My journeys on Hwy 2 yesterday led me to Mt. Wilson to take pictures of the sunset and the city below. To my west I see a column of smoke rising from the other side of a ridge. It was some distance away, so it was difficult to tell if it was in the forest just on the other side of the ridge, or further away in the city. The ridge was fairly high and the column was pretty well defined so my best guess was that it was in the forest. What I really intended to gain by then calling 911 was a set of eyes down the hill on the other side of that ridge who could look up and confirm what I was seeing. I was surprised the call even went through, but the response I got was much more than that.
(best of my recollection)
First party who answered:
Them: 911 whats your emergency
Me: I'm on Mt. Wilson and see smoke to the west of me.
Them: Hold one moment for fire dispatch.
Second party:
Them: Fire dispatch what is the address?
Me: I'm on Mt. Wilson. I don't have an address but I see smoke to the west of me. I think maybe it's above Sunland. I can't tell because it's on the other side of a ridge.
Them: OK, what is the approximate address?
Me: I'm up in the forest on Mt. Wilson I don't have an address. It's west of me.
Them: (in frustrated tone) OK thanks for calling. Click.
At this point I didn't feel that I made any headway but figured I gave it a shot. It occurred to me I should take pictures in case they are of some value...what could it hurt. In the intervening minutes the smoke no longer looked like a distinct column and spread out a bit. Mind you this is with a zoom lens and I didn't have the luxury of looking at this photo on a big monitor.
A couple minutes later my phone rang with a call from a restricted number. I don't normally answer but I knew the odds were that it was related to my 911 call. I was someone from I think ANF dispatch. I explain again where I was and where the smoke was. I mention that the smoke had begun to dissipate and express my doubts that it may be anything but she says she'll call me back if she needs to. I go back to taking pictures. From up there everything down in the city looks small and I see a helicopter flying by and think that's kinda neat to see one from above. Then the helicopter way down there seems to slow and the light gets brighter and I thought to myself, "that's different". Then as I watch the helicopter I realize it's making a bee line straight up the mountain towards me. It flies up between me and the smoke and I figured if it was actually a fire they would have seen it. Nonetheless they continued up the mountain and flew by me - I think it was LA county fire. I tried to motion in the direction of the smoke, but I knew they had an obviously better vantage point so it was mostly pointless to do so. They flew up and down the ridge then flew out of sight.
At that point the situation was kind of embarrassing, but knowing that they had someone set a fire a up there a little while back it still felt like the right thing to do. I take a few more pictures and pack up and start heading down the mountain and I'll be darned I passed a forest service fire truck headed up. Rather than have those guys not know what the call was about I hung a u-turn and caught up with them (no easy task - those guys can hustle that giant beast of a truck) and flagged them down. I explained to them I called it in, described where it was and even showed one of the guys the pictures. I apologized to them that it turned out to probably be nothing but they were cordial and professional about it and I headed back down. And to wrap things up I pass yet another fire truck headed up. Jeez.
So, overall I don't feel too bad about making the call. From my perspective the smoke looked high enough that it wasn't probable to me that it could be coming from some building down in the city. I didn't have line of sight to an actual fire but I wanted to make the call so the authorities could get their eyes on what I was seeing. The lingering question about a situation like that is what could I have done to better describe what I was seeing? I didn't have the luxury of 4G internet up there - I had one bar of either 1G or 3G. I recently deleted my offline Google Maps so I had no mapping to use to supplement what I was trying to relate to the dispatchers. Now that I have access to the web I can say that the smoke was coming from in or above the Altadena area.
