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Firestorm in Canyon Country, California
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Fire! When this was shot Sunday, 10-21-07 at 6:45 PM it was a 14-mile-long fireline, with 400 fighters on the line (200-300 more coming in tomorrow), upwards of 800 people had been evacuated and 25 structures burned (mostly homes). My house is directly in front of you, 2 miles closer to the fire from where this was shot. 4-second exposure in 40 MPH winds (and severe gusts, up to 70 MPH) that were blowing the tripod all over the place. (852 KB) |
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Monday, 10-22-07. And there I was minding my own business having just e-mailed someone we were fine and it'd passed us by and moved to the west earlier in the day when the doorbell rang. Bing! Bong! Hummm, it's after 10:30 who could be at the door? I opened the door and it was the girls (in their mid-teens) from next door and they're freaked. Seriously freaked. I could see the fear in their eyes and hear it in their voices. "My Dad says the fire's... You can see it ..." "Show me girls," and I followed them out into the street asking if it was on the hill at the end of the street. They said you can see it from our house, go on inside. (they're still freaked) I went into their back yard and I could see the fire on the hill on the other side of the hill directly behind our house. "Thanks girls" and I dashed back to our house, went out back, saw it was burning, ran upstairs to Alanna's room in the back of the house, saw where it was (the entire hill was a mass of flames), went back downstairs, grabbed my camera gear, said "Preston are you coming?" Got no answer (he said later that he's just taken his contacts out) and was out the door and in the car in seconds. I drove to the intersection of Soledad Canyon Road and Oak Spring Road right at the freeway (being careful of all the people standing around watching the event transpire in front of them and hoping it wouldn't destroy their homes), went through it and parked on the other side. It's legal and the car will be out of the way of any fire equipment that would be deployed to the scene. I shot a quick panorama at the corner (in case I was told to leave I'd have at least 1 in the can). Then I ran up the street towards the fire. The intersection was blocked off with at least 2 Sheriff's cars 1 of them was working the intersection and the other 1 was up the street opposite me. More Sheriff's units were showing up all the time and there was only 1 Fire Department truck, a small one, at the top of the hill fighting a fire that'd jumped the road and was burning on the side of the freeway (it was clearly closed). I felt that they'd ignore me if I acted like I should be there plus my tripod gave me some level of legitimacy. It worked and I went up the street unchallenged. The wind was blowing at 30+ MPH with gusts but the smoke and burning embers were blowing away from me so I was able to move up the street in relative safety. Because the street was blocked on both sides of me there wasn't any traffic so I was able to shoot where I wanted watching out for the occassional fire truck going in one direction or the other. The entire hillside/bowl behind the old Weatherwax house (Lassie's house, I just shot it last week) and the property itself was burning. No units ever arrived that fought the flames in front of me. They did move into the apartment complex to my right but I never saw men running lines up the hills or spray water on the flames. Obviously they perceived it as a small enough threat to watch vs. actively fight. At one point a small truck arrived and fought, to a degree, the big bush/tree that was burning beside the road but by then it'd already sent burning embers into the street's median and it was also burning (either that truck or another small one put that fire out). I shot a LOT of panos but I had no clue what exposure to use so I experimented. The histograms looked OK (uh huh, right) so hopefully I'll have something usable. I just hope it's not overexposed too much (some of them were really hot, no pun intended). I stayed there for at least an hour shooting as everything in front of me burned. They'd just demolished the house about a month or so ago but if it was still standing it would've burned to the ground. At one point there were a bunch of people on the ridgeline right of the fire so I set up to shoot that thinking I'd get a good shot of firefighters in action. Then a Sheriff on a bullhorn said "Get off of the hill now! Get off of the hill!" and a bunch of lookieloos moved off of the hill (he had to say it several times before they started to move). They were about 20' from major flames just standing there like the fools they obviously were. I couldn't believe it. I could see that the other side of the hill was on fire and knew they were making a stand at the trailer park over there. Fortunately a year or so ago a lot of the trailers were moved out for a real estate development that never happened or it would've been a seriously larger disaster than the 2 trailers the were lost to the flames. The flames in the area in front of me died down somewhat so I headed towards home and spent at least another half hour shooting in the park on the other side of the hill behind us as Fire Department helicopters orbited around it while at least 3 news helicopters were parked at 6-7 grand above us shooting live feeds for the 11:00 news. I never felt threatened but it was a block and a half from the house at the closest point. It was downwind but that doesn't make much difference in my confidence level when I watched it burn into a 40 MPH wind tonight and last night. I stayed up until 2:30 am stitching this panorama even though I had a 7:30 am call on a movie that was starting the next day. All in all it was a pretty exciting shoot. |
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