The Fight to Save Mount Wilson Observatory
Firefighters wage a 5-day battle to save Mount Wilson Observatory
It was near midnight Monday, and Larry Peabody looked toward a leading flank of the giant Station fire as it advanced over a ridge in the Angeles National Forest, marching toward the Mt. Wilson Observatory.
"We can't stop the head of the fire," said Peabody, a fuels battalion chief for the U.S. Forest Service, as he stood in the darkness on the bottom of Mt. Wilson Road, a narrow switchback off the Angeles Crest Highway that is the only paved road into and out of the peak-hugging observatory compound.
The battle for Mt. Wilson was fully engaged.
To one side of the firefighters were multiplying ranks of snarling flames that already had turned miles of centuries-old trees to charcoal. To the other side were a hundred years of astronomical history and hundreds of millions of dollars in communications towers, treasures to the city below.
Over five days and four nights, the fight would be waged on the ground and from the sky, and the odds of saving the legendary observatory and its neighboring thickets of broadcast spires often seemed slim at best.
Read on...
It was near midnight Monday, and Larry Peabody looked toward a leading flank of the giant Station fire as it advanced over a ridge in the Angeles National Forest, marching toward the Mt. Wilson Observatory.
"We can't stop the head of the fire," said Peabody, a fuels battalion chief for the U.S. Forest Service, as he stood in the darkness on the bottom of Mt. Wilson Road, a narrow switchback off the Angeles Crest Highway that is the only paved road into and out of the peak-hugging observatory compound.
The battle for Mt. Wilson was fully engaged.
To one side of the firefighters were multiplying ranks of snarling flames that already had turned miles of centuries-old trees to charcoal. To the other side were a hundred years of astronomical history and hundreds of millions of dollars in communications towers, treasures to the city below.
Over five days and four nights, the fight would be waged on the ground and from the sky, and the odds of saving the legendary observatory and its neighboring thickets of broadcast spires often seemed slim at best.
Read on...