A friend of mine emailed me last night and began the email with DISCO INFERNO. Needless to say, I got a tremendous chuckle when I saw it and knowing where it came from. That about sums up Southern California at the moment. All it takes is virtually nil humidity (3%), hot temperatures with ripe dry kindling, and the good ol’ Santa Ana winds. Wallah! You have a great recipe for raging fires. Oh… and may I add one other ingredient to enhance a few of those fire recipes…a crackpot arsonist or two!

Let me give you a bit of creative background. Tony spent his whole Sunday morning washing his car which hadn’t been touched since mid-August. He even got adventurous, delving into waxing the car, all the while sweating up a storm (cool it guys *eg*). His vehicle was stunning. Well, Tony got home Sunday night and heard his first bit of information about the fires. He naturally thought they were miles away out in the Inland Empire area and Mailbu where they so often are. Yesterday morning he woke up to find his room mate out watching the news. “What you watchin’ on TV?,” he said. The room mate answers, “The news on the fires.” “Oh!” That’s all Tony mumbles. Then the phone rings. Room mate #2 (Room mate #1’s fiance) is calling. She leaves word not to get on I-5. “Great,” Tony says sarcastically.

In any event, out goes Tony…off to the car. “Shit!!!” Envision a beautifully shiny silver Murano now a loverly shade of ASHEN WHITE. “Shit.” That’s all that is raging through Tony’s head.

Ok, shift from third person Tony to first person.

I get on my way to work taking all the surface streets, adding another 15 minutes to my 35 minute commute (which in and of itself should take only 15-20 minutes if traffic weren’t so darn bad in general). I had no concept of any fire in the area still. I pull up to work, get out of my car, and for the first time smelled the stench of burning grass and wood in the distance. I get in the office and start chatting with a fellow worker. He asked me if I had seen the fire outside on the hill. “What?,” I said. I looked out the back door and could see fire in the canyon about two miles away (time: 8am). By 9am the fire was a mile away and looking like it was hitting the crest of the hill across the freeway from our business complex.

By 11 am disco inferno was coming down one side of the canyon behind our work but thankfully about a quarter of a mile away. By noon it was over the hill crest that I previously mentioned and making its way to the nearby residences that backed up against the hill’s lower boundary. Fortunately most of the houses in that area, so far, appear to have been spared any catastrophic damage. I think that is due their recent construction. Many southern California city government’s have adopted stringent building codes…you know, use of stucco, cement/ceramic roof tiles, etc.

In any event, as 2:30pm came beckoning, it was literally raining soot inside my employer’s warehouse complex. It was making its way through the skylight vents, thanks to the Santa Ana winds. My boss conceded to let us go home, as the smell of smoke was increasingly overpowering. Wahoo! But somehow I need to make the lost few hours up to keep my hours at forty minimum for the week. Well, I know you have heard the saying, “Tomorrow is another day.” I’ll just worry about it sometime later this week.

FYI…if you didn’t pick it up in the news flashes over the past day or so, these fires are pretty bad. Nearly 140 homes are being reported lost in the Lake Arrowhead area and about 250,000 people had to be evacuated from San Diego county alone. Mind boggling!