The wild boar incident at night when I couldn't see what it was pushing my car off the dirt road and into a ditch began this incident. So, I just kept driving along the ditch until I could get out of it with my then Red VW Rabbit which the left door was scratching along the dirt of the side of the ditch. However, whatever was out there (I thought it was a raging bull) because cattle were in the same area as I was. But, it wasn't a bull it was a huge Female Wild Boar. But I didn't know that until I went off duty 4 days later from the lookout.
As I drove coming off duty I found her carcass where she had died next to the dirt road. Her jaw was torn loose because she was protecting her babies from the load noise of the VW Rabbit driving towards her. So, by ripping off her lower jaw she had died horribly in the last 4 days. At that point I wished I had had a weapon and the circumstances to put her out of her misery safely. But, that was not to be. I saw her 300 pound babies a little ways away from her carcass eyeing me suspiciously and with fear. However, they were large enough to likely fend for themselves since she was almost as big as my car. I had no idea Wild Boar could get that big, but in the back country the biggest strongest and baddest tend to survive ongoing of the wild boars where I was in the Paicinas area not far from Hollister, California up on top of a 4000 foot peak.
I was being hit with lightning strikes at my fire lookout one day and they had an insulated platform that we could stand on so we wouldn't die as fire lookouts when this happened. However, one lady who was on another peak maybe Chalone Peak at that time was knocked unconcious so they sent a fire engine up to rescue her. I heard it all on my CDF Radio at the time. They were worried about her and I don't know if she actually survived all this but I know she likely never returned to work after that at the very least.
So, because I was on my insulated platform that was about 3 feet by 3 feet with glass insulators like you see on power lines on the bottom which raised the platform 6 inches off the floor of the fire lookout I was okay from all the lightning strikes.
What I did was place the insulated platform strategically between the locating instrument and the 2 way radio to CDF which allowed me to radio out the direction of the strike and the distance of the strike from my lookout. And then Satellites or helicopters or spotter planes would be sent out to the locations of those lightning strikes to make sure large fires weren't starting from all the strikes like what happened this August from about 12,000 lightning strikes in one Sunday here in August of 2020 this year throughout the state of California. Some of those fires are still going now here in October by the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment