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LOS ANGELES -- Firefighters have averted the immediate danger to Mt. Wilson, but the area still remains a concern for crews Wednesday, officials said.
"There has been some serious protection put there and we are taking some real good steps, but we would not go as far as to characterize it as not being threatened," U.S. Forest Service officer Justin Seastrand said.
Roads are clear to Mt. Wilson, allowing crews to access and defend the mountain, Seastrand said. Still, until the fire is 100-percent contained, the area and the valuable communication facilities and observatory stationed there are at risk, he said.
A "peak" of the fire is two-and-a-half-to-three miles north of Eaton Canyon, and crews are digging fire breaks north of all foothill communities from Altadena to Monrovia, said Joel Gonzalez, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.
"There's a little peak of the fire right there west of Mount Wilson," Gonzalez said.
The fire has spread north of Monrovia, but far up in the mountains in Devils Canyon, he said.
Mt. Wilson supports antennas that beam signals for television and FM radio stations throughout the region. The fire also threatened the historic solar observatory atop the mountain, which houses multimillion-dollar astronomy projects for UCLA, USC and UC Berkeley.
Meantime, researchers who have waited as long as a year to spend time at the Mt. Wilson Observatory have shut down their work or will have to reschedule their observing time because of the mammoth fire in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Hal McAlister, director of the observatory and head of an experiment that uses six telescopes to measure the shapes and sizes of stars, said his team had to shut down all its work. As many as 40 different projects were underway.
"Some people had waited a year to get observing time," he said.
They will have to be rescheduled now, but McAlister was philosophical about the inconvenience.
"Losing observing time is a small problem compared to losing the observatory," he said.
The observatory was also a home to Edwin Hubble, who used the famed 100-inch Hooker telescope in the 1920s and recognized that the faint smudges in the sky called nebuli were in fact distant galaxies.
Observing that these galaxies were moving away from one another, he determined that the universe was expanding.
Hubble's theory, combined with Einstein's theory of relativity, concluded that the universe was created at a specific point in time, later called the Big Bang.
"There has been some serious protection put there and we are taking some real good steps, but we would not go as far as to characterize it as not being threatened," U.S. Forest Service officer Justin Seastrand said.
Roads are clear to Mt. Wilson, allowing crews to access and defend the mountain, Seastrand said. Still, until the fire is 100-percent contained, the area and the valuable communication facilities and observatory stationed there are at risk, he said.
A "peak" of the fire is two-and-a-half-to-three miles north of Eaton Canyon, and crews are digging fire breaks north of all foothill communities from Altadena to Monrovia, said Joel Gonzalez, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.
"There's a little peak of the fire right there west of Mount Wilson," Gonzalez said.
The fire has spread north of Monrovia, but far up in the mountains in Devils Canyon, he said.
Mt. Wilson supports antennas that beam signals for television and FM radio stations throughout the region. The fire also threatened the historic solar observatory atop the mountain, which houses multimillion-dollar astronomy projects for UCLA, USC and UC Berkeley.
Meantime, researchers who have waited as long as a year to spend time at the Mt. Wilson Observatory have shut down their work or will have to reschedule their observing time because of the mammoth fire in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Hal McAlister, director of the observatory and head of an experiment that uses six telescopes to measure the shapes and sizes of stars, said his team had to shut down all its work. As many as 40 different projects were underway.
"Some people had waited a year to get observing time," he said.
They will have to be rescheduled now, but McAlister was philosophical about the inconvenience.
"Losing observing time is a small problem compared to losing the observatory," he said.
The observatory was also a home to Edwin Hubble, who used the famed 100-inch Hooker telescope in the 1920s and recognized that the faint smudges in the sky called nebuli were in fact distant galaxies.
Observing that these galaxies were moving away from one another, he determined that the universe was expanding.
Hubble's theory, combined with Einstein's theory of relativity, concluded that the universe was created at a specific point in time, later called the Big Bang.
