Hamish, are you back from Palm Springs yet? Godspeed my friend.

It's hard to understand the effect a wildfire of this scale has on everyone within a few hundred miles. In this case, that "few hundred miles" represents about sixty three million people in the combined Los Angeles basin, Orange County and San Diego County areas. Those of us downwind really sense the doom in our bones (and our noses).

Of course those displaced by the fires directly are most profoundly affected; we're all on edge worrying about just those folks.

For those of you not from this area, for some idea of the scale of these catastrophes, take long, slow look at the photo below. Understand the scale.


The 2003 wildfires -- the largest and most destructive wildfires in American history.

At it's peak, the San Diego wildfires fires burned at two acres per second continuously for hours. The flame front sped across this county at forty miles per hour. When all was said and done, three hundred and ninety two thousand, one hundred and sixty one acres of this earth were scorched in San Diego County alone, fully 23% of the land mass of the County. Two thousand six hundred and eighty five families lost their homes and seventeen people were burned to death.

One month after the `03 wildfires to the day, on Thanksgiving day, 2003, the Santa Ana winds kicked up again. This time they blew the ashes of the lives of thousands of families out to sea.


Post burn ash plume, Thanksgiving day, 2003.

Today, on the third anniversary of those fires, when I walked out of the office to drive home, the smell of smoke and the sickly gray-orange pallor signaled disaster once again. This time the fires rage over two hundred miles away in Riverside County, not far from Palm Springs. Four fire fighters are dead fighting to protect lives and property. There is more horror to come.

By the fifth day of the 2003 wildfires the rage was out of the flames, but the flames were not yet out. As we worked frantically to assess damage in order to prepare for the onslaught of refugees, the Santa Ana winds died down, the temperatures plummeted from the over 100°F temperatures and 10% humidity that ushered in the fires down to below freezing. We now worked in snow covered fields of moonscape ash trying to enumerate the contents of lifetimes of possessions. The hardest part was trying to ignore the burned pets -- the frozen/melted bodies of dogs and cats and rabbits. Children's toys, melted and disfigured by the fires crushed hearts hardened by years of dealing with bellowing duplicitous contractors. (Most of the damage assessment was performed by Building Inspectors for the County's Department of Planning and Land Use.)

If you watch where the fires burn as I write this and the direction of the wind, the news bodes ill. The fires will likely march up into the San Jacinto mountain range.

My best to the locals. You have a hard time ahead.

Regards,
Scott Gilmore