9/3/02

Here are four pictures I took 9/2/02 at the beginning of the fire. The ones from farther away were taken later that afternoon from Rte 66 across from Marie Callender's restaraunt in Azusa.

They haven't been able to use any borade (sp?) bombers our water drop helicopters on this because we keep having huge thunderheads building up above the mountains every day. Thunderheads mean lots of turbulence for planes, and pilots won't mess with those clouds as you might know.

This afternoon as we were driving around town, it looked like the fire had spread as much to the east as to the west, and it is one huge fire. It's pretty far back, so we don't feel any threat from it.

9/7/02

It's especially sad to know that all of Crystal Lake burned, Falling Springs Cafe and cabins no longer exist, probably the Crystal Lake Campground store is gone. I worked there one whole summer. My ex husband Paul lived at Crystal Lake from the time he was five until he started college at age 18. I have many fond memories of Crystal Lake, read Lord of the Rings while sitting on a rock above the lake, snow shoed across the lake (stupid thing to do), hiked up to Windy Gap, which is where you can stand in the gap and look to the north and see the desert below, and turn to look to the south and see the coastline and Catalina off on the horizon of the ocean. Mt. Hawkins is the highest point for that area and there was a fire lookout tower there, this fire burned that area too. I believe the fire burned much farther east than that, and yesterday afternoon while I was out, I could still see lots of smoke coming up from the canyon.

I talked to a woman on one of the fire crews that works the helicopters and she told me it was a very hard fire to put out. She said that it'll take another week to really get it out, and that was last Wednesday.

Paul's brother in law worked on the fire with a fire crew from Corona and said that the house Paul lived in while living up there was saved, and another building, but that everything else up there is gone. Some of those buildings were built in the late 1800's to early 1900's. So there is history that is gone forever.