Sunsets On The Desert

As promised, here are just a tiny sample of all the sunset photos I've taken while in Apple Valley. I have two 15-minute slide shows dealing with the skies of Apple Valley, which include various phases of the Moon and high-flying aircraft.

Clouds Over Apple Valley

I have taken many pictures of interesting cloud formations and colors from my campsite here in Apple Valley. I especially enjoy the sunsets after a rain storm (I'll get to some of those in another post). These pictures were taken at sunset only I was facing east or north.

House Fire Part 3

Well, as you can see by now the garage is almost completely gone and the interior of the house is fully involved.





Even at this stage, they have enough water capacity to put the fire out, but they will just keep practicing with the hoses and let it burn.









After a while, it was time to just let the fire go and let it finish off the house.



A person gets a funny feeling about watching somebody's house go up in flames, but you have to remember it is only PRACTICE. It was going to be destroyed anyway.

After the flames died down and most of the smoke had cleared, I found the following in the ashes.

House Fire Part 2

Well, as we left the burning garage in our last episode, our trusty firefighters are on guard to make sure the fire stays contained.



Meanwhile, the front of the house has burst into flames!



When the instructor told the squad that they could put out all that fire with just their one hose, they could not believe it.







But before they knew it, they had the flames knocked down to the point where they had to stop poring water on it for fear of getting the house too wet and they wouldn't be able to get the fire to flare up again so another squad could practiced dousing the flames.

House Fire Part 1

As part of the Fire Academy training, the school was able to obtain an old house and garage that was going to be demolished and use it to practice putting out structure fires.

First and foremost is Safety! Plenty of backup and water supply. There were no hydrants in the area so water was trucked in with a Water Tender. One engine would be enough, but there was another engine on standby. And they used lots of hose. I was wearing the same "turnout" gear that the rest of the firefighters were wearing to protect me from the heat and such. These are just a few of over 280 pictures that I took to try and capture their story.





This is the house and garage that soon will be gone up in smoke.



They practiced ventilating a roof.



A fire was set in each of the small rooms one at a time in the house and each squad had a turn at entering the house with a hose line and checking for people and then putting out the fire. They had to put out the fire quickly so as not catch the whole house on fire. They even practiced extracting a "downed fireman" from a burning building.





After putting out fires in the small rooms, they torched the garage.



Now they had an exercise in Exposure Protection. In other words keep the house from catching fire from all the heat from the garage fire.



This is just the first part of a three part series that is needed to tell the story. While the garage was going up, they posed for a Class Picture.

Wood Cutting At Big Bear

After stopping in Big Bear to get wood cutting permits from the U. S. Forest Service, Jim, Shonda and I along with their next door neighbor caravaned the three pickups up above Big Bear Lake to an elevation of about 7,500 feet. Jim drove his '63 Ford and Shonda drove their Chevy crew-cab. We found a good spot in a "wood cutting" area to either cut up downed trees or fell your own tree, as long as it was marked for felling. We arrived at the cutting site about 12:30 pm.







Once we had arrived, Jim prepared the chainsaws for the task at hand.




















By the time we had all three pickups loaded it was sundown. We carefully and slowly drove back down the mountain and ate dinner in Big Bear City.

Fire Academy Night Burn

I was asked to be the official photographer for the current Victor Valley College Fire Academy. I have taken hundreds of pictures of various events that are part of their training. I posted several pictures of the Night Burn last April or May, but this time I was able to be in better vantage spots.

Class 32 decided to spend a little money and paint the car that is used as a prop for putting out car fires. I thought the paint would burn off the first time they set the car on fire, but the paint lasted the whole 2 hours of the event because of all the water that was put on the car to put out the fires. However, when it came time for me to take pictures of the 6 different squads posed by the burning car, the car got very hot and the paint vanished.

Here are just a few of the 110 shots that took that evening.

While they were putting out the car fire, another group from the class were extinguishing the blaze on another prop. I had to be able to dance around 8 fire hoses and stay out of their way while taking these shots.

My next post will be about my adventures at a Wild land Burn in the city of Victorville.