This is a huge loss for telecommunications history preservation.
While the Museum of Communications (http://museumofcommunications.org/) in Seattle has switching equipment (much of it one-of-a-kind - JKL specialized in Station Hardware and other items, and had many priceless one-of-a-kind prototypes and the like - it will be hard to duplicate or find again everything that was located at JKL - JKL was also starting collect extensive documentation for preservation as well.
I'm just heartbroken at the scale of the loss, I'd targeted JKL for my next trip into California, but I guess I'm too late.
Looking at it on the map, the warning signs are all there: suburban-rural interface, western slope, wooded area with no firebreaks, and a climate with hot and dry summers. Couldn't pay me enough to settle there.
That could be any number of places in the west though, including much of the edges of the Seattle Metro too.
I grew up with fire really, the issue really is the forrest service policy on fire from the early part of the 20th century into the early 90's - which is to say never allowing any fire ever, so because the smaller fires which would remove excess fuel on the forrest floor every decade or two, we now live in a world where every small fire becomes a major conflagration.
Nearly every major forrest fire we have is a byproduct of those forrest management policies.
Sorry to hear about the fire. We need more efforts to keep phone history alive. So much of our computer science is rooted in telephony -- information theory, Unix, C etc.
The telephone museum in Ellsworth Maine is still open. I took my retired Telephone Man father there and he thought it was great.
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[ 1983 ms ] story [ 661 ms ] threadhttp://cowboyfrank.net/galleries/Trips/2015-08/index.htm#jkl
While the Museum of Communications (http://museumofcommunications.org/) in Seattle has switching equipment (much of it one-of-a-kind - JKL specialized in Station Hardware and other items, and had many priceless one-of-a-kind prototypes and the like - it will be hard to duplicate or find again everything that was located at JKL - JKL was also starting collect extensive documentation for preservation as well.
I'm just heartbroken at the scale of the loss, I'd targeted JKL for my next trip into California, but I guess I'm too late.
http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_details_info?...
I wonder how much they can salvage, if anything...
I'd not call it a forrest fire prone area by any measure, any more than any real estate with a stand of trees is.
I grew up with fire really, the issue really is the forrest service policy on fire from the early part of the 20th century into the early 90's - which is to say never allowing any fire ever, so because the smaller fires which would remove excess fuel on the forrest floor every decade or two, we now live in a world where every small fire becomes a major conflagration.
Nearly every major forrest fire we have is a byproduct of those forrest management policies.
The telephone museum in Ellsworth Maine is still open. I took my retired Telephone Man father there and he thought it was great.
Http://thetelephonemuseum.org