Fire

It has been very dry the last few months, we are in a drought, and fires have been breaking out around the island.  Every now and then we can smell smoke in the air and once while driving V saw a fire that had just started in the grass and weeds of the median and a man jumped out of his car and ran over to stomp it out before it got any larger. 

We were at the public library, then drove to the grocery store to run errands and there was a big plume of dark smoke rising in the sky towards the coast, in the direction of an air field and oil refinery.  We were going to fill up the gas tank next (at the cheapest place on the island and our empty light was coming on) but we made a side trip by our house first so I could grab my camera. 

In the picture above it looks like the building is on fire, but the smoke is just lined up and is coming up from far behind the building. 

Then the fire trucks came by with alarms blaring and leaning heavy on the horn. 

Above is the view when we pulled into the costco gas station.  Again, the fire is much further in the distance than it looks from these pictures.  I snapped some more pictures while we were filling up but of course we didn't try to get any closer and went back from here (so we wouldn't get in the way or get caught in the wrong place). 

I switched to my zoom lens and you can make out part of the oil refinery in the distance through the smoke in the center of the picture above and below. 

In the next two pictures a helicopter was flying between us and the smoke.  It helps give a sense of scale. 

Later we learned it was a grass fire in a field that burned many acres, but it was near the oil refinery and a place where the pipes go right over the road and back down again on the other side.  It seems like this could have easily been a lot worse.