October 28, 2003 12:34 A.M.

Devil Winds

I live in an area where the suburbs meet the wilderness.

It happens every year. Usually in October and March. The air changes. Before the winds start, you smell them. You feel them. Not by a movement of air, but with your senses. And you say, �Oh no.�

Devil winds. That�s what they are, but they are called �Santa Anas�. Somewhere out over the Great Basin area of the desert southwest, a �high� is forming which begins to push out a low-pressure area. The air begins to flood up and over the mountain ranges, and rush in a southwesterly direction down through the canyons and valleys, going faster and faster as it heads for the sea. By the time it reaches this little valley, it has hurricane force gusts which scream �destruction� as they pour themselves out over the land.

In recent years, I have lost a roof off my house and a back wall has come down during these blasts. They never do good; they always destroy, uprooting trees which have stood for decades, and tumbling monstrous eighteen wheelers as though they were Matchbox cars.

But the most horrible devastation perpetrated by these destroyers, is accomplished with fire. I hesitate to post these photos. Not because they are horrible, but because they are not horrible enough. When these holocausts take place, you stay inside as much as possible. And of course, unless you are in some official capacity, you do not get anywhere near �the action�. So these photos barely show what really happened. But then, most of you saw and heard all that on television or in the news. In this particular �fire storm�, it was called The Simi Valley Incident.

These are a little bit of what my camera saw.

About midday, I looked out a back window of my home, and this is what I saw.

A couple of hours later, it had increased to this.

About this time my phone rang. My son was breathlessly rushing to get into his SUV and drive down to the west end of our valley, because he had just been notified that the firm where he is employed was in the path of the fire�s advance. They were in danger of losing equipment and valuable computer information. This was the first time that we fully realized that the fire which had started at Val Verde Park about 25 miles to the northeast, had incredulously sped across canyons and mountains in a few brief hours, reaching the perimeter of our city.

The top black circle is where the fire started. The lower one is how far it traveled in the course of less than a day.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon in an eerie world of smoke filled skies and scanner reports of the fire�s direction as it began to fork east and west along the city�s edge. The voice on the scanner announced each cross-street as the monster�s consuming fingers reached mile by mile like a giant hand of fiery lava arching out to enclose the valley in its grip.

The acrid smoke filled everything, and we gathered a few necessary items in bags and lay down on beds that night, for a night of readiness and little sleep. We listened for the call to come in the night, �evacuate!�

I had been here before. Another home, same town, a little over thirty years ago. We had to evacuate.

This time, we were being protected by something we didn�t really become aware of until the next day. Just above our housing development, a few blocks above my home, the wilderness area begins. All along the outer edge of homes, the earth movers had cleared a wide swath in preparation for a large group of new homes to be built. The raging fires came roaring down the hillside, consumed every bit of the scrub brush and then spread out to go around the bare soil area which it could not burn, and went around our homes.

These photos are at a distance, but show some advancing flames in other areas.

We happened upon this huge Bell helicopter hovering over a pond in a local park, sucking up water. It returned about every five minutes for a fresh load until it became too dark to continue.

As I write, the fires are still raging. Although our immediate area seems to be past danger, the Simi Valley fire has advanced on a new front, and nothing has stopped it yet.

The good news is�the winds have ceased.

Text � copyright 2003 - 2008 The Homespun Philosopher

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