NEW YORK As many papers have done in the past two years, the Los Angeles Times delivered breaking, and diverse, news about a major local story -- in this case, the California wildfires -- to millions of online readers in blog-like fashion, with brief dispatches from correspondents, added at the top. Many were in the human interest vein.
A box near the top of the Web site's home page held changing numbers in large type. Around 9 p.m. they read: "429,862 acres burned...1,235 homes destroyed."
Columnist Steve Lopez was reporting from San Diego and also sending back cellphone photos. A late dispatch opened: "I'm standing on the front porch of a house that no longer exists."
A featured article by staff writer Janet Wilson -- just married -- opened with this intro: "Times staff writer Janet Wilson, who has lived in a creekside stone house in Modjeska Canyon in Orange County for nearly nine years, returned from her wedding Monday evening to find her home threatened by the Santiago fire...
"At 3:45 this afternoon, Wilson spotted her home, which was still intact though not out of danger. 'Yes! Yes! Yes!' she said, and started to cry. Then she saw that the hillside in back of the house wasn't burned, and she knew it wasn't over yet."
Here is a sampling from the blog-like entries Tuesday night.
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High above Las Flores Canyon, at fire Camp 8, L.A. County Fire Capt. Jeff Kaliher said the situation in the still smoldering mountains of Malibu was improving. Firefighters below and aircraft in the sky had kept a critical front of the wildfire from marching toward Topanga Canyon.
"We're holding the eastern line," Kaliher said.
Things had improved to the point where his strike team could relax a little, roughhouse with the two camp dogs, picnic and lather up their fire engine. Planes surveyed the fire from above.
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Carlsbad:
If you are driving around the El Camino Real Mall in Carlsbad and you think your eyes are playing tricks on you, they aren't.
That's a traveling zoo tucked next to the loading dock area near Macy's, complete with a Bison named "Baby Bo," llamas, kangaroos, alligators, monkeys, exotic birds, snakes, a chinchilla, a sloth and even hissing cockroaches.
Driven from their 5-acre Fallbrook ranch and animal house by the wildfires Monday afternoon, the owners of Pacific Animal Productions pulled off the 78 freeway seeking shade for their 100 animals.
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San Bernardino:
As manager of the Green Valley Water District, in a rural mountain village of 750 that has lost at least 55 homes, Rick Mull took upon himself one of the most unassuming but critical jobs.
As homes burned around the town's picturesque Alpine lake, he was close behind to turn off the water.
"Many folks took up and left in a panic and forgot to turn their water off," Mull said.
Mull, 51, has spent his whole life "on the mountain," and while his home was safe from the fire, many of his friends' and neighbors' homes were now burning piles of rubble.
They left in a panic, and did not turn off the water in their homes. Therefore, when the property burned, water that supplied the communal tanks was flowing freely on these burned homes, taking water away that could have been used by firefighters.
"In the last few days, we've gone through 400,000 gallons of water on just one neighborhood street because of leaking pipes," he said.
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Saugus:
California Fire Chief Ralph Alworth at the Southern California Geographic Area Coordination Center in Riverside said here was what they knew about the second fire-related death in L.A. County:
On the first day of the Buckweed Fire, a civilian trying to flee in his car got into a wreck and his car caught fire. His death today is being classified as fire-related.
