[HoustonHam] Firefight for historic Mt. Wilson in S California

[Chris Boone]

www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mtwilson3-2009sep03,0,3994284.story 

 

Firefighters wage 5-day battle to save Mt. Wilson Observatory

 

In a mile-high duel, driven firefighters are determined to keep flames from
the historic facility.

 

By Paul Pringle and Louis Sahagun

 

September 3, 2009

 

It was near midnight Monday, and Larry Peabody looked toward a leading flank
of the giant Station fire as it advanced over a ridge in the Angeles
National Forest, marching toward the Mt. Wilson Observatory.

 

"We can't stop the head of the fire," said Peabody, a fuels battalion chief
for the U.S. Forest Service, as he stood in the darkness on the bottom of
Mt. Wilson Road, a narrow switchback off the Angeles Crest Highway that is
the only paved road into and out of the peak-hugging observatory compound.

 

The battle for Mt. Wilson was fully engaged.

 

To one side of the firefighters were multiplying ranks of snarling flames
that already had turned miles of centuries-old trees to charcoal. To the
other side were a hundred years of astronomical history and hundreds of
millions of dollars in communications towers, treasures to the city below.

 

Over five days and four nights, the fight would be waged on the ground and
from the sky, and the odds of saving the legendary observatory and its
neighboring thickets of broadcast spires often seemed slim at best.

 

Peabody and his colleagues were already exhausted. In oven heat, they had
hacked away brush around Mt. Wilson's structures, and taken chain saws to
low-hanging limbs of oak and pine, in hopes of starving the main body of the
fire. As they toiled, smaller but growing flare-ups climbed the mountain
like a procession of candle-bearers.

 

Now, some of the firefighters were trying to steal a few hours of sleep, or
at least a few minutes, in bedrolls on a turn-off from the highway. Clogging
the narrow lanes were boulders loosened from the braces of trees that had
been felled by the fire.

 

On Mt. Wilson itself, two-dozen firefighters stood overnight sentry,
positioned along the gloomy perimeters of the observatory and towers. A
greater number might have been deployed, but there were more pressing
priorities in the urban elevations -- the protection of hillside homes.

 

The domed observatory and its companion installations -- including the
towers that serve broadcast outlets and a variety of law-enforcement and
national security functions -- had been evacuated. The resulting scene was
as otherworldly as Mt. Wilson's place in Los Angeles lore, as the
105-year-old science marvel whose 100-inch Hooker telescope had proved the
existence of other galaxies flung across an expanding universe.

 

Columns of smoke turned the moonlight orange, and the flurries of ash
mimicked the 5,710-foot mountain's winter snowfall. Sound came only from the
wind, with some gusts created by the fire churning in sea-deep canyons.

 

At daybreak Monday, things had become worse. Twin fronts of the blaze drew
closer, and the danger posed to the crews staging a last line of defense was
suddenly a matter of moral imperative.

 

Firefighters were ordered off Mt. Wilson, and there were prayers for a
change in the weather -- a shift in the winds, a burst of rain, anything
that might make a return to the observatory less than suicidal.

 

"It's not worth dying for," said Los Angeles County Fire Department
Battalion Chief Steve Martin.

 

He spoke even as the elements abided. Temperatures cooled a bit, the
humidity rose, the wind died down, and firefighters pushed the flames back
from the slopes of La Cañada Flintridge and La Crescenta, in Mt. Wilson's
shadow.

 

By Tuesday afternoon, the crews were back at the observatory, and an
intensified aerial assault was under way. Helicopters bombarded the canopies
of trees with fire-retardant gel and foam. A pair of 18-wheelers angled up
Mt. Wilson Road to deliver two house-sized earthmovers, which were put to
work scraping the hillsides clean of brush.

 

And then backfires were set under the oaks within a few feet of the
observatory's gleaming white dome, triggering a skull-rattling alarm that
blared from large horns on the building.

 

By dusk, all that could be done had been done to gird for the arrival of the
flames, which were expected to scale the mountain by 2 a.m. Wednesday. A
backup contingent of 18 fire engines lined Angeles Crest Highway at the
turn-off, five miles down the road. Aircraft were on standby.

 

If the fire overran the compound, a last-resort measure would be taken to
spray the technology-packed structures with foam. "We do not plan to cover
everything with a gooey mess," said county Fire Deputy Chief James Powers,
who was supervising the operation from his improvised headquarters in an
observatory office.

 

About 100 firefighters were dug in, waiting. Two a.m. came and went, and the
fire stayed below the observatory perimeter.

 

At dawn, it had retreated to a less-threatening distance, but not far enough
for comfort. The same was true at midday.

 

"We're still fairly concerned," said Paul Lowenthal, a spokesman for the
fire teams. "This fire is constantly changing and moving in different
directions."

 

It wasn't until late afternoon that the die-hard crews were feeling good
about their prospects of winning, even though scattered hot spots continued
to menace the observatory.

 

"We're pretty confident," said Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Edward
Osorio. "Mt. Wilson is going to be OK."

 

paul.pringle at latimes.com

 

louis.sahagun at latimes 

 

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times