Glad to hear that Duffman is ok, and glad to see you're doing well Tony! You rock! You and your team are no-doubt saving hundreds of animals' lives!
As Rick mentioned, the fire in Murrieta impacted us quite a bit. I was sitting at home, contemplating whether I should go cover the Bonsall fire, and decided I better stay put in case something broke out more local. Boy was I not expecting it to be THAT local! The fire originated about 3 miles east of my house, and was making a HARD run to the west, right for my street. For a couple of hours, there was nothing they could do to even slow it down. I was on scene doing my thing for the Murrieta Fire Department (getting tons of photos and video), and trying to keep track of my neighborhood at the same time. Once we heard that our neighborhood was under mandatory evacuations, Jessica left work and picked Gavin up from school (the school was also in the fire's path) and got him and our dogs over to my mother in law's house.
She returned home and packed her car up with a bunch of our cherished belongings while I hung out on a local hilltop with some of our city's fire and police leaders, so I could personally keep an eye on the situation. It also proved to be a perfect vantage point to get some great shots of several of the air drops taking place. As sundown approached, the conditions made a complete 180. The winds died down substantially, and the aircraft were able to put a ton of retardant ahead of the fire's front to slow it do a crawl. They ended up stopping the fire 1/4 of a mile from our front door.
I was convinced at that point that we'd be ok for the night, but we kept the cars packed up just in case.I spent the entire night awake, watching the wind speeds on my weather station, making sure they weren't picking up enough to throw embers around. By morning, a single helicopter was overhead, dousing left over hot spots. The weather forecast had changed, and they were no longer predicting strong winds on Friday afternoon, so we knew we'd be good.
Here is some dramatic video I shot at the fire, along with some dash cam footage (cut down), followed by some photos from the scene. The video is bad ass, because you can tell just how hard the wind is pushing the fire. In the dash cam footage, you get a great perspective of what it's like to be in the Xterra chasing this stuff around while listening to 3 radios at once. Trying to stay out of the way, and certainly not trying to get myself killed. Below are also some photos I shot of the fire.
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