Early in the morning on Sunday, October 25th I got up to let the dog out and happened to check my email and see the news of the morning. I quickly saw reference to a wildland fire burning off of Summit Rd. in the Santa Cruz mountains. In October? A few days after a massive rainstorm?
So I quickly gathered all the information I could find on it, got the radios turned on, headed to pick up a few additional pieces of photographic equipment and headed up the hill before the sun had even risen. I could see fire burning from Felton as I headed towards Highway 17.
I arrived on scene a little after 7 am and joined a group of neighbors on the side of the road, they were watching the progress and making their own determinations of when they would head down the hill and evacuate their homes. I heard things such as, "If it crosses that ridge over there..." or "If it makes it to the road..."
Winds were extremely heavy that morning, so heavy in fact that the aircraft only made a few drops before being called off of the fire for several hours. They were able to contain the fire without much damage to structures.
Since I had recently acquired my Canon 5D Mark II camera that also shoots HD video footage, I was able to record some video of the fire and quickly distributed that to local media outlets. I know almost all of the local news stations, their websites, and some print editions ran my still photos and video online. I heard reports from Sacramento and even Hawaii that my footage was being used in the reporting of the fire.
Below are a few of the images and video from that fire.
