This photo from today's LA Times sums up the past four days. The caption reads: ''A Valiant Effort: A firefighter from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is dwarfed by flames along East Grade Road on Palomar Mountain early Wednesday....'' Picture by Wally Skalij

Shot from the Castaic Dam. Notice the chopper in the upper left, and another small patch of fire left-bottom. It shows how the winds carried sparks and spread the fires. The winds were gusting to over 60 mpg on top of the dam!

Shot from Castaic Dam. Luckily, the winds are blowing away from us and most of the smoke is to our southwest.

Shot from the Castaic Dam overlooking Lake Castaic. This is a better shot of one of these two firefighting planes.

Same fire, new day, still burning... (shot from our deck).

As we watched TV coverage, we could then hear this plane fly over to refill after making this pass. It was a bit too close and too real!

Video frame of chopper working all day Monday (shot from our deck).

Video frame of one of various aircraft flying over our house all day Monday (shot from our deck).

Video frame showing first TV coverage on Monday.

Screen capture from a video showing early Sunday morning to the Northwest (shot from our deck).