The devastating fires in California have been the top news story for a week. My son Richard and family live in Oak Park which is about ten miles north of the fires. They evacuated for a day or two because they lost power and couldn't work from home as they usually do. They are back now and safe at home.

One thing Richard pointed out to me is that an app called Flightradar24 (free!) shows all the air traffic in a given area. He found a long line of helicopters heading toward the Encino reservoir to pick up water. We could also track the big tankers and watch as they made drops. My friend John Cooper would really like this. As I was looking around I came across this airplane track. It was a US Forest Service King Air which had been circling and probably staging air support. You can see that it had been airborne for 4 1/2 hours. That is a long flight and I am sure the crew was really bushed because they were probably very busy all that time.