Sarge and I had to drive to Temecula this morning. We got down into an area called Rainbow Canyon, which is deeply inset into thick chaparral. We came around a turn, and there was a water dropping helicopter making a giant sweeping upward turn after having just dropped a load on a fire that we were just now seeing come into view a couple of hundred feet ahead of us. We got a wet windshield as a result.
There was a strike team up ahead of the fire cutting brush, and trying to create a fire break. Somehow, out of the blue, a Marine (soldier) snapped into action, and started blocking traffic from our direction, and getting us turned around from the fire. We were first in line at getting turned around.
The chaparral at this point, which is what was burning, is fully 30' deep, and too thick to walk thru. I'm glad it was as easy as just turning around and heading back up canyon to get away from it.
What was silly about this, is that there were two fire trucks a couple of miles back up the road, at the main intersection where you either commit to the freeway, or, to the canyon road. They could have turned us around at that point. Nope. They were letting traffic thru even as we got back to them, including semi trucks that were far too large to turn around on the narrow winding canyon road.
this my fire story for this day, July 25, 2018 AM