Wildfire near Walt’s Barn in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park

Firefighters put out a wildfire in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park near Walt Disney’s barn this afternoon.

A wildfire broke out early this afternoon in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park near the L.A. Zoo and the Gene Autry Museum.

The fire at one point was burning towards the area in the park where Walt Disney’s barn and the Los Angeles Live Steamers area is, just east of the Travel Town area. The wildfire began at 12:40 pm on five acres in the park’s northwest corner near the Travel Town Museum. All 4,000 zoo guests and several animals were evacuated from the zoo. The fast-moving wildfire burned 25 acres of the park before the blaze was contained by more than 200 firefighters from 32 city fire companies plus county, Burbank and Glendale fire companies.

Walt’s barn is okay and no one was hurt. It isn’t known at this time what sparked the blaze.

We’ll be at Walt’s barn Friday afternoon, Lord willing, and post to this blog from there.
Update: The fire was on another side of a large ridge which had trees cut down from it, acting as a fire break. There was also an earthquake centered in Orange County when we were in California the last week of July — and luckily the earthquake didn’t do anything to harm Walt’s barn or the items inside of it.

Firefighters surrounded the blaze, declaring it knocked down about 3:40 pm. No structures were damaged.
Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

Congratulations to all the firefighters who kept this wildfire from spreading further and possibly damaging Walt’s barn!

Now this is interesting…

Statistics to July 27, 2008 (now as this is being written). And this does not count my own visits to this blog, just others.

Thank you, everybody! I hope you’re enjoying what you see. Leave a comment with a suggestion or just to express yourself about this blog. I’m all Ears!

Our plans for Disneyland this week

Some people have been wondering where our travel plans are. Frankly, we don’t have many… but here they are:

We have airline tickets (flying out early Monday morning, changing planes in Houston, arriving Orange County airport before noon), rental car reservations for Friday and Saturday, Lisa kindly offered to pick us up from the airport Monday and go with us to the Disneyland Resort after lunch and us getting a few things on the way, hotel reservations at the Disneyland Hotel, all our tickets, and dining reservations.

Monday

Highlights: Flying in, meeting our friend Lisa (Jiminy on Disney Echo, picking up some supplies we didn’t want/have room to pack in our luggage, having lunch at the In ‘n Out burger place (our first time, and we’re looking forward to it), then checking in to the Disneyland Hotel. After stowing our suitcases and stuff (hopefully our room will be ready), we’ll all go into Disney’s California Adventure together, including Lisa! That will be so much fun. We have reservations at Wine Country Trattoria to celebrate Lisa’s birthday (a little early, but we won’t be in L.A. when she has it soon) for dinner.

Tuesday:

Highlights: Up early because Disneyland opens at 7 am for Magic Morning. Eat just a light breadfast in the room, cups of coffee to go from the lobby for Carol and Rich. Enjoy Disneyland for two hours of attractions, then break to eat at the Plaza Inn for Minnie’s character breakfast. For lunch we plan to go to one of the Golden Horseshoe shows for a burger in Frontierland. At 6:40 pm we have reservations at the Blue Bayou in New Orleans Square.

Wednesday:

Highlights: Early breakfast (7:30 am) at Goofy’s Kitchen at the Disneyland Hotel, then head out to Disneyland (it opens at 8 am, Disney’s California Adventure opens at 10 am). For lunch, I’d like to eat at the Bengal Barbecue in Adventureland — I did it years ago and liked it. We have reservations for dinner at 6:30 at Cafe Orleans in New Orleans Square — outdoor dining. Maybe they’ll be a Dixieland band!

Thursday:

Highlights: Another early entry day so we’ll try to be at Disneyland when the park opens at 7 am, after we eat a light breakfast at the hotel to tied us over. We’ll head to the Rivers of America to dine on the patio of River Belle Terrace for Mickey pancakes around 9 am (they don’t take reservations). I ate at Rancho del Zocalo in Frontierland decades ago and would like to do it again for lunch that day. It is a counter service Mexican restaurant and I remember the food as being good there. Thursday at 6:45 pm we’ll dine at Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney — we had reservations for that place last Easter week, but got busy at Legoland and had to cancel eating there. We like the Brennan’s restaurants in New Orleans and want to compare this one to them.

 Friday:

Highlights: A small breakfast in or around the hotel, perhaps the DL Hotel’s Coffee House… Then at 8 am or earlier we’ll get our rental car from the Alamo office at Downtown Disney. We should head into Disneyland which opens at 8 am to get some FastPasses to use later — then get into the car and drive to Los Angeles to see more that we didn’t have time to see over Easter time. We’ll stop for lunch at Disney’s Ice Cream Parlor & Studio Store and then go into the El Capitan for the movie and stage show: We’ll see “WALL-E” in digital projection with digital sound, as well as a live Disney stage show and the mighty Wurlitzer organ in the beautiful El Capitan Theatre. After that, we’ll drive to Griffith Park where we’ll take a look at our engraved paving stone at Ollie Johnston’s train station near Walt Disney’s barn. I’d also like to see the caroussel in Griffith Park where Walt Disney was first inspired to build a theme park like Disneyland.

Saturday:
We’re up early, check out, drive the rental car to the Orange County airport and turn it in, eat breakfast at the airport, then fly back home with a change of planes in Houston.