Interesting SoCal Fire Picture

Vaughn McMillan

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
36,056
Location
ABQ NM
Here's a picture that was in the Los Angeles Times a few days ago. Dunno if it made the national media. Can you identify what the formation in the picture is?

SoCal%20Fires%202007.jpg
 
Yeppers, they are firefighters in their fire tents. Here's the caption from the LA Times:

Twelve firefighters are trapped atop a ridge off Santiago Canyon Road in Orange County after flames jumped the road. The blaze roared up the hillside and prompted the crew members to deploy their fire shelters. They were surrounded by burning brush, but they made it out alive. "We just remained calm, everyone did," one firefighter said after he was checked out by paramedics. All of the firefighters were treated at the scene and did not want to go to the hospital. (Karen Tapia-Anderson / Los Angeles Times)
October 22, 2007
I'm guessing this was shot with a seriously long telephoto lens.
 
Vaughn,

The first instance of firefighters doing that knowingly happened in a forest fire near Helena, MT. in the late '40s IIRC. The fire was named the Mann Gulch fire. The lead fire fighter and one other guy IIRC did it by running with the wind ahead of the fire...starting a small fire....then going into the burned out area and surviving. The 12 or so firefighters that continued to run and didn't try to start a small fire and create a burned out area...died. The lead firefighter was let go.....ended up being prosecuted.....there was a book "Young Men and Fire" about the incident writen by the same guy who wrote "A River Runs Through It".....Norm Maclean?..Robert Redford directed and produced the movie version of A River Runs Through It.

A guy I worked with here.....his Dad and 4 of his Uncles had emigrated to MT from Arkansas following WWII. They were all firefighters. Jim's Dad came back from one fire into Missoula and was sent to recover the bodies at the Helena fire scene. Each time he turned a body over he expected to find the body of one of his brothers....Luckily, none of his brothers had been sent to fight that fire. They were elsewhere.

PBS did a documentary or maybe it was the Discovery Channel on the fire at Helena.

Firefighters, police officers.....armed services personnel....true heroes.....everyday!
 
Last edited:
Top