Southern California’s October wildfires created crimson skies over Palomar.

Fire on the Mountain

At 4 a.m. on October 23, Scott Kardel, communications manager for Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, was awakened by the blare of a siren and a voice over a loudspeaker. The local fire official, driving slowly down the road, announced that it was time to get to safety. A fire had broken out about 12 miles south on the La Jolla Indian reservation, down in the valley, and was racing toward Palomar Mountain.

Kardel, his wife, Alydia, and their teenage daughter, Sara, quickly got dressed, jumped in their car, and drove the short distance from their home to the observatory, where other members of the Palomar staff were gathering. Soon, about 30 other members of the small Palomar community of roughly 300 people started appearing, some with their horses and motor homes. The facility’s well-maintained fire breaks and the impervious steel and concrete dome of the historic 200-inch Hale Telescope made the observatory the safest refuge on the mountain from the blaze, dubbed the Poomacha fire.

Early fall is prime wildfire season in southern California, and the Palomar staff had already been concerned about the danger because of the region’s severe drought conditions. Then the fierce Santa Ana gales started blowing on Sunday, October 21, bringing sustained winds of 45 miles per hour and gusts of more than 65 miles per hour. “It was pretty brutal,” said Kardel. As a precaution, observing was cancelled for the night. “When the Santa Ana winds are blowing and the humidity is low, everyone on the mountain top is on pins and needles,” added Dan McKenna, the deputy site manager at Palomar.

By late Sunday, it seemed like all of southern California was aflame. From the U.S.–Mexico border to Santa Barbara, more than two dozen fires ignited, eventually killing eight people, destroying more than 2,000 homes and hundreds of other structures, and forcing the evacuation of about half a million people, mostly in the San Diego area. (Amazingly, with the exception of Malibu, the entire LA basin, including Pasadena, was spared both fire and the brunt of the heavy winds.) On Monday, with the smoke from one of the San Diego fires visible, McKenna asked members of the Palomar grounds crew to walk the perimeter boundary of the observatory’s 2,200-acre complex, to make sure that there were no tree limbs close to any power lines.

Although Palomar locals say that the last major fire on the mountain top was in the 1930s, before the observatory was built, staff who live on the mountain say that fires in 1987 and 1989 got within a couple of miles. On both those occasions, the observatory became the main fire command center, hosting about 2,500 firefighters and 50 members of the community for two weeks. And in 2003, during the Cedar and Paradise wildfires in San Diego, much of the mountain was evacuated. McKenna couldn’t derive any comfort from a firsthand historical perspective, since he had only been on the job for three months. Still, in his more than 30 years at other observatories, including the Steward and McDonald observatories in Arizona and Texas, respectively, he had experienced a few wildfires that had come close to these facilities and was hardly a greenhorn.

On Tuesday morning, when the fire broke out on the La Jolla reservation, McKenna quickly realized that the observatory was going to be transformed from a research facility to a firefighting staging ground. Although the observatory has several cottages on site that could house area residents, the staff knew that it would make most sense to get residents off the mountain while the roads were still open. Compounding the problem, power and telephone service went out that day, although the facility’s generators were able to provide electricity for the observatory.

“We received people for a while, but we’re not set up to have people there long term,” Kardel said. “In a pinch, it’s okay, but it’s not a good place to hang out for a week. Every time we looked at the fire, it seemed to be getting worse. We decided it would be better to get people to a proper evacuation site.”

Kardel and his family drove down the mountain on Tuesday, along with the residents who had gathered at the observatory, leaving McKenna and several other staff members to maintain the facility. Two staffers, computer specialist Dan Zieber and electronics technician Greg van Idsinga, are members of the Palomar volunteer fire department, and they were quickly dispatched to work the Poomacha fire.

Thicksten snapped this picture on the afternoon of October 23, as a massive smoke plume from the Poomacha fire in north San Diego county rose behind the dome of the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory on Palomar Mountain. At the time, reported Thicksten, the fire, which had begun on the La Jolla Indian reservation about 12 miles to the south, was “about 1.5 miles away as the crows fly and seems to be headed in a northerly direction.” The structures in the foreground are part of the Palomar testbed interferometer operated by JPL.

“By Tuesday afternoon, the fire was making its run up the south slope and we got our first view of its smoke clouds,” McKenna said. Because the wind was blowing from the east, the air was clear on the mountain and the views of the ash plumes were spectacular. “We had a fire department radio, so we were in constant contact with fire officials,” McKenna said. Caltech administrators in Pasadena were also in regular contact with McKenna, expressing their concern about the fire danger as well as potential risks from deteriorating air quality. They suggested that the remaining staff members evacuate Palomar, something that had never happened before at the observatory. That night, McKenna and his coworkers took turns walking around the dome’s exterior catwalk to monitor the progress of the fire.

On Wednesday, with fires still raging in San Diego county, the need to evacuate became more urgent. “I received communication from Caltech that they were concerned, and they wanted to make it clear that Caltech values its employees above its considerations for the facility,” McKenna said. No one wanted to leave, but now there was no choice. “We could hear over the radio the fire officials calling for backup support. There was talk about road closures.” Making matters more confusing, smoke would occasionally appear in unexpected places, and it was unclear whether it was coming from control burns set intentionally by firefighters, or flare-ups from the Poomacha fire. If the staff was going to get out, this was the time, so on Wednesday afternoon, McKenna and about 10 other employees drove down the mountain.

The scene driving down South Grade Road—known as S6—was surreal. The fire was moving along a ridge parallel to the observatory, but with the wind still blowing away from the observatory, the vehicles and passengers were in no immediate danger. Once they got to the burn areas, they were surprised to see most of the oak trees still standing, amid a blackened landscape barren of brush. Said McKenna, “It was like everything had evaporated and left the trees,” due, most likely, to the fast moving nature of the fire. “We saw buildings still standing, which means that the fire department did an amazing job of structure protection.”

Unfortunately, firefighters were unable to save the home of Karl Duns- combe, telescope operator for the 200-inch. According to Kardel, a neighbor called Dunscombe early Tuesday morning to tell him that the Poomacha fire was bearing down on his house near the La Jolla reservation. Dunscombe and his wife escaped before the fire consumed and then destroyed their home. “Had it been another five minutes, they would not have gotten out,” Kardel said.

On Palomar Mountain, the Thicksten family dogs welcome a firefighting team from San Dimas, California.

Back at the observatory, Bob Thicksten and Steve Einer were the only Palomar employees remaining on the mountain, joined a few days later by Bruce Baker. With its one-million-gallon water tank and three wells, Palomar became the filling station for fire crews protecting the mountain. The observatory’s administrative manager and a Palomar resident for 28 years, Thicksten knew that the firefighters would run out of water if he didn’t stay behind to keep the facility’s generators and its water pumps going. “I explained to Caltech administrators that as long as I took proper precautions, I should stay in place,” he said. “I’ve got my purebred Australian shepherds with me, and I wouldn’t put my dogs in danger.”

Near Mother’s Kitchen, a restaurant five miles from the observatory, Thicksten, his son, Daniel, and other volunteers set up a barbeque and started feeding firefighters, mostly using food donated by residents. Some firefighters also caught up on sleep in the observatory’s dormitory, normally occupied by visiting astronomers, and on the floor of the Hale Telescope’s dome. Not surprisingly, the firefighters started asking questions about the kind of work that goes on at Palomar. “I became a tour guide during that time,” Thicksten said.

“For a few nights we had 50 to 100 firefighters sleeping at the observatory,” Thicksten said, six days after the fire started. By that time, the fire was more than 50 percent contained, and new resources continued to arrive, redeployed from other fires that had been totally contained. A group of Marines with two bulldozers even showed up to help clear fire roads. “Caltech has a major role in the community and they depend on us,” Thicksten said. “And we’re getting the support we need” from the firefighters and Marines.

Nearly fully contained by November 4, the fire never came closer than a mile of the observatory. By Monday, November 5, observing had resumed there. “If there is anything that’s permanent, it’s the 200-inch,” McKenna said. “That’s built to last for all time.” As for the Palomar staff members, he said, they had plainly showed that they consider the observatory more than just a place to work. “Everyone feels that working here is not just a job but part of a community. There’s not one person here who does not take extra pride in what they do.”