This afternoon my mother and I (with me riding shotgun in her car) drove down to see the nearby 2,000-acre Cuesta Fire burning in the Cuesta Grade area of the local stretch of the Santa Lucia Range in the Los Padres National Forest. The fire flared up this afternoon from the afternoon winds that firefighters feared would come. The result was the fire spotted over the ridgeline east of Highway 101 and uphill from it and fully implaced itself within the national forest after starting in State Responsibility Area (SRA).
Once we got word of the escape we rushed down from my house in Paso Robles. Actually, we drove down to view the fire twice today separated by a short break at her home in Atascadero. Both times we took the 101 Freeway down to San Luis Obispo and turned around at Monterey Street and returned in the bumper-to-bumper traffic headed up the Cuesta Grade. This slowness allowed us to get a great view of it without stopping along the route to take pictures which the CHP was discouraging by way of sentinel units holding watch along the length of the grade. From there we pulled off the freeway at Highway 58 and headed into Santa Margarita to check on fire preparations there as the fire approached.
What follows are images I captured as a passenger in a car shown in the order I took them. I am dividing up the two trips today into two separate blog posts but I am linking them together for easy reference. See Cuesta Fire - Day Two - Trip Two
Note: one of the lenses I use with my camera has a noticeable scratch which shows up on some images. I cannot currently afford to replace it so please bare with my flawed images until then.
Southbound Highway 101 adjacent to Santa Margarita Ranch on the left and Eagle Ranch on the right.
Two Bell-206 Huey's, one sporting a "bambi bucket" and the other a snorkel.
Santa Barbara County FD and Sheriff's Department Copter 308 (one of six operated by the county) leaving a pond adjacent to Highway 101 north of the Cuesta Grade on the northbound side as viewed from southbound.
A SLO Co. FD water tender at left, a Cuesta Crew bus at center, and Kern County dozer strike team's two dozer transports at right, all on the northbound bide of Highway 101 at the summit.
Tanker 912 which is a DC-10 which type tanker is referred to as a VLAT (Very Large Airtanker).
An LPF engine (Los Padres National Forest).
A strike team of CALFIRE Type-2 crew buses (Miramonte Camp in Tulare Unit CALFIRE).
A strike team of type-3 engines from CALFIRE's Fresno-King Unit along with a private water tender.
Fire burning up and over the ridgeline. The dark smoke at left was from a run the fire made to the top of the ridge but did not slop-over. The lighter smoke to the right is from a major slop-over from the segment of the fire further north. Mt. Lowe Road traverses the mountainside.
Lead plain cruising along the ridgeline.
Santa Barbara County Engine 330.
The aforementioned strike team of FKU type-3 engines.
Fire retardant-painted mountainside.
Active flames in grass along the side of the freeway.
Active flames in brush along the side of the freeway.
Copter 901 (UH-1H Super Huey)
Structure protection resources began pooling up in Santa Margarita by this time as the fire approached.
Cattle being evacuated on the south side of Santa Margarita as the fire approached.
All images by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved)
Earlier this evening this wildfire called the 300-acre Cuesta Fire (initially it was the "Grade Fire") broke out on the Cuesta Grade in three different spots of which the top-most (or northern-most) two fires burned together. Early reports indicate an automobile driving northbound on Highway 101 dragging chain or other accidentally started it along with another fire earlier on the northbound shoulder of the freeway on the Nojoqui Grade in Santa Barbara County and in the Cottonwood Pass along the shoulder of Highway 41 near the Kern County line. In any case the fire has thus far escaped initial attack and is well into extended attack with no significant containment late tonight. This sequence of three images captured from Air Attack 340 (based out of CALFIRE's Paso Robles Air Attack Base) show the progression of the fire over the course of the first few hours.
All three images courtesy of CALFIRE San Luis Unit.
Just now I watched this short video and I must say that I do believe I am in love with Kate Berlant. It has nothing to do with her entertainment industry income (which she appears to admirably spend on her rock collection which as far as I'm concerned is a plus. RESPECT!) or her sense of humor (which is important but not as important as rocks because I have my priorities straight). As I related in 2012, Rachel Bloom produced a fantastic musical ode to boobies and early-pubescent male curiosity that invoked references to the love of rocks (example lyric: "Wow, amethyst is a type of quartz? For that you can touch my boobies.") which you can view HERE. I must confess that my crush on Ms. Bloom is in jeopardy as Ms. Berlant has stolen my heart. Ms. Berlant, I'll show you mine if you show me your's. I meant my mineral, fossil, and artifact collection, of course! If any of you thought I meant something else, SHAME ON YOU!
*Note to Ms. Berlant: NEVER pay 20 grand for any size Archeulean chopper from Morocco or anywhere! Next time you want to purchase something like that hit me up before you do that. NEVER buy such a specimen anywhere but in Tucson or perhaps Sainte-Marie or Munich (maybe Denver). Some dealers will try to rip you off because you have money and they think you don't know what you are doing. Also, DO NOT buy retail in a store or from a dealer NOT in a wholesale context (that's where Tucson, Sainte-Marie, Munich, and maybe Denver come into play).
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Another explosive wildfire started in Lake County, CA, today burning with a ferocity similar to the Rocky Fire a couple of weeks ago. The Jerusalem Fire (named for Jerusalem Valley near Middletown, CA) burned 3,000 acres today. Craig Philpott, a local photographer/videographer who distinguished himself during the Rocky Fire with some awesome images did it again today with some knock-out time-lapse images of the fire.
A couple of nights ago on Twitter I spotted this short video clip taken with a smart phone from a flight departing Chicago's O'Hare Airport the night of August 2, 2015. The storm complex illuminated by lightning flashes as seen through the window reveal an epic storm complex!
Any woman who is to be my Soul Mate and One & Only must necessarily not only "get" this but also find it as funny as I do. Otherwise, "we" just won't work. Also, if I have to explain that this is not really narrated by Morgan Freeman, but rather is an intentionally goofy imitation of Freeman then "we" are a non-starter.
