Flaming Leaves

We should have suspected the day would be different when we awoke to an overcast, yellow sky. It didn't occur to me that what I was seeing in the east was not cloud cover, but smoke, racing westward on 60 m.p.h. Santa Ana winds from the desert. Hot, dry blasts pushed the largest southern California wildfire ever recorded. Yellow skies in Florida had meant tropical storm season. In the Midwest, a tornado. My mind just didn't process the information.

Television news provided clues that a monumental catastrophe was impending. A usual fall fire that had started 60 miles away in the mountains on October 25 was joined by fires to the north and south of central San Diego. As I worked at my computer, I kept a small TV tuned to a local channel giving continuous news about the fires. Word that homes were burning along a certain road I knew jerked my attention away from email. A report that Scripps Ranch was being evacuated jumpstarted my adrenalin. That was only one freeway exit north of my community, on the other side of Miramar Air Station! Ten minutes later, flames jumped I-52, the freeway between Miramar land and my small community of Tierrasanta. I grabbed photo albums and dumped them in the trunk of my car, alerting my non-believing neighbors that they'd better leave.

Exit from our cul-de-sac community was almost completely cut off. I could drive west toward the ocean or south on I-15 toward fires in Mexico. I was too panicked to remain on the road. After spending several hours breathing smoke in a stadium parking lot, I crept down Mission Valley to the first hotel I found. Two expensive days later we were allowed to return to see if we had homes. Ten of my neighbors were losers.

We didn't lose much compared to the overall results: 15 dead, 2,200 homes destroyed, millions spent containing the fire. For a week we moved like zombies. A year later we were still traumatized. Now, two years later, we agree that event has changed our lives. Some feel anxious whenever we hear sirens; some question remaining here. It's fire season again, and last year's relatively lush rainfall resulted in a bumper crop of tinder for this year's fires. We teeter on the brink of the continent, wondering if we'll be shaken off by earthquakes or driven into the Pacific by flames, or simply priced out of the population because, despite the precarious natural dangers, it still seems that everybody wants to live in this paradise.

Listen to this article