Jason Womack

My first "Ojai Post"

After working on it for longer than I thought I would, I just submitted my first article to the Ojai Post. Click on over, and read about one of my favorite "Saturday to-dos" while I'm at home...a ride along the Ojai Valley Trail.

Home for the weekend...

Yeah, I'm in Ojai for a little bit!

If you know of anyone with two of my personal interests, please pass this site along. I love being outside, and I enjoy helping people. So, on Saturday, I'm going to run through Ojai, participating in a fundraising event for our local Ojai Hospital.

(It looks like it will be a fun, fast course. Some of these kids ran amazing times last year!)

A video of "Day Fire" smoke

It's a 20 video second clip looking southwest to northeast from the back yard. I start out looking west toward the beach (Ventura) and end looking north toward the Los Padres National Forest.

Here's the video...
(Sorry, I took it with the Olympus digicam, and don't have an easy way to edit - it's about 5M)

And, here's a picture

Calm winds in Ojai...

Well, we're doing the preliminary "walk around the house" to pick out the things we'd grab if they were to evacuate us away from Ojai. It's been an interesting afternoon: Aircraft directly over our house, fire crews all through town, and smoke and ash in the air.

Here's the update I found as of 09/22/2006  at 03:49 PM.

Link: InciWeb: Day Fire Information September 22.

Day Fire Information September 22
Update Los Padres/Angeles National Forests
For more Information: Phone: (805) 961-5770 or 388-4276

Moderate growth continued yesterday on the 111,588 acre Day Fire, and fire fighters were helped by a cool and fairly calm day. The fire is now 35 percent contained and good progress was made to construct fire line west of Mutau Flat. Burnout operations on the north flank in the Black Mountain and Alamo Mountain area are going well. This technique starts with igniting small fires on ridge tops and then letting the fire slowly descend to Piru Creek where fire crews can more easily stop the low intensity flames. The purpose of this attack is to eliminate fuel under a controlled condition. Containing as much of the fire as possible is being emphasized with the helpful weather, and to prepare for the predicted Santa Ana event late Friday, which has generated a Red Flag Warning. As of this morning, the fire is still approximately 7 air miles north of Fillmore, 9 miles north of Santa Paula, 7 miles south of Lockwood Valley, 12 miles south of Frazier Park, and 10 miles northeast of Ojai.

The "Day Fire" is close...

After an amazing "road trip," working in LA, Phoenix, New York and London, I returned home today to find the hills behind our house on fire.

Although we're the lucky ones so far, and are not being asked to evacuate, there's always that possibilty. Driving home was a fascinating sight, with the sun behind ash, and the mountains a blurry vision to the east. At home, here's the picture we saw:

This is looking west, away from the fire, away from the mountains. My car was here all week, and it had collected a few pieces of ash over that time. Apparently, the fire is some 20% or so contained, and it looks like it's still a few days away from complete control.

I'm heading out of town again tomorrow (going to Colorado Springs, CO), and looking forward to hearing some great news as the firefighters (and weather) work to get this contained.