Extra "feature" of Radar Box - Fire alerting...

[oceans777]

Woke up this morning at 0500 Pacific Time here in California to walk the dogs and glanced at the RB display; noticed four Los Angeles Fire Department helicopters showing up in the air, in the Interface list.
They only fly this early in the dark when there is an active fire and with four helos up, must be significant. With our current Red Flag fire conditions and big winds, I knew to turn on the radios - turns out I could have just walked out to the road and looked at a glowing red east sky. Three canyons here on fire less than a mile away at the closest point.

Anyway I got a jump on the fire and managed to go into the canyon and get our horses and get out before the fire trucks even reached the area.

This is the third time I've been made aware of a major local fire by noticing the LAFD aircraft in Radar Box. Pretty cool!

Fire is under control now  thanks to absolutely the best fire fighters on earth - Los Angeles City and County Fire.

[oceans777]

Note we now have the mighty Canadair CL-215T-6B11 (C-GQBE) and Government of Quebec CL2T (C-GQBG) dropping water up the canyons and rattling the house on ingress to the fire :-)

[Terry]

I saw a documentary on the fire fighters and jumpers of the U.S..Full credit to all of the men and women who fight bush and forest fires.They are breed apart and give nothing but 100% into every fire they are called to deal with,the fire jumpers are just something else AWSEOME!

                                  Regards Terry.

[oceans777]

You should them put 6 Firehawk and Bell helos, Ericsson fire cranes and multiple fixed wing water-scoopers in the same few miles of airspace - and the endless LA news helos over them orbiting and asking questions the whole time. It's like watching an airshow. And the latest addition, a DC9 dropping phos-check at 200 feet and just above stall speed.
These guys are always dead calm, 45 mph winds +, no visibility in dark and smoke,
power lines, it has to be the most dangerous job going.

[RodBearden]

Hey, Oceans - it looks pretty bad in your part of the world.

I hope you're not being evacuated - take care of yourself, family, dogs, horses, and your RadarBox!

Rod

[oceans777]

thanks Rod! Very windy here but no more fires yet so we're crossing our hooves..