Red Flares

Posted on September 25, 2004 in Encounters Neighborhood

A line of red flares wedged traffic at the intersection of Santiago Canyon Road and the Silverado cutoff to the left. I leaned forward from my passenger side, trying to guess what had happened. A single Sheriff’s car waited behind a second line of flares crossing the right lane. Lynn, John the driver of the burgundy Saturn station wagon, and I tried to guess what was going on. No bright flames leaped from the roadbed. No dark, disfigured block of wreckage cluttered the intersection. Had someone hit a mountain lion? There was no yellow body bag, no corpse.

John pulled over to the left. The deputy came out from behind the car, carrying the standard-issue huge-flashlight-which-can-double-as-a-club as he approached the car. He seemed annoyed. “What are the flares for?” John asked as he rolled down the window.

“The road’s closed,” said the cop.

I leaned over and asked in my friendly-you-and-I-are-just-a-pair-of-guys voice “I live in Portola Hills. What’s going on?”

“There’s a fire in Modjeska Canyon,” he said.

“What’s the best way to my home?”

“You can go back to the toll road,” he said, correctly guessing our route.

“Or we can circle around through Irvine,” I suggested, perhaps sounding a little worried.

He relaxed. “It should be open again in about an hour,” he said reassuringly. (This is the season of fire, after all, and the chaparral is especially dry.)

We thanked him. John turned the car around so we could go back along Jamboree. “I thought I’d detected the scent of something,” he said. I looked back over my shoulder, towards the Mounts Modjeska and Santiago. They looked like a dead coal against the greying sky. “I don’t know,” I said, a little worried.

It took us about forty minutes to spin around the Irvine Ranch lands and get up to Portola Hills. When we got out of the car, I sniffed the air. Nothing from the Modjeska Canyon blaze stained the air. A small fire, perhaps. Something to be investigated tomorrow.