Scary Wildfire

Yesterday afternoon, I was talking on the phone to my brother as he was driving over to a friend's house in their hometown of Los Angeles. In the middle of our conversation, he noticed smoke and flames coming from a nearby hillside. He shared his obvious concern about the size and proximity of the fire and did his best to describe the magnitude of this blaze.

Very late last night (what were you doing up at 2:00 a.m., dear brother?), Eric emailed me this picture and some videos he took with his camera phone near his friend's house. I can certainly see why he was alarmed, especially because his friend lives so nearby!

This wildfire has apparently burned over 800 acres of the 4,000 acre Griffith Park, which is near the Los Angeles Zoo. The zoo animals have all had to be moved inside because the flames are so close. The news from this morning was that the wildfire is only about 40% contained. Scary stuff for all those people who live in the area!

I uploaded the videos Eric sent to YouTube so I could post them here. Keep in mind that the only camera he had was on his cell phone, so the quality isn't great. As Eric put it, "Little did I know the image quality becomes really horrible if you zoom in. Lesson learned." I thought these were amazing, none the less!