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The Heat Goes On

Posted on October 24, 2007 in Photos Santiago Fire

The area which I photographed today. Note the pink streak on the hills near the housing development: this is residue from the flame retardant.

There’s a teensy weensy helicopter flying across the foothills here. Now that the air is still, they’ve been making bucket drops, drawing on local reservoirs. This is a good sign: the winds have died down enough so the choppers can fly. No sign of the C-130s that were here yesterday. Probably are needed elsewhere.

The fire has moved down canyon. The burnt over area to the right is the backfire that they set yesterday afternoon.

Firemen relaxing at Cook’s Corner, the neighborhood’s infamous biker bar. There’s not a lot to do while the fire is burning in the backcountry.

Boring is good, a therapist of mine told me once. And today things are turning boring but hot. The fires plus La Nina have given us a particularly fierce Indian Summer.

I walked to the place where everyone partied yesterday. People came in briefly and left, seeing that nothing much was happening near Santiago Heights save for a single, stubborn fumarole in the ravine behind the development. The fire had denuded the hills and eaten its way east across the hills towards the mouth of Trabuco Canyon and Holy Jim.

Folks took the day off work to watch and unpack their cars. One fellow told me about how a refugee had packed up his car to flee and then been robbed.

No word about who did this, though the news said there was an arrest in San Bernardino County. Radio pointed out that the usual perpetrators of this kind of blaze were people who wanted themselves to be firemen but had been rejected for physical or psychological reasons. So there’s another blow to the terrorism theory.

The one phrase I am not hearing anywhere is “global climate change”. This was made possible by an unusually dry winter. I’d like to see some discussions about how climate is causing this and whether we can expect to see more of this kind of thing.

AHnold is touring the evacuation facility at El Toro High School as I write this.

UPDATE: The LA Times printed this:

Officials were searching for an arsonist responsible for the Santiago fire. In San Bernardino County, a suspected arsonist was shot and killed by police Tuesday night. The shooting was under investigation, but the man was spotted in a brushy area behind Cal State San Bernardino, officials said. After a vehicle pursuit on a dirt road, the man rammed a police car before being fired on by officers, officials said. “There was no reason for him to be back there,” said Lt. Scott Patterson of the San Bernardino Police Department.

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