Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
The Tourists Have Arrived
Posted on October 28, 2007 in Photos Santiago Fire
We followed these guys up El Toro as far as the checkpoint below Cook’s Corner. Another day, another media frenzy — houses involved.
The fire as it looked today — it’s moved across three canyons since the photos I took on Wednesday. The mountain peak on the right is Mount Modjeska. Firefighters have been doing their best to keep the flames from affecting the communications stations there and on nearby Mount Santiago. The area that I showed in my earlier pictures is off camera to the left.
While we slept on Tuesday morning, the fire crept up to the very fringes of Portola Hills. The slopes here are planted with fire resistant plants. OCFA threw everything it had to stop the fire at this point and succeeded.
Ginny asked about Whiting Ranch. This is a close-up of the district known as Sleepy Hollow. It appears that the fire half-killed many of the oaks, but there is a good chance that many will survive. The large black clumps on the hills on the right are stands of prickly pear. I am not sure how these will do in the months to come, but there are plenty of plants on nearby, unburned slopes where birds and deer will browse the fruit and bring the seed here.
There’s a good look at the Cactus Trail in this shot, too, which was the site of the mountain lion attack back in 2004.
After I took the last of these shots, I was walking back to my condo when I was stopped by a woman with a camera. “Oh,” she said, “you’ve got to go over there. You’ll get a great view of the canyon if you go that way.”
“I saw it burning,” I replied.
Among the problems facing Orange County’s counterattack on the fire was a lack of planes. Fire officials expected to depend on C-130s provided by the U.S. Navy. The Navy, however, would not allow the California Division of Forestry to control the planes which was necessary to prevent midair collisions. This is one of the ways that Osama bin Laden has reached deep into our lives. There’s no reason to distrust Americans with the use of fire fighting equipment. Our military exists for our national defense. Sometimes our enemies are natural forces. They don’t attempt to steal our secrets from us nor are they engaged in the creation of new weapon systems. A little less military constipation would have saved lives and property.
Here’s the story of a couple who saved themselves by remaining in their swimming pool. Don’t think for a moment that it was fun:
As the house filled with smoke, the couple moved to the garage. Eventually, the heat and smoke forced them into their swimming pool. For the next four hours, they huddled together, trying to keep their bodies warm in the chilly water and their exposed heads protected from the oven-like heat of the fire.
“Wet your hair! Wet your hair!” Dena said she told Roger. “Don’t let your head catch on fire!”
They listened as prized bottles of wine exploded in the house where they were wed 19 years earlier. They were afraid they were going to die.
Shivering uncontrollably and cramping from the cold water, the couple climbed out of the pool just before dawn. The deck railing had melted and looked “like pieces of licorice,” Dena said.
They huddled on the ground for several more hours as the fire burned around them, claiming all five homes on their short strip of mountaintop road. At daylight, they made their way to the main road below, Dena leading Roger by the hand because his eyes were caked with soot.
There’s an audio version of their story at the LA Times web site.
Even though it is not over:
