I am in the foothills north of L.A. where the Station fire is now >20,000 acres, and the firefighters up here are also STUDS...The Engine companies on the ground are holding their lines and heroically defending people's homes. We are less than half a mile from one of the evacuation zones, but there's very little chance the flame-front could make it this far. (I've been watching it burn West-to-East along the ridge-lines for the past 4 nights.)
The terrain here is way too steep to get into on foot to try to suppress the fire (it blew right through the dozer line they set up like it wasn't even there) so they've been attacking it primarily from the air - flying non-stop helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft for 3 days trying to keep this monster down. I was outside on my front lawn today watching the little tankers drop their loads, when I heard this huge roar and looked up.to see a DC-10 flying sideways through our little valley spewing Phos-chek or similar ..pilot must have thought he was friggin' Han Solo or something...crazy!