Palomar Mountain News

For those of you on the mountain this afternoon, ‘The Calvary’ showed up for a fire that stayed under an acre, with much gratitude to them and the crews on the ground! I just got of the phone with our own Station 79 Captain Dean Kawaski. He said it started up on a ridge between the back of Frye Creek Campground and Doane Pond. About 30 to 40 firefighters really got a workout today because they had to hike back in some steep terrain. Palomar’s Fire Department was joined by crews from Valley Center, Warner Springs and La Jolla Reservation. They were just sitting down to dinner at about 8:30pm and plan to be out mopping up first thing in the morning.

When I first heard about the fire, I called Ray and Sue Carpenter who have a huge pond on their ranch in Mendenhall Valley. They invited me down for a front row seat watching helicopters draw water, including this huge twin engine Chinook, that showed up about every four and a half minutes over an hour and a half. It holds 3000 gallons. Their pond and others on Palomar have been used for every fire up here for decades. Another reason to not have the 500KV towers anywhere at all on Palomar Mountain.

The pond is three acres. In an hour and a half they had taken about 60,000 gallons of water. We noticed the light color showing up on the lower part of the reeds along the edge of the pond where the water level was dropping. Ray and Sue had already turned on their well system that pumps 250 gallons a minute to keep the water supply up to fight the fire. Another fire popped up about 20 minutes later so the helicopters were at the pond again. We are so blessed to have the outcome we have when so many other areas is So Cal aren’t as fortunate.

I’d kidnapped Sandrine (webmaster for Save Palomar Mountain). We first drove up to the Campground entrance where trucks and crews from Escondido, Pala and San Pasqual were staged to assist if needed. But thinking they might have been able to go back home tonight in their clean turn-outs and shiny trucks.

We are so thankful for all of the amazing support and resources that kept that fire from spreading on our beautiful mountain!

Bonnie Phelps

PS – We’re working on getting a great video to you along with a wonderful story from Ray about what it took to get another fire out up here back in the days.