Doc Searls Weblog

3:22pm—Hats off to Miles Archer for the links below, one of which goes here—

—showing all the aircraft and their paths at once. You can start here at https://globe.adsbexchange.com/, which is kind of your slate that’s blank except for live aircraft over the Palisades Fire:

Meanwhile all the media are reporting one home loss, in the 3000 block of Mandeville Canyon Road in Brentwood.

As you can see above, most of the action right now is on the north flank of the Palisades fire, along the crest of the ridge:

Here is a Chinook dropping water alongside Mandeville Canyon Road near where it adjoins Mulholland Drive:

I should pause here to say I’m just getting acquainted with ADS-B Exchange, the “World’s largest source of unfiltered flight data.” Here’s the About page. Bottom line: “In essence, ADS-B Exchange is more than just a flight-tracking website; it’s a dynamic, collaborative community committed to bringing transparency and inclusivity to the world of aviation.” It has a pile of social channels, and lots of ways to join in.

9:00am—The battle against wildfires in Los Angeles is almost entirely won by aerial firefighting. Helicopters and airplanes dropping water and retardants on fires and along perimeters saved Hollywood from the Sunset Fire two nights ago. They saved Encino from the Paradise Fire last night, and they are saving Brentwood right now. What we see above, thanks to KABC/7, is N43CU, a Boeing CH-47D Chinook, gathering water in Stone Canyon Reservoir to dump on the Palisades Fire in Brentwood. Here is its recent flight path, thanks to FlightRadar24:

And here is N60VC, a Sikorsky HH-60L Firehawk from Ventura County Fire Protection, filling up in the Encino Reservoir and running its routes over the fire:

And here is Cal Fire’s CFR605, a Sikorsky S-70i Firehawk:

They can do all this because the winds right now are relatively calm, as they also were last night above Encino and the night before above Hollywood. When the winds are too strong for them to handle, we have what happened to Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

Some flights are mysteries (at least to me), but seem to have some relevance, such as this Piper out of Riverside, weaving back and forth across three of the fires regions:

I want to know more about that one because I want to know more about everything, and to share as much as I can, as much for historical reasons as well as to satisfy current curiosities.

Anyway, if all goes well, the fire will burn a maximum spread of fuel (desert grass, forest, and chaparral), creating fire breaks good for a year or two—and then stop spreading short of houses and neighborhoods. Lord willin’ and the wind don’t come all thes fires will be sufficiently contained.

Also, if we’re lucky, Winter—our rainy season—will finally arrive, all the brown will turn green, and the fire season won’t return until late Spring.

Three bonus links:

1. The Architects Of L.A.’s Wildfire Devastation, by Katya Schwenk in The Lever. She makes a sensible case against development in areas such as the ones being saved in Brentwood right now. But she doesn’t mention a second danger. That’s why you need to read—
2. Los Angeles Against the Mountains, by John McPhee in The New Yorker . That ran in 1988, and later in his book The Control of Nature. McPhee is the Shakespeare, the Rembrandt, the Beethoven, of nonfiction. What he says about where and how we live with danger is essential for making sense out of both the fires today,and the debris flows they assure when big rain comes. Which it will. A pull-quote: “The phalanxed communities of Los Angeles have pushed themselves hard against these mountains, an aggression that requires a deep defense budget to contend with the results.”
3. Making sense of what happened to Montecito, which I posted here in 2018.