This ran several days ago but is still worth noting as a solid capper to the science news, and posts here, on the huge fire that burned through the mountains north and east of Los Angeles (and is still not entirely contained). The Los Angeles Times‘s Ari B. Bloomekatz and Cara Mia DiMassa put some time and broadly-based reporting into a  review of the fire’s assault on Mount Wilson. They report that operators of the observatory and of the the nearby grove of communication transmitters had advance warning of the enormous risk for catastrophic fire loss up there. Plans were in place to clear brush but the fire occurred first (One wonders why such warnings were not given years ago).

This is good, solid reporting on lessons learned, and on the difficulty figuring out exactly what is the best way to secure the facilities against wildfire without seriously disrupting or wrecking the local wildlife and plant cover.

Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.