Glad to hear your buddy is going to be fine and all ended well.

As for the signal fire set to help locate him, the danger of fires set back east and here in the Ozarks really can't be compared to the Western U.S., unless maybe you're in the northern rainforest.

To provide some perspective, a large White Oak fell in my front yard yesterday. The ground under it is so saturated with water that the hole where the rootball was torn out has over a foot of water standing in it.

I watched a guy take a 1" thick solid metal bar and poke it, one handed, over 5' straight down into the ground while looking for my septic tank in February. The ground is wet deep down here.

You could not start a forest fire here today if you worked at it full time with a couple friends. Later this summer, that may indeed change.

So, setting a signal fire here, right now, would be the safe and smart thing to do no matter what the conditions in California are today.

Tom, the article said Knight "started a brush fire that brought firefighters and rescuers to his location", so we need to recognize that "Rescuers" found him too, as a result of his signal fire.

It did not say what the fire danger level was. The 3-day history shows mostly calm winds and misty conditions:
NOAA

And, helicopters are dangerous. They are tearing themselves apart the whole time they are operating. The people that pilot them would rarely miss an opportunity to do so and they are well aware of the machine's design flaws.

Each year the Feds spend close to an hour flying a helicopter in, around, and over, me and my neighbors property looking for pot plants. They must spend hundreds of hours flying in just our county. Please don't blame us if one of them crashes in the hollows near my house. Odds are, eventually, one will.

I worked with handicapped people for years. I'm impressed that Mr. Knight will get out there at all and even more that he does it on his own. And I'm impressed that he faired so well while being lost and was able to help himself get found.

With just a few tweaks in todays tools to make them more accessible for his needs, I'd bet he could go by himself to just about anywhere I'd want to go. That's encouraging to me.

Bill