Well, our personal fire department has rolled off for the night. They didn't know if another would be sent in their place tonight or not. It's not looking like they'll be necessary at this point. The five crews (I missed counting one of the crews earlier today) on our street had nothing to do but sit around and wait all day.
The New York Times website has a pretty good fire map here:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/08/31/us/20090831-fires.html
You can use the slider at the top right corner of the map to see how this fire has progressed from day to day. Dark circles show fires spotted on that day, and yellow areas are previously-burned areas. The darker circles show why we were on edge Monday the 31st.
Here are a couple of telling screen shots from today...
This one shows the overall area. As before, our house is right above the word "Sunland" on the map:
And here's a little closer look at our neighborhood. We're on Denivelle Place in the white zone just south of where you see Mt. Gleason Avenue:
The yellow circles represent 1 mile in diameter, and they indicate that at least one fire was spotted by satellite somewhere within that circle. For example, the circle to the west of us covers some residential streets, but they are not burned...the burned area is on the other side of the hill from them at the top of that circle. (In fact, they're doing a controlled burn over there right now.) Anyway, this gives an indication of how fortunate we've been.
And here are a few other random shots from the day...
Here's what I saw when I woke up bright and early at 11:00 after 4 hours of sleep. This is from my front lawn:
And a look from our driveway, across the cul-de-sac:
And a bit closer view:
And a look down the street:
And a shot of a crew just kicking back in front of one of the neighbors' houses...
We had crews from the Monterey California area. There were trucks from Salinas, Fort Hunter Liggett, and Monterey. They work and travel as a group of 5 crews and a captain. These guys (and one gal) rolled in Monday morning at about 2:00 AM after a 7-hour drive, got three hours of sleep and hit the fire lines by 5:00 AM. They've been working 12-hour shifts since then. I commented to one bunch of guys that I figured they must enjoy getting a kick-back day like today once in a while, and they said no, they'd rather be up on the hill mixing it up with the fire.
As the day went on, we made sure they had a few comforts like chairs and ice for their drinks:
Then, at about 7:30 this evening, their shift was done, and they headed back to the base camp at Hansen Dam. They got lots of thanks and applause from us as they drove off:
And a parting shot for the evening. Looks like things can start to finally calm down around here:
That's the latest...