Near total loss

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Holy cow. That is definitely a complete loss.
I hope they can eventually rebuild
 

Rick

Moderator
Staff member
It's just sickening. Not just me, hundreds of people put blood sweat & tears into building the range for many, many years. The finest, the oldest and the largest handgun silhouette shooting facility in the world. Gone in a heart beat.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
That's a real shame. Hope that they can rebuild it.

Are there any reasonably affordable building material which can avoid being ignited by a short
exterior fire. I remember seeing a pic with zero info on it about the Oakland Hills fires a number
of years ago. The pic was quite striking and I remember it because it was taken from some substantial
distance, directly facing the hill. There were about three roads crossing the image, each at a diffeent
level. The frame was large enough to get about 5 home sites on each level. All homes were just
ashes with refrigerators and such, like your photos, except one home which appeared to be entirely
untouched. It was striking because it was white stucco exterior and a red clay tile Spanish style roof.
Is this sort of construction actually fire resistant enough or was that just some sort of a fluke? Here
we commonly have cedar shake roofs, which I consider insane from a fire risk standpoint, although they
are mostly being replaced with normal shingles these days. In KC suburbs we have lots of
trees, but not so much shrubbery.

I see that the walls are OK, would there be some roof materials (affordable) that would withstand this?
Many homes in Colorado mtns near my vacation home have metal roofs, which it seems would be
pretty fire resistant, but not sure how it really works. What may seem to be fine may not actually
survive in practice.

Bill
 

Kevin Stenberg

Well-Known Member
I'm also very sorry for the loss of the availability of the facilities.
I would be willing to bet the Anti-gun people in political office are jumping with glee at the thought of them being able to deny the rebuilding permits.
 

Rick

Moderator
Staff member
Bill, the walls you see standing are cement block. I don't know if they can be saved cause I'm not there to look, I also don't know what effect that much heat would have on the mortar.. What gets used to rebuild will depend entirely on money. That building had tar shingle roofing cause that's what was donated to the club. The LASC 200 foot firing line overhead also had tar shingle roofing (the same stuff actually) and mostly survived. Go figure huh? At ASR several hundred feet of covered firing line burned to the ground, nothing left. At the ASR main range they lost completely every vehicle and except for the store every single building, the LASC range truck survived completely unscathed sitting next to a tree that burned to the ground, just a stump left. Having a single building survive during such a fire is well beyond perplexing but it does happen. That the ASR reloading and gun store survived completely unscathed and is the sole building on the property still standing is proof of that. That store is wood frame and tar shingles

Cedar tile roofing is illegal in CA, has been for many years because of the fire threat. Metal roofing is expensive, we'll have to wait and see what gets used to rebuild. The club is pulling together and several of those that can will start arriving at the club Friday and camp out spending the weekend, assuming the roads are open then, to start the clean up and evaluation.
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Ian

Notorious member
The cinderblock structure is a total, you can see the mortar gave up above the window frames and blocks are sagging. The steel posts for the patio should be salvageable.

What amazes me even more than how a green tree still stands next to a building burned to the ground is how everything looks like it was burned years ago, and it's only been a few days. No soot, no ash. That wind must have been phenomenal.
 

Rick

Moderator
Staff member
There are two of those trees that ya can see in that photo. What's even more surprising is that they are pine trees that normally go up in a ball of fire but there they are. I salvaged those trees from a movie I worked on in the early 90's and planted them there. Still there. Amazing huh?
 

Chris

Well-Known Member
Very sorry to hear about this enormous loss. It sure affects a lot of people. Perhaps everyone can pull together and rebuild?

When I was a teen our family home burned... it leaves a hole in your life.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Very odd. I was so focused on the building that I missed the green pine in the background, healthy and fine. ????

Amazing that the wood framed building with powder and ammo was not burned, too. Must have been pretty
horrific to have been there.

Bill
 

Rick

Moderator
Staff member
Very little of the powder in the reloading store and no ammo at all. The reloading store for powder had only enough for display on the store shelves and doesn't sell ammo. All the powder inventory storage is in a separate building and didn't survive. Black powder storage in yet a different building that also didn't survive. Ammo Sales was from the main range office that burned to the ground, the bulk of over a $150,000 ammo inventory again in a separate building that burned to the ground. The reloading store building is the single building of numerous buildings on the 100 acre property that survived. All offices, classrooms, maintenance, storage buildings gone. One building and two pine trees. Yep, pretty odd.
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pokute

Active Member
I am amazed that the firing line (where the green trees are in the bottom picture) appears to be intact! I will be at the range tomorrow to see what the near-term plans are.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
That had to be an emotional drive for someone.
 

Rick

Moderator
Staff member
That was Ron Cotttriel, President of the Board of Directors of Angeles Ranges & General Manager & one of the founders of LASC. Would have been there that time of day to unlock/open the main gate for fire crew access.
 

popper

Well-Known Member
Mortar didn't give out, the metal window frame takes the load and it sagged. But the metal posts at the line survived as the fire swept by pretty fast. Our code here has added a requirement for steel posts around front entry door so it won't collapse and allows occupant escape. Thnaks for the link.
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
Regarding the vegetation there, I'm no westerner so I don't know much about this. Is there a plant of some sort other than sagebrush that will grow and flourish there that isn't so fire prone? Sounds like dry juniper to me, ready to burst into flame in a dry summer.
 

Rick

Moderator
Staff member
Na Bret, the range itself is cleared off completely including well off to the sides, no small undertaking considering a 100 acre property but is done continually. The terrain is mountainous and canyons, the sage brush and scrub oak is what is natural there. To try to plant anything else in the wild would require 100's of square miles to be of any use and then you would be up against the desert conditions to get it to grow much less live, virtually no rain an average of 9-10 months of every year.

We've had fires go through the range property in the past with only minor damage, they are not uncommon. It's not uncommon when there are fires in the area for the County and State Fire Departments to use the cleared ranges as a base camp. The big problem this time is what is locally known as Santa Anna winds (devil wind). A high pressure weather system over Utah causes the atmosphere to compress downward and it swirls clockwise, that air mass flows across the high desert of SoCal. When it gets to the mountain ranges surrounding SoCal it compresses further as it is forced through the canyons picking up speed. When it exits those canyons it is sometimes 100+ mph. Nothing new there, been happening for millions of years.

When a fire occurs that coincides with the Santa Anna's is when you hear about the fires in SoCal. This fire originated only a few miles from the range property and with wind gusts up to 70 mph the range was overwhelmed in minutes. The wind blows burning embers and coals well ahead of the main fire starting new fires. That can and does happen sometimes miles ahead of the original fire.

ASR has been a shooting range since the 1950's and this is the first time there has been damage anywhere near this or that was total and complete. 7-8 years ago a fire went through the property and the ASR ranges suffered no damage. On the LASC range property a class A motor home and two police cars burned to the ground, a couple of wooden fences burned and that's about it. During that fire the Santa Anna's were quite mild for Santa Anna winds, probably 20-25 mph or so.
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smokeywolf

Well-Known Member
Good write-up on how the Santa Anna winds occur. I didn't know before, the meteorological conditions that cause them.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
I read an article that pretty well summed it up. The fuel and potential has been there all thru history. What is different is the ignition potential due to human activity.

Southern CA could be a very nice place to live if it wasn't for millions of others already there.

I will stick with tornadoes and snow.