Fire

We had been in Berkeley for the weekend and were flying south Sunday afternoon. Passing Los Angeles we saw two thick chimneys of smoke rising and then blowing toward the ocean. The strong Santa Ana had been predicted, and when you live in Southern California on a hot, clear October day, you always watch for smoke.

It was discouraging, but not surprising, to hear the pilot's San Diego weather report: warm, clear, but visibility only four miles because of smoke. Going downwind and turning back to our airport, we saw several origins of smoke. The sun was low and diffused by smoke to the extent that our pilot "couldn't get a good fix on the runway," as he put it, and he aborted the landing and went around again.

On the ground, thin smoke hung above the airport and turned the sun a signature raspberry color. Driving home, though, we entered a blue wedge of clear sky between smoke streams to the north and to the south. The radio said the wind was blowing from the northeast, and fires in the Ramona area were blowing smoke across our view from our La Mesa house toward the ocean, and a fire near the Mexican border was producing the southern smoke.

The wedge has persisted since. We have been watching due east, for any sign of a new fire that might threaten us, but so far so good.

We did, Tuesday morning, wake up at 1:30 a.m. to see Mt. Miguel, about five miles south of us, on fire. There is only one word to describe a Southern California wildfire at close range at night, and that word is "dramatic." It may be the drama that makes the fire appear closer than it is. I have seen this effect several times before, when I lived in Jamul, farther east in the foothills. We had begun some evacuation preparation on Monday, watching fires force the evacuation of 250,000 people. Watching Mt. Miguel flames fill our bedroom window at 2 a.m., we completed those preparations, loading both cars and saving the "three P's" – puppies, paintings, and 'puters – until the last moment.

Now it is Wednesday morning, and the last moment has not come. Media coverage has been intimidating. Media reports are like fire at night. They make the event appear closer than it actually is. My experience has taught me two things, about media appearance, and map appearance. In Italy, I learned that maps often have a weak relationship to what is actually on the ground. In Southern California, in fire season, I have learned that media reports often have a weak relationship to what is actually on the ground. The lesson: always believe the ground. Events on the ground, even the sight of Mt. Miguel burning five miles away, convinced me we have not been in direct danger. When they do, the cars are packed, we'll grab the Three P's, and be gone. At this point, knock on wood, I don't think that is going to happen.

In the meantime, we watch fires growing elsewhere, fires even worse than the catastrophic Cedar Fire in 2003. The Cedar Fire was a thoroughbred, racing at 6,000 acres per hour. This fire, or cocktail of fires, is a marathoner, covering a mile at a time until the miles start to reach from the inland foothills clear to the ocean. This morning, a finger of the fire jumped Interstate 5 in Camp Pendleton, right on the ocean. Astonishing. But the real headline of this story is the movement of people. More than half a million people have been forced to evacuate, and new evacuation orders are being announced this morning.

The firefighters and other response personnel are writing heroic chapters, working 24-hour stretches to save what they can. Like the Cedar Fire, though, this is a fire that humans can't stop. The ocean can stop it, and a change in the wind can slow it to a point where the fighters can beat it. After the Cedar Fire four years ago, I wrote a commentary about humans arriving to live in a land where fire previously had unlimited space to roam on the winds, which it did, regularly. I sent that commentary to our San Diego paper on Monday, and it was published yesterday. In that story, I wrote that whatever humans learn about fighting fire, the next fire that they can't fight is already out there, waiting. Now it is here. On hot October nights, we in Southern California listen to the wind rising, and rattling the windows, and always hope, in our land of wind and fire, that we wake up to a clear dawn. This October, hope wasn't enough.