| Interesting how in some cases the fire went right around
things without touching them.
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| This valley was burned all the way up and down.
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| The fire curved around this development, scorching all the hills
but leaving the houses alone.
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| The golf course near Barona Casino... the fairways stayed, and
the roughs burned up.
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| Susan, our excellent in-air photographer, caught this shot
that very clearly shows how close the fire came.
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| This shot shows the "house on the hill", with our place
to the west-northwest (look for the solar panels on the
roof and the red truck out front.)
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| Just around the corner on Wikiup, you can see how the fire burned
down the open space and for the most part didn't make its way into
people's yards... and yet, on the other side of the street, someone
lost their garage.
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| This shot shows how close the fire was to our house on three
sides. The metal framed-house with the really good view at the top
of the hill burned... kind of like being in a reverse funnel. Our
nearby "greenbelt" hiking trail looks like a scene from the moon.
The fire pretty much moved through the neighborhood by running down
the trails and greenbelts, occasionally hopping over to eat a house
here or there.
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| Santa Isabel got lucky... they stopped it just meters away
from the town.
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| With the winds pushing the flames towards the town so hard,
Julian was lucky to preserve their downtown. Many of the
residences in the outlying did not escape.
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| Harbison canyon, one of the harder hit areas.
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| Fire roads that did basically no good in Santa Ana wind conditions.
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| Hopscotching across the plains, sometimes stopping when it came to
the road and other times hopping right across...
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| El Capitan reservoir near sunset. The fires burned right up to the
water's edge on all sides.
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| The end of Ramona Oaks road, where the fire first reached the
Estates from the Cleveland National Forest.
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| A beautiful ridge, now barren of trees and chapparal.
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| These people obviously cleared the brush for quite a distance
around their homes, but apparently it didn't help in most cases.
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| It's sometimes hard to tell when looking sideways just how burned
everything is, but when you look down it's quite obvious. Everywhere
you don't see green in this photo is totally burned.
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| Very difficult terrain for firefighting, and with the winds
they weren't able to use aircraft in the first few days.
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| This is the equestrian center at the northeast end of the
Estates. To the left of the track you can see that the upper
stables are still standing but the lower stables burned.
As far as we know, all the animals were evacuated in time.
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| A beautiful San Diego sunset, looking at downtown
San Diego from over El Cajon.
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| Another interesting example of the fire burning completely around
something, but leaving this grove of trees standing.
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| Aerial view of the Viejas Casino and Outlet Malls, including their
(very early) Christmas tree in the lower-left courtyard.
Notice the two different styles of HVAC systems used on the
north vs. south buildings.
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| And... any landing you walk away from is a good landing, but this
one was particularly nice. Landed about 15 feet from the threshold
and had to add power just to make it to the first turnoff. Sweet.
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