What was all that about?

I observed something a few minutes ago I need to make note of.

I have previously mentioned San Diego's fire-fighting helicopters and their base of operations.

A few minutes ago while taking a walk, I observed one of them approaching said base. I saw it trailing a spray of water behind it, and it also had it's hose for taking on water extended.

As it was getting close to it's landing spot at Montgomery Field, when it was perhaps 10 feet above the ground, I saw it hover and release a considerable amount of water from it's tank - which really startled me because there had definitely been no sign of smoke or other indications of fire from that spot.

After the copter released the water I lost sight of it as it went behind a building and presumably landed.

Only explanation I can think for releasing water from the tank just before landing is it's simply not allowed to land otherwise. I hope they at least dumped the water on some plants!

I suspect...

...the person who owns this truck is really, really enthusiastic about helicopters.

Fire putting out from the sky

As I was getting close to home yesterday after work, I couldn't help but notice some sort of fire relatively nearby was putting out disconcertingly large amounts of black smoke.

Just before I actually got home, it was really nice to see the city's two fire fighting/rescue helicopters taking off from Montgomery Field, a general aviation airport that is very near my condo. I hadn't realized these copters were based there, so it was encouraging to know they were going to have a very short flight to get to the fire.

The fire turned out to be near a golf course that has a large pond and also borders the San Diego River, so the copters had those very convenient sources for filling their tanks before making water drops on the fire. As the story the link goes to explains, those water drops plus several ground crews put the fire out after it burned 10 acres.

The city owns one of these copters outright, but the other one will be gone after the lease on it expires August 1, unfortunately. At any rate, it was great to see what they can do, and to know the city did not have to call in the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which is the only other source available in the county for water drops.