Southern California Fires

This map, from the LATimes website does show the fires, but what it can't show is the air that smells like a smoky campfire--that's in my garage, by my college, everywhere. We usually open our windows at night, but now they're closed.

Where I am, I'm slightly protected from the downwind surge of smoke from the Lake Arrowhead fires. But as I turned onto I-215 this morning, heading north to my turn-off on I-10 and school, my eyes started to sting, even thought I had the AC in the car turned on to recirculate.

I see three ladies walk in the morning, one has a tracheotomy. She turned back today because even at 6:15 a.m. the smoke permeated the air.

I dusted on Saturday. That was a waste, as the dust and dirt from the Santa Ana winds have coated everything with a fine misting of grit--the bathroom counters, the top of the phones, the letter I left in the hallway to mail--all feel like they have a coating of very fine-grade sandpaper. I'm luckier than the people about 20 miles from here. Some lost their cars to drifts of sand, and it filtered into their homes, seeping into carpets, leaving piles on windowsills, smothering flowerbeds.

The ash snowed down as I carefully drove next to Santiago Canyon on Sunday night, the ash combining with blowing pebbles and dirt. Winds gusting to 80 mph can push a car, or an RV, into the next lane. All the drivers staggered their positions as we slowly drove through the winds, the sky next to me gray, then dusty brown, then magenta and lastly orange, the flames licking over the edge of the mountain ridges to my right. A motorcyclist was far to the right shoulder, nearly hugging the outcrop of earth and chaparral.

They say the flames are at the mercy of the winds, the winds at the mercy of high pressure system over the great basin which should start to break up tomorrow. I'll be inside grading papers out of the smoke. Two of my students wrote to say they'd been evacuated--the classes had more absentees than normal. I even got a parking place near the building--a rare event. As I drove out tonight from Yucaipa, I could see huge clouds reaching high into the sky--I assume the smoke from the southern Witch Creek/McCoy fires. I wanted to linger and watch, but I hurried home instead, drawing my house around me.