Ariane Fire Aerial Response 2025

  Homeless-Caused Fire in Tecolote Canyon Invokes Costly Response.

Event Report 20250624

Back to Bill Caid's Home Page

The Experience

I subscribe to an app called "Watch Duty".  Watch Duty became very popular during the L.A. Wildfires and it is a highly useful tool for maintaining fire awareness.  Plus, in addition to real-time fire status notifications, the paid version allows overlays of fire aircraft positions on a satellite map.  The tracking is based on the locations transmitted by the transponder on each helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft in the fleet. 

The real-time notifications of this fire combined with the air craft tracking allowed me to anticipate the arrival of the tankers assigned to a homeless-caused fire in a nearby urban canyon.  These canyons are, in-general, San Diego City Park land, but usually with natural, dense native brush and trees.  A fire in one of these urban canyons is a grave risk for anybody living on the canyon rim (like we do).  A timely, forceful response by the fire department is the only thing that prevented this fire from damaging homes, condos and apartment buildings that line the rim of Tecolote canyon.

Since I had several minutes warning of the fire tanker aircraft's arrival at the fire, it allowed me to attach a zoom lens and use for the first "actual" photos from the lens/camera combination.  Those photos are below with photo descriptions.

The SanDiego Fire Department (SDFD) hit the fire hard, requesting : 1-type 1 strike team (5 type 1 engines), 1-type 3 strike team (5 type 3 engines), and fixed-wing aircraft from CAL FIRE were requested by incident command.  CAL FIRE allocated two Grumman tanker planes and an OV-10 "strike aircraft" that is a spotter and directs the aerial assault in coordination with firefighters on the ground. In the end, 10 truck crews, 2 air tankers, 2 helicopters, 1 spotter aircraft and dispatch/command resources were allocated to addressing this fire.

Due to the forceful attack by SDFD and CAL FIRE, this event only consumed 3 acres of canyon slope, albeit right in the backyard of the canyon-rim properties and at a high cost to the taxpayers.

Homeless individuals start over 50% of the canyon fires, as estimated by SDFD.  Suppressing these frequent fires is time-consuming and costly but required due to the steep, brushy canyons and the high-housing density on the canyon rims.  A breakout of the fire could be catastrophic for the surrounding neighborhoods.

The SD City Counsel needs to devise a mechanism for preventing these fires.  It is only a matter of time before one of these causes huge property damage and loss of life.  The City Counsel needs to act now to actively dissuade the homeless from sleeping in these heavily wooded urban canyons.

The photos below were screen-shots or taken with my Sony A1 with 70-200mm zoom lens from my backyard on the canyon rim.


The screen-shot above was taken off my iMac of this event as shown in the Watch Duty application.  The green track shows the path of the spotter aircraft over time.  Also depicted are icons for 2 SDFD helicopters C-10 and C-12.  Mission Bay is also visible in this satellite map.



We were already in the backyard overlooking the canyon when we heard the sounds of approaching air craft.  Above, is one of the 2 Grumman tankers assigned to this fire.


Moments later, we spotted the second tanker.


A Rockwell OV-10 split-tail spotter air craft was also assigned to this fire to direct the tankers to the most-effective locations.  His over-watch mission is to direct air and ground resources for optimum fire containment.


The tankers were at least 1,000 feet below the spotter and they were directed to circle the fire on a recon path.  The smoke from the fire was starting to impact visibility of the area.


The tankers completed their recon pass and then circled back to begin alignment on the actual drop approach.


The trailing tanker followed the same route.  Note in the photo above that the smoke from the fire is now visible as the brownish cloud at the bottom of the photo.


As the tankers circled onto their drop-path, they also descended toward the canyon rim until they were just above the tree-tops.  The view above is from the canyon rim in my backyard.

Once the drop was completed, the Grumman banked a hard turn to come-about for the next pass.  The tanker is just visible through the trees to left-of-center in the photo above.  EMS assets were being moved into the impacted area to allow rapid response if there were casualties.




Coming-about for a second pass.


The actual drop path is hidden behind the trees and houses on the far side of Genesse canyon.

This run was completed.  The combined effort is making progress.  Note that the amount of smoke has significantly decreased.

The spotter remained above the operational altitude of the tankers and continued circling the incident site.  The split tail of the OV-10 is clearly visible in the photo above.




The tankers were instructed to line up for another run.  The tankers continued to make drop-runs until their tanks were empty.
Both tankers completed their final runs prior to being "bingo" on retardant, thus forcing a return to their base in Ramona for a refill.  The tankers, combined with 10 SDFD engines and personnel on the scene, were able to halt the fire's progress.  The tankers were highly effective and were released after their sortie.


These fires are wholly preventable and the solution is straightforward as it is difficult- prohibit and enforce no-camping in city parks, particularly urban canyons.

Many thanks to SDFD and CAL FIRE for their rapid and efficient response to this preventable incident.


Back to Bill Caid's Home Page

Copyright Bill Caid 2025.  All rights reserved.