The 395 and Owens Valley-Eastern Sierra Region

There was one on the far side of 395 on a little plateau. Nothing near it...yikes!

 

I wish I could move up to Owens Valley. First I couldn't convince my soon to be wife and secondly, our employer, has no locations in the valley. I plan to drag her to Nevada in retirement.

 

I noticed another FB post about a new 395 closure. Yesterday, it was closed with a status change today...

"1-way controlled traffic at various locations from 2 mi south of the Jct of SR 108 /at Burcham Flat Rd/ to the Jct of SR 108 (Mono Co) from 0700 hrs to 1700 hrs Monday thru Friday thru 6/27/25 - Due to construction".

 

I called earlier in the week and left them a message on their voicemail. Got a call today (well, voicemail as I missed the call) saying they found the order had been held up on their web storefront by some sort of shipping cost issue. Said they'd got it figured out and will probably go out tomorrow.

So pretty much what I expected: honest local shop with a somewhat outsourced online storefront that had a hiccup and needed to be poked by someone other their end. No harm, no foul. Looking forward to the book!

 

They handle the gift store at the visitor center. I stopped on the way home from J-Tree--they have nice bathrooms Plus AC.

 

Looking for a place to board my dog for a couple days in mid-September. Preferably Bishop but can be anywhere between Lone Pine and Lee Vining. Anyone have recommendations for a kennel?

 

https://youtu.be/NMQkR5bOsyg

I thought this was pretty cool. It's pretty long but if you've been following along, the first few minutes are enough.

 

Here's a photo sphere I shot of the original American Hotel Aug 2014, before the "fire."

 

"Fires" happen at the most opportune times. Don't they? lol

 

But Saul, how do you start a flood? Old Joke

 

?

 

It was a spin off joke of "Jewish Lightning" (insurance fire). Not sure if it's PC or not.

 

I always thought the timing was more than a little suspicious.

 

Maybe. But those old wiring systems aren't the most stable. Not easy to say one way or the other.

 

Besides just the old wiring, it is so easy to burn something down doing construction or demolition. Restoration work managed to burn down Notre Dame after all. I’ve seen more than one modern building go up during a renovation. Usually a while after work has stopped. There was something hot, it was smoldering, and no one noticed. With workers gone it can spread fast once it breaks out.

So while I’m a cynic who won’t be able to stop himself from throwing shade on the “restored” hotel, it would honestly be hard to consider it anything other than an accident.

 

I believe it was the original hotel that burned, not a restoration in progress. I get buildings with old wiring being hazardous, but the building survived just fine from 1871 until the fire in 2000 (with new ownership).

 

At the time the original hotel burned they had been working on restoring various buildings on the property preparing to start hosting guests. My assumption at the time was that the work included the hotel. That said, I have no idea if the hotel itself had recently been worked on when the fire broke out.

The wiring in all the buildings was almost certainly a complete mess, they were presumably tinkering with lots of them, they were presumably using the electrical systems way more than they had in the past, and it wouldn’t take much of any of those changes to cause an electrical fire. With old wiring like that the fire doesn’t even have to break out during an overcurrent event. The heat from overcurrent can start something smoldering for hours and hours before it finds enough air and fuel to really start burning.

Move a bunch of new people onto a property in disuse for years beyond a single caretaker, start poking at everything to “improve” it for guests, put new electrical loads on different parts of the electrical system. You’ll get a fire eventually doing that. New people moving into historic homes and them burning down shortly after (including killing the owners) is not that unusual.

Take a rickety electrical system that was “fine” for decades with one kind of use and suddenly use it differently and all that “safe” past history with a different use case is irrelevant.

Was that what happened? I have no idea. But it was an expected outcome given what they were doing.

 

We've had more than a few major fires in buildings under construction. Whether welding or roofing, the buildings had pretty much gone up after hours and burnt pretty much to the ground or concrete deck. I guess that's why I don't find it too hard to believe in accidents.

 

The last video Brent posted inside the hotel was them working on it; sanding the floors using power to do such.

 

I build and remodel houses for a living. If given the choice between framing up a brand new home vs remodeling an older home I will always choose the new build. Just some food for thought. lol