Fire on the Mountainside.
I'm not quite certain where to begin, really, but I feel that this post really ought to be made...
As some of you already know, I live in a mountainside community in south Orange County, adjacent to the cities of Irvine, Lake Forest, and Mission Viejo. And, as some of you also know, there is at this very moment a very large wildfire burning in the canyons just north of me.
The name has changed a few times over the four days in which the wildfire is been burning, but I believe that the Orange County Fire Authority gave the blaze the name of the Santiago Incident, and so I will refer to it herein as the Santiago Fire. And I do so with quite a measure of sorrow; Santiago, Silverado, Black Star and Live Oak canyons are some of my very favorite places to hike and linger and just enjoy nature. Located only minutes from my house and sprawling about the base of Saddleback Mountain, I discovered these beautiful nature retreats in my very first year of college, and although I do not live down in the canyons myself, they have become very much a second home to me. I am down there once a week, if not more; I hike the trails, I drive the canyon roads, I off-road and dirtbike on the mountain paths with friends and I love to explore the canyons at length. These places are very much a retreat, an oasis of nature, if you will, in the very heart of over-populated, urban Orange County; they are a wonderful break from the monotony and stifling regularity of metropolitan life, and thusly, for a little cow-town girl like myself, they are very much a small bit of heaven on earth.
... and even now, twenty-five thousand acres of these canyons that I love and these wilderness retreats that I cherish are going up in twenty-foot-high flames.
And that's just the canyons themselves. Within some of these canyons are housing communities, hillside homes and manors built back in the beauty of the Saddleback foothills. And these homes are being threatened by the fire. Some of them have already burned. I have a friend in Modjeska and another in Live Oak; both of these friends and their families have been forced to evacuate their homes, taking only their necessities and what they could carry away in their cars. The damage is unthinkable. The whole EVENT is unthinkable; in almost the decade that I've lived down here, I have never, ever experienced something so horrifying as the Santiago Fire.
I was there with one of my very best friends on Sunday night, just an hour after the blaze was set. SET. It was an ARSONIST who unleashed this nightmare on the foothill communities of southland Orange County. This was done DELIBERATELY, with conscious thought to the scale of damage that the act would wreak. The arsonist torched a lumberyard down in Santiago canyon in three - I'm sorry, the OC Register is now saying two - places, strategically directed so as to channel the resultant conflagration into an area that would both ignite readily and spread in a specific manner. This individual knew exactly what he was doing, and he did so with intent, during a time when practically all of Southern California was suffering fierce Santa Ana winds. The wind speeds in our area during the first and second days of the fire were almost at hurricane force. And those violent winds drove the blaze, and spread the embers far faster than the fire crews could possibly hope to match.
What sick and depraved excuse for a human being would DO this sort of thing to his fellow men?
And now the fire keeps coming. It started five minutes before six on Sunday, and it's now Thursday afternoon. It has consumed the hillsides from the 133 and the 241 all the way south to Foothill Ranch, Portola Hills, and it has menaced all of the canyon communities between. And although I have hoped and prayed vehemently against it coming any closer, despite the dying of the Santa Ana winds, the fire is still creeping closer. Yesterday my friend and his family were given a voluntary evacuation notice at a street that serves as the northern border of my city ... only a few blocks away from where I live.
So, my roommate and I have packed, with the help of one very brave and generous friend, in case the evacuation notice should be sent to us as well. I am still hoping and praying that it won't come to that. I've tried to tell myself that I am simply over-reacting, worrying over such a small probability, but in all honesty, wasn't it a very long shot that the Santiago Fire should have reached Foothill Ranch in the first place? And yet flames were threatening both Foothill and Portola Hills two days ago. The sky is black with smoke and ash, and the sun burns a strange, sickly shade of red as if it were dawn or dusk throughout the day. I can SEE the flames from my front door, and the skies are filled with the sounds of the aircraft above; helicopters and tankers as they circle and descend to drop water and retardant on the fires. Every day the news assures us that the fire will be contained in short order, and every day, the leading edge comes closer still across the hills. And suddenly, for the first time in my life, I realize that I may quite seriously be in danger of losing almost everything I own.
And my case is NOT the worst of it. Fires are burning out of control across southern California. Seven counties, this one among them, have been declared to be in a federal state of emergency. The President is supposed to be here somewhere today, and the Govenator came down earlier in the week to witness the destruction. From Canyon Country where three more of my friends were forced to evacuate, to Malibu where the hill fire refuses to be tamed, to Temecula, south down to San Diego where the worst of the lot has destroyed over a THOUSAND homes already ... it honestly feels as if the southern half of the state is going up in flames.
And I am frightened.
I've come close in the days prior, but today I broke and cried. I am so tired, and so scared, and so stressed. There is nothing to which I can liken this sense of helplessness, of utter horror; the sight of that glowing red line as it advances across the mountain is enough to send a cold pang of dread through my heart whenever I behold it. There are over a thousand firefighters battling the Santiago blaze alone, and although the valiant efforts of these brave and selfless men and women have been able to keep the fire from destroying most of the homes in our area, they haven't been able to save all of them. And they haven't been able to stop it.
Just Sunday night I sat in a parking lot at the Arbor and tried my very best to comfort and console a friend who had been evacuated from his home in Canyon Country. Even then, I admitted that I could not pretend to fathom the thought of having to look about at one's own home, the place where one finds safety and sanctum, to look at one's belongings and personal possessions and items of sentimental value ...
... and try to decide what to save, and what to let burn.
How does one make that decision? A part of me, the wiser voice in my mind, cries out that they are all simply material things, many of which can be replaced, and that self-preservation is paramount. And this is of course true. But to think of so many mementos, treasured belongings ... all of the things that we as people hold special to us ... how does one decide among them? How does one come to grips with letting them go?
Worse yet - and my heart goes out to those families in San Diego, in Modjeska and Silverado - how in the name of all that is holy does one come to grips with the fact that in one evening, in a matter of mere HOURS ... everything that one had could be gone?
A home, a haven, a place of peace and life and personality ... reduced to nothing but ashes.
How do they COPE?
Day by day ... step by step, moment by moment, I would suppose. So long as one has life, one has hope, yes? Life teaches us strange lessons, and at times it tempers those lessons with the strangest of circumstances. I feel almost guilty to mention it in the shadow of the catastrophe that is gripping my region, but I would feel just as guilty if I did not; even in the face of this disaster and fright, life has brought me one of the very brightest moments of happiness I think I've been blessed with in ... I don't even know how long. I can't remember a time when I was this overwhelmingly, utterly happy, and while I am thoroughly grateful for it, for all of it, it just strikes me as so darkly converse that it should come at such a time as this! And yet, I can hardly find the voice with which to argue, for the power of this sudden spark of light in my life is helping me stay that much more sane in the face of adversity.
... yes, I am strong enough to combat this on my own. Yes, I am sound enough to face this and survive. Come what may, I will endure, just as I have so many times before ...
... but because of you, it is made easier.
To those of you who have stood by me in this time of crisis, to those of you who have been able to make me laugh and forget my fears for even a moment, to my stubborn but unerringly accurate Seeker sister and to one very special peace-hunter who has managed to bring peace to my heart when nothing else could ...
... from the very depths of my heart, thank you.
As some of you already know, I live in a mountainside community in south Orange County, adjacent to the cities of Irvine, Lake Forest, and Mission Viejo. And, as some of you also know, there is at this very moment a very large wildfire burning in the canyons just north of me.
The name has changed a few times over the four days in which the wildfire is been burning, but I believe that the Orange County Fire Authority gave the blaze the name of the Santiago Incident, and so I will refer to it herein as the Santiago Fire. And I do so with quite a measure of sorrow; Santiago, Silverado, Black Star and Live Oak canyons are some of my very favorite places to hike and linger and just enjoy nature. Located only minutes from my house and sprawling about the base of Saddleback Mountain, I discovered these beautiful nature retreats in my very first year of college, and although I do not live down in the canyons myself, they have become very much a second home to me. I am down there once a week, if not more; I hike the trails, I drive the canyon roads, I off-road and dirtbike on the mountain paths with friends and I love to explore the canyons at length. These places are very much a retreat, an oasis of nature, if you will, in the very heart of over-populated, urban Orange County; they are a wonderful break from the monotony and stifling regularity of metropolitan life, and thusly, for a little cow-town girl like myself, they are very much a small bit of heaven on earth.
... and even now, twenty-five thousand acres of these canyons that I love and these wilderness retreats that I cherish are going up in twenty-foot-high flames.
And that's just the canyons themselves. Within some of these canyons are housing communities, hillside homes and manors built back in the beauty of the Saddleback foothills. And these homes are being threatened by the fire. Some of them have already burned. I have a friend in Modjeska and another in Live Oak; both of these friends and their families have been forced to evacuate their homes, taking only their necessities and what they could carry away in their cars. The damage is unthinkable. The whole EVENT is unthinkable; in almost the decade that I've lived down here, I have never, ever experienced something so horrifying as the Santiago Fire.
I was there with one of my very best friends on Sunday night, just an hour after the blaze was set. SET. It was an ARSONIST who unleashed this nightmare on the foothill communities of southland Orange County. This was done DELIBERATELY, with conscious thought to the scale of damage that the act would wreak. The arsonist torched a lumberyard down in Santiago canyon in three - I'm sorry, the OC Register is now saying two - places, strategically directed so as to channel the resultant conflagration into an area that would both ignite readily and spread in a specific manner. This individual knew exactly what he was doing, and he did so with intent, during a time when practically all of Southern California was suffering fierce Santa Ana winds. The wind speeds in our area during the first and second days of the fire were almost at hurricane force. And those violent winds drove the blaze, and spread the embers far faster than the fire crews could possibly hope to match.
What sick and depraved excuse for a human being would DO this sort of thing to his fellow men?
And now the fire keeps coming. It started five minutes before six on Sunday, and it's now Thursday afternoon. It has consumed the hillsides from the 133 and the 241 all the way south to Foothill Ranch, Portola Hills, and it has menaced all of the canyon communities between. And although I have hoped and prayed vehemently against it coming any closer, despite the dying of the Santa Ana winds, the fire is still creeping closer. Yesterday my friend and his family were given a voluntary evacuation notice at a street that serves as the northern border of my city ... only a few blocks away from where I live.
So, my roommate and I have packed, with the help of one very brave and generous friend, in case the evacuation notice should be sent to us as well. I am still hoping and praying that it won't come to that. I've tried to tell myself that I am simply over-reacting, worrying over such a small probability, but in all honesty, wasn't it a very long shot that the Santiago Fire should have reached Foothill Ranch in the first place? And yet flames were threatening both Foothill and Portola Hills two days ago. The sky is black with smoke and ash, and the sun burns a strange, sickly shade of red as if it were dawn or dusk throughout the day. I can SEE the flames from my front door, and the skies are filled with the sounds of the aircraft above; helicopters and tankers as they circle and descend to drop water and retardant on the fires. Every day the news assures us that the fire will be contained in short order, and every day, the leading edge comes closer still across the hills. And suddenly, for the first time in my life, I realize that I may quite seriously be in danger of losing almost everything I own.
And my case is NOT the worst of it. Fires are burning out of control across southern California. Seven counties, this one among them, have been declared to be in a federal state of emergency. The President is supposed to be here somewhere today, and the Govenator came down earlier in the week to witness the destruction. From Canyon Country where three more of my friends were forced to evacuate, to Malibu where the hill fire refuses to be tamed, to Temecula, south down to San Diego where the worst of the lot has destroyed over a THOUSAND homes already ... it honestly feels as if the southern half of the state is going up in flames.
And I am frightened.
I've come close in the days prior, but today I broke and cried. I am so tired, and so scared, and so stressed. There is nothing to which I can liken this sense of helplessness, of utter horror; the sight of that glowing red line as it advances across the mountain is enough to send a cold pang of dread through my heart whenever I behold it. There are over a thousand firefighters battling the Santiago blaze alone, and although the valiant efforts of these brave and selfless men and women have been able to keep the fire from destroying most of the homes in our area, they haven't been able to save all of them. And they haven't been able to stop it.
Just Sunday night I sat in a parking lot at the Arbor and tried my very best to comfort and console a friend who had been evacuated from his home in Canyon Country. Even then, I admitted that I could not pretend to fathom the thought of having to look about at one's own home, the place where one finds safety and sanctum, to look at one's belongings and personal possessions and items of sentimental value ...
... and try to decide what to save, and what to let burn.
How does one make that decision? A part of me, the wiser voice in my mind, cries out that they are all simply material things, many of which can be replaced, and that self-preservation is paramount. And this is of course true. But to think of so many mementos, treasured belongings ... all of the things that we as people hold special to us ... how does one decide among them? How does one come to grips with letting them go?
Worse yet - and my heart goes out to those families in San Diego, in Modjeska and Silverado - how in the name of all that is holy does one come to grips with the fact that in one evening, in a matter of mere HOURS ... everything that one had could be gone?
A home, a haven, a place of peace and life and personality ... reduced to nothing but ashes.
How do they COPE?
Day by day ... step by step, moment by moment, I would suppose. So long as one has life, one has hope, yes? Life teaches us strange lessons, and at times it tempers those lessons with the strangest of circumstances. I feel almost guilty to mention it in the shadow of the catastrophe that is gripping my region, but I would feel just as guilty if I did not; even in the face of this disaster and fright, life has brought me one of the very brightest moments of happiness I think I've been blessed with in ... I don't even know how long. I can't remember a time when I was this overwhelmingly, utterly happy, and while I am thoroughly grateful for it, for all of it, it just strikes me as so darkly converse that it should come at such a time as this! And yet, I can hardly find the voice with which to argue, for the power of this sudden spark of light in my life is helping me stay that much more sane in the face of adversity.
... yes, I am strong enough to combat this on my own. Yes, I am sound enough to face this and survive. Come what may, I will endure, just as I have so many times before ...
... but because of you, it is made easier.
To those of you who have stood by me in this time of crisis, to those of you who have been able to make me laugh and forget my fears for even a moment, to my stubborn but unerringly accurate Seeker sister and to one very special peace-hunter who has managed to bring peace to my heart when nothing else could ...
... from the very depths of my heart, thank you.