I’ll be fine with 4 hours of sleep.

Got a call from my principal around 10:15 tonight.

There was a fire in the auditorium and the Fire Marshall needed some information about the stage lights and how the light board worked.

He tried to get the information from me over the phone, but in the end I ended up having to head down to the school to turn things on so I could answer his questions.  I ended up being there for a while, I didn’t get home until a little after midnight.

We figured out that is probably wasn’t a short in the system, and that none of the lights were left on.  What we think happened is that a couple of the spot lights that are on light trees on the stage were a little too close to the curtains, and somebody probably accidentally pushed the curtain right onto one of the lights on their way out of the stage.  Even though there were off, they had been on and if you’ve ever worked with them you know that they get incredibly hot, and can stay that way for a while.

Fortunately, thanks to the fire-sprinkler system, the damage (to the building) was minimal and we’ll still be having school tomorrow.

The main curtain was ruined, as was one of the black side curtains.  The nice hardwood on the wall by the curtain was burned and had to be removed, and a little of the hardwood floor was singed a bit too.  The stage and auditorium floor were drenched, according the the Fire Marshall there was 3 feet of water in the orchestra pit area.

The big damage was water damage to the sets.  The school production of “The Wizard of Oz” was scheduled to start next week, but since the witches castle and the front doors to the emerald city were destroyed, we’re not sure it’s going to happen.

Anyway, at least the building didn’t burn to the ground and I’m getting real tired so it’s off to bed.  Hopefully they’ll have the smoke smell cleared out of the building by morning so I won’t have to deal with that. 

G’nite.

One big campfire.

30 miles (48km) south of Salt Lake City a 4,000+ acre fire is burning, along the mountains that separate the Salt Lake Valley from Utah Valley.  With the winds coming from the south, the majority of the smoke is blowing right into our valley.

Salt Lake smells like one big campfire.  Now I like the smell of campfires, but only when I can move my chair around and get out of the smoke.

But one thing a smoke filled valley is good for is sunset pictures.  The smoke draws the oranges and reds of the sunset throughout the whole valley.  Here are some pictures from tonight’s sunset.

And a few other shots from tonight:

An airplane, seen through the smoke cloud.

Requisite moon shot.

The same airplane, out from behind the smoke, reflecting the sun.

Traffic on the I-215/I-80 interchange.

Here you can see the smoke cloud above the city.

Two car shows and a sunset.

A couple of days ago I posted about a British Car Show that I went to.  You probably saw the pictures I took.  Well, I posted that before The Gearheads called me to let me know of a Datsun* Show that evening at the south end of the valley.  Some of you may find this hard to believe, but I went to both car shows.

On the way home I noticed some smoke coming from even further south, so I decided to investigate.  I got a couple good pictures of what is probably a wildfire, unfortunately it looked pretty close to some homes.

The wildfire also made me think “Hmm, ought to be a pretty good sunset tonight”, which is true when we have anything polluting the valley, even natural pollution.  So I went and grabbed my tripod and headed up to the east bench to get some sunset pictures.  Here are the pictures from the second car show, the fire and the sunset.

		Second Car Show and a sunset VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

* For those of you too young to remember the Datsun, they are what you now know as a Nissan.  Sometime in the 80’s Datsun decided to go with their corporate name and for a couple years their cars were badged with Datsun by Nissan, then Nissan with a small Datsun below and finally lost the Datsun name all together.

Milford Flat Fire : in perspective.

Danny writes :

For those of you who have been wondering what the 340,000 acres in central Utah that has burned from the fire known as the Milford Flat Fire would look like, the red rectangle represents what 340,000 acres covers on the wasatch front. Please feel free to pass this around. Danny

All I can say is : Holy Crap. You don't quite get the feeling for how big it really is when it's way down there, out in the middle of nowhere. Gibb's cousin was driving down there when it was jumping I-15. They, wisely, decided to flip a "U" turn and head back to the nearest town. When they got there, they had to find a tire store - it had gotten so hot it melted the tread on their tires. (The picture to the left is not their truck, but another one that got caught in the cross fire.)

Click on the picture if you want to see it full size.