Last night (7/29), I noticed the smell of a brush fire after dinner and went outside to observe the spectacle captured in the photos below. Apparently some knuckleheads trying to remove a tire by banging on the rim with a hammer started what is being called the Crown Fire. As I write this (10pm), it has burned 13,000 acres and is only 20% contained.
The bulk of the fire scorched Leona Valley and Leona Valley is at the end of our street. There’s a high school at the end of our block and, at one point, there were about thirty police cars in the parking lot preparing to enforce an evacuation. Luckily it didn’t come to that, although the area I run in is pretty much wiped out.
With the exception of the “scorched earth” image that I shot this morning, everything was photographed from our front balcony. The photos fail to capture the anxiety everyone in the neighborhood was feeling (our next door neighbors actually packed up and left); the thick, acrid smoke that had everyone’s eyes watering; the ash that fell like snow; and the smell that has permeated everything.
Ah, the joys of living in the peripheral areas of Southern California…
The view after dinner...
.... dessert...
...and cocktails.
The morning after.
I want to thank the idiots who were too stupid to go to the local tire store for burning up the park I run in - and killing and displacing God-knows-how-many animals. I never really thought our house was in jeopardy, but Kathy did and lots of other people were very worried. There isn't a ridgeline or mountainside within view that isn't a smoldering wasteland. I'm so pissed off. Somebody ought to beat those guys in the head with their hammer.