Fire Watch..................

Yesterday morning a small plane crashed into one of the canyons behind our ridge of mountains. This first picture was taken about 2 minutes after the crash.

From there, the fire just escalated.

Below you can see one of the mosquito helicopters that are helping fight the fire. This morning's briefing said that 6 copters, 7 water bombers and one DC10 are fighting this monster. So far, it's only 5% contained with 4,800 acres lost.

It started very close to last year's fire, but it really hit hard the Blackburn Canyon area and then spread west and east and back into the Old West Ranch area where many homes were lost last year.

Just before dusk last night, the fire reached the top of the ridge and we watched the flames soar into the air.

All night long we watched but knew we were not in harms way because the fire had really laid down during the nighttime hours. We had both vehicles loaded and were ready just in case.

Today will be another noisy day as the copters are watering up in the sump just to our north and the well to our east. It's amazing to watch how they fight this fire. The copters go in one after another and drop their water loads while the planes are gone. Once the planes are reloaded then they attack the fire and the copters go into a holding pattern.

The glider airport to our east is once again a staging area and all the tow planes and gliders are grounded.

I'll keep you updated and please do remember all these heroes that are fighting this fire.

This afternoon we are expecting thunderstorms and that's a flip of the coin - could bring rain or lightning.