No, it\u2019s not another movie review.\u00a0 It\u2019s what\u2019s been occurring here in the Southland since Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve had our share of forest fires in the 50 years I\u2019ve been living in this part of the world, but nothing like this.\u00a0 Apocalyptic is not too strong a word.\u00a0 I think everyone who lives in southern California knows someone who lost their home.<\/p>\n
This all started on Wednesday evening with the Santa Ana winds.\u00a0 We get them every year.\u00a0 They are usually strong, but this year they were something out of a disaster movie.\u00a0 In southern California, our normal daily winds predictably blow from west to east starting around 2:00 p.m. and going to approximately sundown.\u00a0\u00a0 There\u2019s an atmospheric\/geologic reason for it I won\u2019t pretend to understand or explain.\u00a0 The Santa Ana winds do just the opposite; they below from east to west, and they blow hard.\u00a0 Throw a fire into the mix, and you get what we have been experiencing for the last few days.<\/p>\n
I can see the smokey skies from my house.\u00a0 The Eaton fire (the closest one to us) is about 30 miles to the west, but other than that, we were lucky.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had lots of forest fires before in the 50 years I\u2019ve lived here and we could see the flames on many of those fires, but they were always up in the mountains.\u00a0 This time, the fires jumped into residential neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
I appreciate all the texts, emails, and phone calls from people checking in on us.\u00a0 We\u2019re fine.\u00a0 The air quality is poor, but that\u2019s trivial compared to what the other people in southern California have suffered. I feel for them, and I hope their situations get resolved quickly.<\/p>\n