Fire Brigade News
October 2009
Well I was so excited by a measly ¼ inch of rain last month, imagine my joy at getting almost 9 inches!! Wow! What a storm!! I have to say in the many years I have lived in Big Sur I have seen a lot of rain, but that was pretty impressive. I kept watching my rain gauge as it went from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 and then I thought, OK, it will end soon, then 6, 7, 8 inches! I ended up on Pfeiffer with 8.66 on my electronic rain gauge behind the house. I went out front and checked my “standard” one to find almost 10 inches. I heard varying reports from around the area up to 13 inches. Then of course, we got the report of highest of all from Mining ridge of 21.34. All in about a 24 hour period.
Fortunately and I might add, quite amazingly, we had little to no damage or problems. The worst I heard was a tree falling on a home with damage. The roads incredibly enough stayed open, huge efforts and work on Cal Trans part. They were hopping all day. They also assisted State Parks with the problem area at Redwood creek where it flooded in front of the Big Sur Lodge and across the highway late last year. I was hearing them on my scanner and it was touch and go for awhile. But they managed to keep it open.
We were called by OES several times, about 6:00 and 8:00 PM. Their figures were showing that flooding could be imminent. We had been keeping an eye on the river most of the day and it didn’t look to bad. I took a final drive around the valley and looked at the usual problem areas about 9:00 Tuesday evening. It looked like it was going to stay within it’s banks if we didn’t get much more rain. There were some BIG trees floating by
The hills are now showing a hint of green , a preview of the beautiful emerald green color to come.
Unfortunately, the same day as the storm, was the Board of Supervisors meeting that many of us were planning on attending and speaking at to plead our case for continued 24/7/365 ambulance service in Big Sur. At the last minute some of us emailed in our prepared statements for the Supervisors to read. They did vote 5 to 0 for negotiations to continue for the existing service to stay here. While that was good news, we are not out of the woods yet. The negotiating process starts and we could still end up with limited service. So it wouldn’t hurt at all for those of you that have not yet contacted your Supervisors to do so.
I have already had calls asking if it is OK to start the backyard burning, NO! Burn season will start December 1st as usual. We could still get a week of hot weather (in fact we had several days of almost 90) and be right back in fire season.
The Jade festival was last weekend and the Brigade had a table there selling our wares, coffee, Ts etc. Warren Doyle and Margaret Grahame-Doyle did a great job setting it up and “manning” it almost the entire time. Remember, you can go online and purchase our Brigade items, due to popular demand we have added our T and sweatshirt in black, HYPERLINK "http://www.bigsurfire.org" www.bigsurfire.org.
We have finally replaced our South coast squad, thanks in part to a generous donation from the South Coast Land Trust. Our old one had over 170,000 miles on it. We still need to get the new one all outfitted with radio, light bar, etc, before it goes in service. We have one more pickup, a 20 year old Chevy, that needs replacing and we will be looking good.
Daylight savings time also starts soon, it is the time of year that we remind everyone that has battery operated smoke detectors to change their batteries. At the same time the weather seems to be getting a little chillier and now is also a good time to be cleaning your chimneys and stove pipes.
I just got back from the River Run, we did quite well considering we weren’t sure until recently that we would even be able to have it. I think the final count was about 560 runners and walkers. The 30th will be next year! Hard to believe that some of us have been getting up every year for 29 years and going down to the park and working the run. Time for some new “young blood” to step in and take over. Next weekend is the Bal Masque, both are big fund raisers for the Brigade. Then we will be into the Holiday season and taking a brief respite from our training schedule.
Martha Karstens
Chief