Crown Fire - The Aftermath

Last week DH took me up to where the Crown fire had been burning up in the Lancaster/Palmdale area. We had several bee locations in the vicinity, and he wanted me to document the fire and what it did to our bee hives.
So I'm going to share this the way I saw it. I'll describe what the photo shows.
This first photo isn't too exciting, but this is the ridge line where the CDF drew the line. If you look, you can see where the fire started over the saddle. On the other side of the ridge pictured here, it's a different world.

We had to pull off the one lane dirt road here, to let some power company vehicles pass. We aren't quite to the crest of the ridge, but I climbed up a knob so you could see this finger of where the fire had spread. In the distance you can see a lot of buildings. Also a highway. I forget which one.
The paved road we were on in the first photo had houses on both sides, but they were set back from the road.

See the red fire retardant they dropped here? Buckwheat has white flowers as you can see in the lower left portion of the previous photo.
Most of these hills in the photos to follow were covered with buckwheat and grasses.

This is another view of the fire retardant. I like this one because it shows some of the burned areas, green growing things, and the red retardant.

Red fire retarded buckwheat. A close up.

This is the first bee location we were checking out. You can see a swath of the retardant on the left side of the photo, and some of our hives (in the silver boxes) in the middle on the right edge of the photo. They came pretty close to the hives with the retardant.

The big cat came up and cleared an even larger perimeter around the hives. You can see them in the center of this photo. You can also see how close the fire came to the crest.

This is the beginning of a series of photos I took while standing in place and turning in a circle.
You can see the hives much better in this photo. All of these hives are fine. : - )

Turning in a counter clockwise motion the 2nd photo in this series.

3rd in the circle.

4th in the series.

5th in the series.

6th in the series.

7th in the series.

The last one in this series.
More to follow.

View to the left while driving up the ridge road. They stopped the fire short of all those transmission towers.
I should mention that we saw the CDF trucks patrolling the roads looking for smoldering roots, etc. not once, but several times through out the day.

Still driving towards the towers, but the ash is so black on the right side. : - (

Almost to the towers.

A view of the right side of the road looking down the valley towards Palmdale.

Looking back towards that first bee location. You can't see it in this photo, but look at all that ash.

Looking toward the second bee location we need to check out. Looks like at least some survived.

Using the telephoto you can see the hives in the center of the above photo.

Looks like the cat came through and made our fire break bigger here too. We wanted to, but CDF said we couldn't. We are very grateful that they cleared the perimeter around our hives. : - )

Burned kind of close here.

The hives on the left are fine. Yea!

DH was worried about the hives on the right because the bushes are closer than he likes. But they came through just fine too. : - )

A better photo of the hives on the right. They are about 5 feet tall in this location. Most of those "boxes" on top of the hives are full of honey and beeswax. We call those "boxes", 'supers'. I don't know why. The bees live in the bottom 2 boxes which are the hive. The supers are where the bees store their honey.

Looking in the valley below, I am baffled at why there would be a dry grass triangle in the middle of all that black ash.

The 3rd bee location is fine.

Look at the irregular burn pattern. I wonder how the fire was burning that it skipped that grass, and what did it burn that caused that white ash?

A different view of our 3rd Bee Location.

The hillside looking back towards the towers we passed.

DH didn't think I could get this photo. Extreme telephoto, hives are waaaaay down there.
You'll see in a minute.

Aha! The mystery of the unburned triangle of dry grass is explained. It's a cistern. The CDF probably had a fire truck or staging area there.

We haven't reached the bees down below yet, but this bee location on top of the hill seems to be okay. : - )

Another view of the same location. This was one of the places where a fire truck passed us. : - )

Does this remind anyone else of "The Langoliers" by Stephen KIng?
It's really quiet, and black. Seems surreal. Downright creepy.

Taken with the telephoto again, and it doesn't look good at this location.

More of the burn area on our way down to check out the bee location in the previous photo.

Still trying to figure out what burns so hot that it turns the ash white.