Wildfire jumps freeway

garyhaupt wrote:


A good time to think...when would you shut'r down and run?

Almost never.
Turn around and head back on the shoulder, maybe.

If it is daytime and you can see around/through the flames I think the best thing to do is take a run at it.....IN the car.

That is assuming that the pavement is not on fire and that the road is not already blocked.

It was more than just stopping traffic. That was the big complaint from the news anchors until the eyewitness accounts came in that the fire was basically ON the freeway and people were running from their cars. It sounds like they stopped it where they could in the time they had to do it. Been through allot of fires, but nothing that literally burned across the freeway and anything on the road In its way.

Burning uphill is only a side benefit to this pass. It's ALWAYS windy, and can hit in excess of 100MPH during Santa Ana wind conditions. Thankfully that wasn't today. This is the same pass that makes national news to show fully loaded semi's and RV's blown over or completely off the freeway.

There's now another one burning in Wrightwood

Brush fire burning uphill is a chimney.

Wind blowing the fire uphill.

Cars were stopped on the road at the top of the chimney.

IMO:
"Somebody" made a poor choice of a location to stop the traffic.

Very lucky there were no serious injuries or loss of life

.

Glad we weren't on the road today, it is one we travel quite often.

watched the breaking news on the fire for almost 2 hours

started in the median, cause currently unknown
escalated into 3500 acre wild fire that is still burning
it was when the wind changed and the fire swept over the south bound lanes that vehicles caught on fire
several spots along there have very large open median with the north and south lanes on different elevations
south bound will be closed for the night, maybe longer
north bound toward vegas is open but very congested and slow moving

Here's a link:

CA I-15 Fire

Terrible, I hope no one was injured, Vehicles can be replaced. Personally if I knew a fire was ahead of me I would do my best to avoid that area.

That would be darn scary! Been up and down that grade a few times.