been known to jump much larger gaps than a mere 50 meters, making the "firebreak" useless.

Inside info from the ex-telescope maintainer

[karikas]

My brother-in-law used to be the maintainer for the telescopes up there several years ago, and is up there right now with the firefighting crews (has been for a few days now). The mountain has been in danger several times but firefighters are there in full force (well, 150 is the number I hear). From his perspective I've been getting mixed information - a lot of the news has come in via what people up there see, and what they see isn't always what's really happening (we heard an entire Christian camp up there was completely burned down, but it's actually just fine!).

A lot of the media here is hyping up the 20+ communications towers at the top of the mountain being in danger, and just started talking about the observatory recently (running out of things to talk about after days and days of coverage, I guess). It is a critical communications point, but so far between the flame retardant, back burn (?) fires started now to prevent areas from burning in the immediate future, actual firefighters and planes/helicopters dropping water/retardant, it's looking really good. The winds have died down as well which is helping quite a bit. I'm currently in Palmdale which is a bit north, and the other day it was "snowing" ashes!

One guy close to the action on the news today downgraded the fire from "angry" to "cranky" - good to hear for all of us still riding this out.