SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY - Preventing the Calf Fire from destroying homes was a hard fought battle on the ground and in the air.
Central Coast News hopped aboard a private plane out of Santa Ynez Airport looking for a unique perspective of the destructive nature of a fast moving wildfire.
"It's clear anyway", says pilot Shawn Knight, "we've got pretty decent visibility, you can see the smoke along the ridge here."
The morning marine layer, which helped firefighters gain an upper hand on the Calf Fire, burned off enough for us to get a good look at the scorched earth left behind.
"Yeah, and you can kind of see, assuming from the water it most have cruised over from this direction", Knight says, "I would assume the starting point was down there at the river, and it just went northeast bound, looks like they made their stand over here by all these homes which is a good thing they stopped it where they did, it looks like."
Air space directly above the Calf Fire was restricted so as not to interfere with the water and retardant dropping aircraft.
"We're basically at 6,500 feet", Knight says, "I mean this is the elevation we should fly over."
It wasn't hard to tell, even from 6,000 feet, homeowners were also helped out by the all important defensible space around their properties.
Water and retardant drops over the Calf Fire were called off earlier Tuesday, most of the work to put the fire out completely will be done by hand crews on the ground.
