Monday, August 31, 2009

fire water burn

i still have not adjusted to fires. i know they are a fact of life in southern california, but to me, it is a complete oddity to be driving around with smoke filling the air around you.

tonight's drive home from work was the best/worst of it yet. more of the hills are on fire and it is more visible from where i am. the smoke is filling all of the hills north of me, and almost every ridge is filled with spots of flames. what's unfathomable to me is that they keep saying, "this would be so much worse if the santa anas were blowing. if they were, this would be the true disaster that we've been predicting."

because it's so odd to me, i don't see how the city keeps on functioning. in my mind, we should all be standing outside just watching. or if i had my way, i'd be up on one of the high floors in one of my mid-wilshire buildings watching.

i can't imagine that just 20 miles north of me, people are losing every thing they own. that the landscape is being scorched. that firefighters are waging what has become an unending battle against the flames. every day we wake up and find out it has only gotten worse in the night. i'm trying to find some good side, and not able to.



2 comments:

Unknown said...

A second fire started in Yucaipa today. This one ran up and then down the ridge that is closer to me. One of my brother's friends has been evacuated. He lives about a mile from me. Basically, I'm sitting here waiting for the call saying it's our turn. I know we're ok. We are in a populated area while his house is butt up against the vegetation. Still really scary. It's nice there are no winds. But both of these fires are burning in areas that haven't been burned in decades. I'll keep you updated! I didn't want to complain on facebook since Derek's friend is a friend of mine. He may have lost his house... I don't want to whine about a little bit of smoke.

knittergran said...

good luck to Diane-what a scary thing to go through.
And what a video-really end-of-the-world frightening.
I guess I would be watching all of this too....