BurnsFamily Blog

Last night Julie and I were driving home North on 101 from Santa Cruz and noticed a huge plume of smoke near Gilroy. I know what you’re saying, did it smell like sauteed garlic? No, in fact it didn’t — the fire was near Gilroy, not in it. The fire is in the largest state park in open space in Northern California, the Henry W. Coe state park. Here’s a nice map of what we’re talking about.

The fire had just started and was doubling in size every few hours.

We don’t normally worry about wildfires in NorCal, so I had to update the scanner with CalFire frequencies to follow CDF’s (now called CalFire) actions. I found the Frequency of Nature website really helpful to decode the Strike Team designations, equipment type, and scanner frequencies. And even Wikipedia is getting into the action with details on the controversial-but-oh-so-cool “Tanker 910” water drop aircraft. Hearing CalFire vector in Tanker 910 for a water drop gives me tingles! In a single drop it can make a 300-foot by 1 mile long water or retardant line. It can drop its entire 12,000 gallon load in 8 seconds and can reload in 8 minutes. Wow!

Maybe it *does* pay to have a action hero for a governor!

On the sobering side, I heard a fire team get dropped off for their shift. But they had to walk 3 hours (in the 90 degree sun, with full gear on) just to get to their work location. Whoa. These CalFire folks deserve our immense gratitude for serving us like this.

Frequencies I now monitor:

All CDF Command, CDF Tactical, SCU L, all “air-to-ground”, all “air tactics”, all “air victor net” all OES, and CALCORD freqs.