Friday, January 30, 2009
Game Show Contestant
Last Tuesday was an interesting day for me. In the last year I have attended tapings of such game shows as Jeopardy and Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and had always thought about being a contestant. I found out about a show called "Catch 21" and went in for an audition.
"Catch 21" is a relatively new show that has only been around for a year. It was created by the same guy who invented the Hollywood Squares show. It is a combination of Blackjack and Trivial Pursuits. The top prize is $26,000 but it sounds like it is very hard to win that much.
My audition was Tuesday afternoon in LA. There I met the Casting Director, Bev. There were about 30 people in attendance, mostly young guys. First Bev had us say something about ourselves. Then she ran us through a couple of test games to make sure that we understood the rules.
I don't really know what they want in a contestant...I guess I will just wait and see if I get called back. It was a fun and interesting afternoon.
Cheers
"Catch 21" is a relatively new show that has only been around for a year. It was created by the same guy who invented the Hollywood Squares show. It is a combination of Blackjack and Trivial Pursuits. The top prize is $26,000 but it sounds like it is very hard to win that much.
My audition was Tuesday afternoon in LA. There I met the Casting Director, Bev. There were about 30 people in attendance, mostly young guys. First Bev had us say something about ourselves. Then she ran us through a couple of test games to make sure that we understood the rules.
I don't really know what they want in a contestant...I guess I will just wait and see if I get called back. It was a fun and interesting afternoon.
Cheers
Monday, January 19, 2009
CALIFORNIA FIRESTORM PART 2
DRIVING INTO THE BURN AREAS
It was about 2 weeks after the fires, and the burned out neighborhoods were re-opened. Apparently the threat of looters had passed. So I took the opportunity to drive up and see the damage. On a weekday morning these suburbs were eerily quiet, just like they are on any working day I suppose. As I drove through these upscale neighborhoods, I could not help but notice that all the vegetation was quite green and robust in appearance. I suppose that was because of the recent rains we had. As I drove through the hilly terrain on the verge of the burn area, everything looked just fine. And then I saw the first burned home. The first thing I noticed is that it had a temporary chain link fence around it. I suppose this was required by the insurance. The second thing that I noticed is that the damaged homes had not burned completely to the ground. In last year's Modjeska Canyon fire, most buildings had burned completely because they were all wood. These homes, however, were built with a lot of brick, stone, and stucco. It seemed that while the interior of the house had burned, the walls were mostly intact.
As I drove further down the street, I couldn't help but notice the random, hop-scotching pattern of burned houses. You might drive a couple of hundred yards past pristine homes, then find two or three burned in a row. Or maybe a single. Most of the burned houses were on the outside ring of the neighborhood, right on the edge of the hill. These were the ones with the million dollar views. However they sat directly above the hillsides of brush that would eventually be their undoing.
I guess you could consider it just plain bad luck if you were in the process of building a house at the time of the fire. There was one such house under construction at the top of Santa Ana Drive. It was going to be huge. The site was so large that a large number of Porto Potties had to be brought in for the workmen. The fire swept up the hill and quickly burned the raw framed house, before sweeping westward. Two days later this is how a newspaper described the scene: "Porto Potties Reduced to Steaming Piles."
UPSCALE NEIGHBORHOODS
These were upscale neighborhoods, and some of the houses were quite fancy. I don't know what it is, but when you make a million dollars I guess you want a million dollar view. I knew the area. Last year I had a limo job up there. I took the client and his friends into town to see a comedy show. He was a nice guy, his name was Jerry. I asked his friend what kind of business he was in. "Pizza" he said. I looked at the big house and thought that his restaurant must be doing a pretty good business. His friend continued...."He owns 126 Pizza Hut restaurants."
In a few areas, enclaves of cookie cutter models, similar in most respects, could be found. Kind of a McMansion neighborhood. Others, however, were much more impressive.
One interesting feature of owning a bigger mansion is the need to do something about Parking. Parking....obviously one of the great issues of civilized life. Where are we going to park all of our cars. Some of these homes have 3 and 4 car garages. I saw one that had 5 garages. This means that the front of the house is mostly taken up with garage doors and concrete driveways. The really rich solve this problem by building their own underground parking garage. Lots for ridge houses are very expensive, so I guess the only solution for your Lexus parking problems is your own garage.
At most of the burn sites, the remnants are still standing. But occasionally you will see that some homeowners have decided to rebuild immediately. They got in industrial sized dumpsters
and cleaned the site with front end loaders. All that is left is a clean concrete slab, which will eventually also be torn up. Things were pretty quite on this working day. As I drove along I noticed two types of services being rendered. A lot of the remaining homes were being power washed. I did not understand why this was necessary. I can only speculate that the imbeded ash was acidic in nature and would cause damage in the future. Also there were a number of lawn services on site. They were cutting back small trees that had been stressed by the fire. I suppose this was done in an effort to save them.
Here and there some RVs were set up on the street. I don't suppose burned out residents were allowed to camp out.... I believe they were there to house security personnel.
MUDSLIDES
Sometimes Mother Nature seems to have a mean streak in her nature. We have had drought conditions in the LA area for a number of years now. Then, on the weekend of the Nov 14th we had the Firestorm that burned hundreds of houses. It sounded ridiculous at the time but the Fire Chief said that the first thing that had to be done, now that the flames were gone, was sandbag the hills. And it was a good thing that the sandbagging was done.
Last year there were flash floods and huge mudslides, caused by the November rains, in the Modjeska Canyon area. Whole neighborhoods had to be evacuated. After surviving the danger of a wildfire, some home owners returned to find a foot of mud in their living rooms. Sometimes the house could be cleaned out and saved. Other times the damage was so bad that the house had to be condemned. This is what Ann Marie Keefer said last year. "This has been an absolutely harrowing experience. First there was the fire... then I've been sandbagging....now you get hit with mud and your house is yellow tagged as unlivable."
This year, not a week after the Big Burn, came the Big Rains, when a huge one day rain storm dropped about two inches of water.
Homeowners in the fire ravaged areas needed a break, and Fortune smiled on them. Despite experiencing the most powerful storm to hit Orange County in more than two years, the hillsides held their ground. There was practically no mudslide activity.
"We caught a big break with the storm." City Manager Dave Gruchow said "We wanted to get
everyone evacuated in time. You have to understand that the threat of mudslides is quite real. The San Gabriel Mountains that ring Los Angeles are some of the steepest mountains in the world due to all the earthquake faults. Once the mud comes, it's too late."
"There has been no emergency activity regarding debris flow." said Fire Capt. Greg McKeown. "We are glued to the weather reports...everybody is holding their breath. Threats of slides will be an ongoing thing for a long time, possibly months." He continued, " We will continue to monitor the hillsides and watch the water coming in from the canyons."
EVACUATIONS
Families that had just gotten back into their homes after the fire, were now forced to evacuate again. The drought had caused the soil to become dry and loose, and you now had a layer of ash on top of that. Most mudslides start in little gullies in the steep hillside, so they were reinforced. Many of the homes that sat at the bottom of burned hillsides were heavily reinforced with sand bags.
Greg Friga and his family left their home at about 2am with their black poodle, Romy, and some books. "When the fires hit last year, we brought out everything we could" he said. "But this time around, we didn't think we'd need it. It's been a long, long week and a half now." All told, about 10,000 people were evacuated during the fires...not so many for the mudflows.
WE CAN BE THANKFUL FOR JUST BEING HERE.
The last of the mandatory mudslide evacuation orders were lifted Wednesday afternoon, but officials urged residents to stay away until the threat of rainfall lifted.
So hundreds of residents, chased out of their homes during the rains, were allowed to return home in time to celebrate Thanksgiving. This isn't the Thanksgiving they had planned. They're staying in hotel rooms, wearing clothes donated by strangers. They will set aside time for family, but when they give thanks for the roofs over their heads, they won't be talking about home. Thanksgiving has a deeper meaning for families that lost almost everything in the wildfires. For some , its a time to focus on the big things: life and health and the beauty of a new day. For others, its about the little things---a kind word, a hot meal, a warm bed.
SURVIVOR STORIES
WEDDING RING
Some happy results did come out of this otherwise bleak event. The Philblad family lived on Laurel Tree Drive, and had no time to pack as flames approached. "I saw a big flame come over the hill.” Jeff Philblad said. “It was just unbelievable, and the heat was so bad, at that point, I knew it was time to go." Jeff, his wife Dana and their 11 year old son evacuated the house, taking nothing with them but their pets and the clothes they were wearing. Their home was destroyed.
Dana is 6 months pregnant so she hadn't been wearing her wedding ring because it didn't fit. Last Monday afternoon at least 7 firefighters searched through the rubble to help Dana look for it. The search continued during the week as off duty firefighters looked for the ring. They dug through a gray mess about 3 feet deep in the approximate area where the bathroom had been.
On Friday, their efforts paid off. Greg Fox and friends had been searching for about 3 hours. "We were close to maybe putting in the last hour for the day. But we actually ended up finding the ring intact. It was pretty exciting to find something like that. It was like finding a needle in a haystack." When the husband received the ring from the firefighters he told them..."You guys are great....you are all heroes." Fox replied "Hey, we're not heroes, we're just doing out job." Dana Philblad cried when she saw the gold band with the princess-cut 2-carat diamond. "I was elated. I was so happy." she said. "That's the one thing that I wasn't going to stop looking for. It felt great."
LESSONS FROM THE ASHES
Last month's firestorm was not unique. Many LA neighborhoods are at threat of fire every year because they live in areas susceptible to high winds. In the past many have had their homes burned to the ground. In 1993 there was a huge fire in the artist colony of Laguna Beach. In the Canyon Acres neighborhood 60 of the 85 homes burned. The fires swept down the narrow canyon walls, fueled by mad winds and the brush in its path. It consumed eight out of every 10 homes. Along with them went original artwork assembled over lifetimes in this artist Mecca.
In all, 389 homes burned on Oct 27th of that year. When one walks through the area now, the homes and the canyon appear robust. But they have come back from the dead.
FIRE VICTIMS ADVICE
So Laguna residents hold the unsought distinction of being disaster veterans. This puts them in the position to offer some advice to new victims.
Afterward, those who lived through the 1993 firestorm reflected on life after devastation. Some residents found a new, better life. Others saw their personal trials continue. "It takes time" one said "but its one day at a time and it works out." City manager Ken Frank, who also lost his home, says that 70% of the houses have been rebuilt by original owners. The remaining homeowners either could not, or did not rebuild, opting instead to move. He said that victims learned to brace for 2 to 3 years of tough times as they rebuilt. Those who rebuilt eventually got brand new homes, new clothes, and new furniture. "It had a positive impact on our economy financially" he said " if your house burned down, you probably did OK with insurance and state and federal aid."
"There's always something redemptive to suffering. Out of the ashes comes new life." said Jay Grant, pastor at the Little Church by the Sea in Laguna. "And those people from the new fire need to know that their lives won't be like this forever. They will be fine in a couple of years. Nobody lost their life and nobody died in this fire, either. That's the grace of God."
ANOTHER SURVIVOR'S STORY
Another survivor, Beverly Blumenfeid had sifted through the ashes after the firestorm and found her white ceramic angel, now marred with black streaks. It now sits in a china cabinet in her new home. When the sky turned black, Beverly had time to grab some treasures---heirlooms, photographs, the four cats , their son Daniel's hockey equipment, and load them into the van. "The most important things in my life I got out". After the fire, Beverly and her husband of 41 years got to know neighbors they hadn't known. They saw the generous side of a community. Friends put them up for a month before they found a rental. Strangers gave them $1000. They had bought their house in 1975. When the home burned, Mark had spent nearly 28 years putting finishing touches to it. Mark was devastated at the loss, but Beverly felt that everything would turn out well. After fighting for it, they got a $480,000 insurance settlement and set themselves on the path to rebuild a bigger and sturdier home. Yet it took more than 4 years before they could move back into Canyon Acres.
"Now I look at things differently." says Beverly, 64. " I am a real firm believer in God, that God takes care of us.........What are you gonna do? I don't like to feel sorry for myself." Her advice to other homeowners: Have replacement cost insurance. Trim chaparral around your home. Consider a volunteer firefighting force of neighbors. Keep a video catalog of the contents in your home.
SAD STORY
Not all residents, however, rebounded as easily. David Battersby, the local high school history teacher, had gotten a divorce 2 days before the fire. He was not having a good day. "I learned about the fire when I got a telephone call from a 9 year old neighbor telling me that she was going to rescue my Rhodesian Ridgeback puppies, Licky Red and Curly. Then the phone line went dead."
He raced home. Because his narrow street had only one way in, firefighters have given it up as a lost cause. He decided to try to save his house It turned out that he could not save his own home, but helped to save 6 others.
Fighting the blaze that night, Battersby suffered exhaustion and smoke inhalation. He ended up in a hospital. While firefighting he says he ruptured a disk in his back. Two surgeries later, he was permanently disabled. After that he had to file bankruptcy. On top of that, Battersby says he suffered a $280,000 loss, because his insurance would only pay $15,000. "My Laguna dream was gone." he said, speaking from northern California where he now lives. "I felt like I was cast out of paradise. So I lost my family, my home, my health and my financial footing. From that point on I became one of those individuals who simply lived from hand to mouth" After many years, things have finally stabilized for him. He has a good relationship with his 3 children, and is on speaking terms with his ex-wife.
The knockout punch the fire delivered also taught Battersby, now 61, some tough lessons. "I have put more faith and energy into people and a lot less energy into things" he says. "Relationships changed. I thought about the fire, and my divorce and loss of health...about losing three things that are the cornerstones of life. I recognized that I was not the husband to my wife that I could have been. I was distracted. And I have attempted in my relationships afterwards to look to the human needs of people around me."
He can empathize with the people who have lost everything in the Yorba Linda fire because he has been there. He says the survivors have a long road ahead. With good insurance, they could possibly bounce back in 18 to 20 months, others in 3 to 5 years. "It's a lot of hard work." Battersby says.
WHY DID THESE HOMES BURN DOWN
As I said, one is always surprised by the randomness of the burned homes. Some ridge top homes, that took the full force of the wall of flames, survived with little apparent damage. While others, maybe two or three streets over, burned. How could this have happened? Now these are relatively new, expensive homes with all of the latest anti-fire modifications. They all have clay-tile roofs. They have treated lumber and tempered glass. They all have light wooden framing so there is a minimum of exposed wood. Many of them have enclosed eaves. Some even have balconies that are finished underneath, so that there is no exposed wood.
And all of them have exterior walls of stucco filled with fireproof insulation. Stucco is to the outside of the house, what plaster is to the inside of the house. It is made from a mixture of lime, cement, sand and water, and is applied to a wire mesh. It is about an inch thick. It is highly fire resistant.
As I drove deeper into the sub division, I would occasionally come across a burned home far from the front lines of the fire. It was always a surprised to see a single burned home in a sea of normal houses, and you always wondered why that particular house had burned. Especially when you consider the fact that nearby were houses with the notorious cedar shake roofs. This type of roof was quite the fashion about 40 years ago and many houses had them. However, why anyone would want to install highly combustible slabs of cedar on their roof in a fire area was beyond me. When a storm of embers rained down in the high winds, you would have thought that these houses would have gone up first. But that was not the case.
OUTSIDE IN OR INSIDE OUT
As I drove through these neighborhoods, I could not help but notice a mysterious fact. Almost without exception, the homes on either side of a burned house looked absolutely pristine. There was no scorching or blackening of the stucco walls, there was no bubbling of the exposed paint, there was not even any distress to the delicate palm trees around these houses. Yet, there they stood not 20 feet from a completely burned home.
So the big question is this: Did these fires burn from the outside in, or the inside out? If the homes burned because of the walls of flame that raced up the hills, then obviously they burned from the outside in. However, it is my contention that these homes burned from the inside out.
LESSONS FROM THE ASHES
Let's review. The final tally was 250 homes, and 29,000 acres, burned. Practically all of these devastated homes were destroyed by wind driven embers. Some of these embers were as large as golf balls, but most of them were very small. Anyone who has ever had a roaring campfire knows just what these tiny embers look like. When you throw a log on the fire, a shower of red hot embers floats up into the sky. In a fire as large as the Yorba Linda blaze, countless embers were generated. Then they were blown on the hot winds for miles.
So what happens when these embers come back to earth. Sometimes they will land in brush, where they can start another fire. But all homes in fire zones are supposed to have a 100 foot buffer zone of cleared brush. Many of these embers landed on million dollar homes. But most of these homes are designed to be fire proof.
Yet a home can burst into flames from one of these little embers, when their neighbors are untouched. Why would this happen? Well, it does seem extraordinary, but after many years of fires some people are finally coming up with an answer.
It turns out that the Achilles’ heel of these wonderful homes may be the attic vents that are mandated by law to prevent mold and rot. Every home owner not only wants gable vents, but also attic exhaust fans. By reducing the amount of hot air in the attic, fans can reduce a homeowners cooling bills by 30%. These vents are covered with a mesh screen. These mesh screens have to be small enough to keep out birds and insects, but still allow an easy airflow.
Brent Berkompas is a firefighter who has seen homes destroyed by wildfires. Last year his team was sent out to a cul-de-sac, not to fight the fire, but to protect the houses. "The main fire was a mile away, but fire was hop-scotching through neighborhoods because embers were getting into the gable vents on their sides. On TV people see walls of flames and think that is what is setting these houses on fire. But the reality is that wind-blown embers will find any opening into a covered area. Embers are so small and produced in such quantity, it's like a snowstorm pushed through vents into attic spaces," he said. "There they ignite sawdust or paper-faced insulation." What starts as light smoke can turn into a fully involved fire within five minutes. And the reason that these burning homes are almost impossible to put out is because the fire is burning from the inside out.
Berkompas told the state fire marshal about the problem. That's when he found out that no one made ember-blocking vents that still allowed air flow. "Quarter-inch mesh cannot stop embers during wildfires" he said. ""Smaller mesh screens would do a better job, but they clog more easily." Berkompas worked with a metal fabricator to create a line of vents that could repel embers. The vent's design includes overlapping baffles in the front. That effort has evolved into Brandguard Vents, which have been very successful. The price is about $25 per vent. An average home can be retrofitted for a few hundred dollars. "I didn't start out thinking of it as a business." he said "but that is what happened."
As of this year, state code for new construction in wildfire areas must include ember-blocking vents. However it is going to be a long education process for the building industry. One issue is that the state has not yet approved standards for such vents or recognized any specific products. When these issues are resolved, there should be a large market for his product. Across the country, 44 million homes have already been built in fire danger zones.
THE BURNED HILLS
You cannot help but come to the conclusion that these homes burned because of embers that entered the attic through the gable vents. Obviously, houses that burned in the interior of the sub-division were not started by walls of flame. When you see pristine homes on either side of a burned one, you understand that these homes burned from the inside out. It was only the stucco walls of the homes that prevented fire damage to their neighbors. Was it just a matter of luck that some homes did not burn because their roofline ran perpendicular to the oncoming fire?
I certainly don't know. I do know this. Probably in the last 40 years there has been millions of dollars of fire loss in southern California. And it seems that most of these houses burned from the inside out. Yet no fire professional seemed to understand that these fires were cause by the porous gable vents. No fire professional, until last year, came out with a modification to these vents that would prevent the penetration of embers. It seems preposterous. A lot of very intelligent people live in California and it only seems natural that they would want to know why their homes burned down.
But then again, for the last 40 years fire professionals in the US have been putting out forest fires. None of our fire professionals pointed out that infrequent small fires were necessary for the health of the forests. None of these professionals pointed out that small fires prevented brush from building up on forest floors. Or that this fuel load would allowed grass fires to leap into the crowns of the trees, eventually producing Yellowstone-type firestorms. Now workers are clearing out this brush to prevent firestorms in the future. Why couldn't someone have figured this out decades ago?
SUMMARY
Later I drove out into the thousands of acres of rolling hills that had burned. These were primarily grasslands, with some trees in the gullies. It seemed like there were an awful lot of birds around. I suppose the fire had released a lot of seeds for the smaller birds.
By the time I returned to the burned neighborhoods in the afternoon, people had returned home. For those who were lucky, for those whose homes did not burn, life pretty much remained the same. The daily paper was delivered, the garbage was picked up, neighbors talked in the streets while the kids played on the lawns. For them life had not changed.
Yet, for their burned out neighbor next door.........now everything had changed. Normalcy and disaster----only a property line apart.
DRIVING INTO THE BURN AREAS
It was about 2 weeks after the fires, and the burned out neighborhoods were re-opened. Apparently the threat of looters had passed. So I took the opportunity to drive up and see the damage. On a weekday morning these suburbs were eerily quiet, just like they are on any working day I suppose. As I drove through these upscale neighborhoods, I could not help but notice that all the vegetation was quite green and robust in appearance. I suppose that was because of the recent rains we had. As I drove through the hilly terrain on the verge of the burn area, everything looked just fine. And then I saw the first burned home. The first thing I noticed is that it had a temporary chain link fence around it. I suppose this was required by the insurance. The second thing that I noticed is that the damaged homes had not burned completely to the ground. In last year's Modjeska Canyon fire, most buildings had burned completely because they were all wood. These homes, however, were built with a lot of brick, stone, and stucco. It seemed that while the interior of the house had burned, the walls were mostly intact.
As I drove further down the street, I couldn't help but notice the random, hop-scotching pattern of burned houses. You might drive a couple of hundred yards past pristine homes, then find two or three burned in a row. Or maybe a single. Most of the burned houses were on the outside ring of the neighborhood, right on the edge of the hill. These were the ones with the million dollar views. However they sat directly above the hillsides of brush that would eventually be their undoing.
I guess you could consider it just plain bad luck if you were in the process of building a house at the time of the fire. There was one such house under construction at the top of Santa Ana Drive. It was going to be huge. The site was so large that a large number of Porto Potties had to be brought in for the workmen. The fire swept up the hill and quickly burned the raw framed house, before sweeping westward. Two days later this is how a newspaper described the scene: "Porto Potties Reduced to Steaming Piles."
UPSCALE NEIGHBORHOODS
These were upscale neighborhoods, and some of the houses were quite fancy. I don't know what it is, but when you make a million dollars I guess you want a million dollar view. I knew the area. Last year I had a limo job up there. I took the client and his friends into town to see a comedy show. He was a nice guy, his name was Jerry. I asked his friend what kind of business he was in. "Pizza" he said. I looked at the big house and thought that his restaurant must be doing a pretty good business. His friend continued...."He owns 126 Pizza Hut restaurants."
In a few areas, enclaves of cookie cutter models, similar in most respects, could be found. Kind of a McMansion neighborhood. Others, however, were much more impressive.
One interesting feature of owning a bigger mansion is the need to do something about Parking. Parking....obviously one of the great issues of civilized life. Where are we going to park all of our cars. Some of these homes have 3 and 4 car garages. I saw one that had 5 garages. This means that the front of the house is mostly taken up with garage doors and concrete driveways. The really rich solve this problem by building their own underground parking garage. Lots for ridge houses are very expensive, so I guess the only solution for your Lexus parking problems is your own garage.
At most of the burn sites, the remnants are still standing. But occasionally you will see that some homeowners have decided to rebuild immediately. They got in industrial sized dumpsters
and cleaned the site with front end loaders. All that is left is a clean concrete slab, which will eventually also be torn up. Things were pretty quite on this working day. As I drove along I noticed two types of services being rendered. A lot of the remaining homes were being power washed. I did not understand why this was necessary. I can only speculate that the imbeded ash was acidic in nature and would cause damage in the future. Also there were a number of lawn services on site. They were cutting back small trees that had been stressed by the fire. I suppose this was done in an effort to save them.
Here and there some RVs were set up on the street. I don't suppose burned out residents were allowed to camp out.... I believe they were there to house security personnel.
MUDSLIDES
Sometimes Mother Nature seems to have a mean streak in her nature. We have had drought conditions in the LA area for a number of years now. Then, on the weekend of the Nov 14th we had the Firestorm that burned hundreds of houses. It sounded ridiculous at the time but the Fire Chief said that the first thing that had to be done, now that the flames were gone, was sandbag the hills. And it was a good thing that the sandbagging was done.
Last year there were flash floods and huge mudslides, caused by the November rains, in the Modjeska Canyon area. Whole neighborhoods had to be evacuated. After surviving the danger of a wildfire, some home owners returned to find a foot of mud in their living rooms. Sometimes the house could be cleaned out and saved. Other times the damage was so bad that the house had to be condemned. This is what Ann Marie Keefer said last year. "This has been an absolutely harrowing experience. First there was the fire... then I've been sandbagging....now you get hit with mud and your house is yellow tagged as unlivable."
This year, not a week after the Big Burn, came the Big Rains, when a huge one day rain storm dropped about two inches of water.
Homeowners in the fire ravaged areas needed a break, and Fortune smiled on them. Despite experiencing the most powerful storm to hit Orange County in more than two years, the hillsides held their ground. There was practically no mudslide activity.
"We caught a big break with the storm." City Manager Dave Gruchow said "We wanted to get
everyone evacuated in time. You have to understand that the threat of mudslides is quite real. The San Gabriel Mountains that ring Los Angeles are some of the steepest mountains in the world due to all the earthquake faults. Once the mud comes, it's too late."
"There has been no emergency activity regarding debris flow." said Fire Capt. Greg McKeown. "We are glued to the weather reports...everybody is holding their breath. Threats of slides will be an ongoing thing for a long time, possibly months." He continued, " We will continue to monitor the hillsides and watch the water coming in from the canyons."
EVACUATIONS
Families that had just gotten back into their homes after the fire, were now forced to evacuate again. The drought had caused the soil to become dry and loose, and you now had a layer of ash on top of that. Most mudslides start in little gullies in the steep hillside, so they were reinforced. Many of the homes that sat at the bottom of burned hillsides were heavily reinforced with sand bags.
Greg Friga and his family left their home at about 2am with their black poodle, Romy, and some books. "When the fires hit last year, we brought out everything we could" he said. "But this time around, we didn't think we'd need it. It's been a long, long week and a half now." All told, about 10,000 people were evacuated during the fires...not so many for the mudflows.
WE CAN BE THANKFUL FOR JUST BEING HERE.
The last of the mandatory mudslide evacuation orders were lifted Wednesday afternoon, but officials urged residents to stay away until the threat of rainfall lifted.
So hundreds of residents, chased out of their homes during the rains, were allowed to return home in time to celebrate Thanksgiving. This isn't the Thanksgiving they had planned. They're staying in hotel rooms, wearing clothes donated by strangers. They will set aside time for family, but when they give thanks for the roofs over their heads, they won't be talking about home. Thanksgiving has a deeper meaning for families that lost almost everything in the wildfires. For some , its a time to focus on the big things: life and health and the beauty of a new day. For others, its about the little things---a kind word, a hot meal, a warm bed.
SURVIVOR STORIES
WEDDING RING
Some happy results did come out of this otherwise bleak event. The Philblad family lived on Laurel Tree Drive, and had no time to pack as flames approached. "I saw a big flame come over the hill.” Jeff Philblad said. “It was just unbelievable, and the heat was so bad, at that point, I knew it was time to go." Jeff, his wife Dana and their 11 year old son evacuated the house, taking nothing with them but their pets and the clothes they were wearing. Their home was destroyed.
Dana is 6 months pregnant so she hadn't been wearing her wedding ring because it didn't fit. Last Monday afternoon at least 7 firefighters searched through the rubble to help Dana look for it. The search continued during the week as off duty firefighters looked for the ring. They dug through a gray mess about 3 feet deep in the approximate area where the bathroom had been.
On Friday, their efforts paid off. Greg Fox and friends had been searching for about 3 hours. "We were close to maybe putting in the last hour for the day. But we actually ended up finding the ring intact. It was pretty exciting to find something like that. It was like finding a needle in a haystack." When the husband received the ring from the firefighters he told them..."You guys are great....you are all heroes." Fox replied "Hey, we're not heroes, we're just doing out job." Dana Philblad cried when she saw the gold band with the princess-cut 2-carat diamond. "I was elated. I was so happy." she said. "That's the one thing that I wasn't going to stop looking for. It felt great."
LESSONS FROM THE ASHES
Last month's firestorm was not unique. Many LA neighborhoods are at threat of fire every year because they live in areas susceptible to high winds. In the past many have had their homes burned to the ground. In 1993 there was a huge fire in the artist colony of Laguna Beach. In the Canyon Acres neighborhood 60 of the 85 homes burned. The fires swept down the narrow canyon walls, fueled by mad winds and the brush in its path. It consumed eight out of every 10 homes. Along with them went original artwork assembled over lifetimes in this artist Mecca.
In all, 389 homes burned on Oct 27th of that year. When one walks through the area now, the homes and the canyon appear robust. But they have come back from the dead.
FIRE VICTIMS ADVICE
So Laguna residents hold the unsought distinction of being disaster veterans. This puts them in the position to offer some advice to new victims.
Afterward, those who lived through the 1993 firestorm reflected on life after devastation. Some residents found a new, better life. Others saw their personal trials continue. "It takes time" one said "but its one day at a time and it works out." City manager Ken Frank, who also lost his home, says that 70% of the houses have been rebuilt by original owners. The remaining homeowners either could not, or did not rebuild, opting instead to move. He said that victims learned to brace for 2 to 3 years of tough times as they rebuilt. Those who rebuilt eventually got brand new homes, new clothes, and new furniture. "It had a positive impact on our economy financially" he said " if your house burned down, you probably did OK with insurance and state and federal aid."
"There's always something redemptive to suffering. Out of the ashes comes new life." said Jay Grant, pastor at the Little Church by the Sea in Laguna. "And those people from the new fire need to know that their lives won't be like this forever. They will be fine in a couple of years. Nobody lost their life and nobody died in this fire, either. That's the grace of God."
ANOTHER SURVIVOR'S STORY
Another survivor, Beverly Blumenfeid had sifted through the ashes after the firestorm and found her white ceramic angel, now marred with black streaks. It now sits in a china cabinet in her new home. When the sky turned black, Beverly had time to grab some treasures---heirlooms, photographs, the four cats , their son Daniel's hockey equipment, and load them into the van. "The most important things in my life I got out". After the fire, Beverly and her husband of 41 years got to know neighbors they hadn't known. They saw the generous side of a community. Friends put them up for a month before they found a rental. Strangers gave them $1000. They had bought their house in 1975. When the home burned, Mark had spent nearly 28 years putting finishing touches to it. Mark was devastated at the loss, but Beverly felt that everything would turn out well. After fighting for it, they got a $480,000 insurance settlement and set themselves on the path to rebuild a bigger and sturdier home. Yet it took more than 4 years before they could move back into Canyon Acres.
"Now I look at things differently." says Beverly, 64. " I am a real firm believer in God, that God takes care of us.........What are you gonna do? I don't like to feel sorry for myself." Her advice to other homeowners: Have replacement cost insurance. Trim chaparral around your home. Consider a volunteer firefighting force of neighbors. Keep a video catalog of the contents in your home.
SAD STORY
Not all residents, however, rebounded as easily. David Battersby, the local high school history teacher, had gotten a divorce 2 days before the fire. He was not having a good day. "I learned about the fire when I got a telephone call from a 9 year old neighbor telling me that she was going to rescue my Rhodesian Ridgeback puppies, Licky Red and Curly. Then the phone line went dead."
He raced home. Because his narrow street had only one way in, firefighters have given it up as a lost cause. He decided to try to save his house It turned out that he could not save his own home, but helped to save 6 others.
Fighting the blaze that night, Battersby suffered exhaustion and smoke inhalation. He ended up in a hospital. While firefighting he says he ruptured a disk in his back. Two surgeries later, he was permanently disabled. After that he had to file bankruptcy. On top of that, Battersby says he suffered a $280,000 loss, because his insurance would only pay $15,000. "My Laguna dream was gone." he said, speaking from northern California where he now lives. "I felt like I was cast out of paradise. So I lost my family, my home, my health and my financial footing. From that point on I became one of those individuals who simply lived from hand to mouth" After many years, things have finally stabilized for him. He has a good relationship with his 3 children, and is on speaking terms with his ex-wife.
The knockout punch the fire delivered also taught Battersby, now 61, some tough lessons. "I have put more faith and energy into people and a lot less energy into things" he says. "Relationships changed. I thought about the fire, and my divorce and loss of health...about losing three things that are the cornerstones of life. I recognized that I was not the husband to my wife that I could have been. I was distracted. And I have attempted in my relationships afterwards to look to the human needs of people around me."
He can empathize with the people who have lost everything in the Yorba Linda fire because he has been there. He says the survivors have a long road ahead. With good insurance, they could possibly bounce back in 18 to 20 months, others in 3 to 5 years. "It's a lot of hard work." Battersby says.
WHY DID THESE HOMES BURN DOWN
As I said, one is always surprised by the randomness of the burned homes. Some ridge top homes, that took the full force of the wall of flames, survived with little apparent damage. While others, maybe two or three streets over, burned. How could this have happened? Now these are relatively new, expensive homes with all of the latest anti-fire modifications. They all have clay-tile roofs. They have treated lumber and tempered glass. They all have light wooden framing so there is a minimum of exposed wood. Many of them have enclosed eaves. Some even have balconies that are finished underneath, so that there is no exposed wood.
And all of them have exterior walls of stucco filled with fireproof insulation. Stucco is to the outside of the house, what plaster is to the inside of the house. It is made from a mixture of lime, cement, sand and water, and is applied to a wire mesh. It is about an inch thick. It is highly fire resistant.
As I drove deeper into the sub division, I would occasionally come across a burned home far from the front lines of the fire. It was always a surprised to see a single burned home in a sea of normal houses, and you always wondered why that particular house had burned. Especially when you consider the fact that nearby were houses with the notorious cedar shake roofs. This type of roof was quite the fashion about 40 years ago and many houses had them. However, why anyone would want to install highly combustible slabs of cedar on their roof in a fire area was beyond me. When a storm of embers rained down in the high winds, you would have thought that these houses would have gone up first. But that was not the case.
OUTSIDE IN OR INSIDE OUT
As I drove through these neighborhoods, I could not help but notice a mysterious fact. Almost without exception, the homes on either side of a burned house looked absolutely pristine. There was no scorching or blackening of the stucco walls, there was no bubbling of the exposed paint, there was not even any distress to the delicate palm trees around these houses. Yet, there they stood not 20 feet from a completely burned home.
So the big question is this: Did these fires burn from the outside in, or the inside out? If the homes burned because of the walls of flame that raced up the hills, then obviously they burned from the outside in. However, it is my contention that these homes burned from the inside out.
LESSONS FROM THE ASHES
Let's review. The final tally was 250 homes, and 29,000 acres, burned. Practically all of these devastated homes were destroyed by wind driven embers. Some of these embers were as large as golf balls, but most of them were very small. Anyone who has ever had a roaring campfire knows just what these tiny embers look like. When you throw a log on the fire, a shower of red hot embers floats up into the sky. In a fire as large as the Yorba Linda blaze, countless embers were generated. Then they were blown on the hot winds for miles.
So what happens when these embers come back to earth. Sometimes they will land in brush, where they can start another fire. But all homes in fire zones are supposed to have a 100 foot buffer zone of cleared brush. Many of these embers landed on million dollar homes. But most of these homes are designed to be fire proof.
Yet a home can burst into flames from one of these little embers, when their neighbors are untouched. Why would this happen? Well, it does seem extraordinary, but after many years of fires some people are finally coming up with an answer.
It turns out that the Achilles’ heel of these wonderful homes may be the attic vents that are mandated by law to prevent mold and rot. Every home owner not only wants gable vents, but also attic exhaust fans. By reducing the amount of hot air in the attic, fans can reduce a homeowners cooling bills by 30%. These vents are covered with a mesh screen. These mesh screens have to be small enough to keep out birds and insects, but still allow an easy airflow.
Brent Berkompas is a firefighter who has seen homes destroyed by wildfires. Last year his team was sent out to a cul-de-sac, not to fight the fire, but to protect the houses. "The main fire was a mile away, but fire was hop-scotching through neighborhoods because embers were getting into the gable vents on their sides. On TV people see walls of flames and think that is what is setting these houses on fire. But the reality is that wind-blown embers will find any opening into a covered area. Embers are so small and produced in such quantity, it's like a snowstorm pushed through vents into attic spaces," he said. "There they ignite sawdust or paper-faced insulation." What starts as light smoke can turn into a fully involved fire within five minutes. And the reason that these burning homes are almost impossible to put out is because the fire is burning from the inside out.
Berkompas told the state fire marshal about the problem. That's when he found out that no one made ember-blocking vents that still allowed air flow. "Quarter-inch mesh cannot stop embers during wildfires" he said. ""Smaller mesh screens would do a better job, but they clog more easily." Berkompas worked with a metal fabricator to create a line of vents that could repel embers. The vent's design includes overlapping baffles in the front. That effort has evolved into Brandguard Vents, which have been very successful. The price is about $25 per vent. An average home can be retrofitted for a few hundred dollars. "I didn't start out thinking of it as a business." he said "but that is what happened."
As of this year, state code for new construction in wildfire areas must include ember-blocking vents. However it is going to be a long education process for the building industry. One issue is that the state has not yet approved standards for such vents or recognized any specific products. When these issues are resolved, there should be a large market for his product. Across the country, 44 million homes have already been built in fire danger zones.
THE BURNED HILLS
You cannot help but come to the conclusion that these homes burned because of embers that entered the attic through the gable vents. Obviously, houses that burned in the interior of the sub-division were not started by walls of flame. When you see pristine homes on either side of a burned one, you understand that these homes burned from the inside out. It was only the stucco walls of the homes that prevented fire damage to their neighbors. Was it just a matter of luck that some homes did not burn because their roofline ran perpendicular to the oncoming fire?
I certainly don't know. I do know this. Probably in the last 40 years there has been millions of dollars of fire loss in southern California. And it seems that most of these houses burned from the inside out. Yet no fire professional seemed to understand that these fires were cause by the porous gable vents. No fire professional, until last year, came out with a modification to these vents that would prevent the penetration of embers. It seems preposterous. A lot of very intelligent people live in California and it only seems natural that they would want to know why their homes burned down.
But then again, for the last 40 years fire professionals in the US have been putting out forest fires. None of our fire professionals pointed out that infrequent small fires were necessary for the health of the forests. None of these professionals pointed out that small fires prevented brush from building up on forest floors. Or that this fuel load would allowed grass fires to leap into the crowns of the trees, eventually producing Yellowstone-type firestorms. Now workers are clearing out this brush to prevent firestorms in the future. Why couldn't someone have figured this out decades ago?
SUMMARY
Later I drove out into the thousands of acres of rolling hills that had burned. These were primarily grasslands, with some trees in the gullies. It seemed like there were an awful lot of birds around. I suppose the fire had released a lot of seeds for the smaller birds.
By the time I returned to the burned neighborhoods in the afternoon, people had returned home. For those who were lucky, for those whose homes did not burn, life pretty much remained the same. The daily paper was delivered, the garbage was picked up, neighbors talked in the streets while the kids played on the lawns. For them life had not changed.
Yet, for their burned out neighbor next door.........now everything had changed. Normalcy and disaster----only a property line apart.
Monday, January 12, 2009
THE DEVIL’S WIND November 1-14, 2008
Last year I sent you pictures of the Modjeska Fire that burned dozens of homes in the canyons outside of Orange County. We have just finished with another Santa Ana Winds event, and the toll of burned houses is at least as bad as it was last year.
SANTA ANA WINDS
The Santa Ana winds are strong, extremely dry offshore winds that sweep into southern California. They originate in the Nevada Great Basin Desert and the upper Mojave Desert. They are remembered primarily for the very hot weather they bring, which often leads to the hottest temperatures of the year. As a matter of fact, during the fire last week high temperature records were set in downtown Los Angeles. They are a form of drainage wind that is propelled gravitationally into lower altitudes.
Meteorologically they are a well understood phenomenon, and can be predicted accurately well in advance.
The name Santa Ana Winds probably got its name from the Santa Ana River canyon, where the winds are particularly strong. During the times of the Spanish missions, they were called the Devil’s Wind because of the heat they brought. The Spanish called them “Santana” or Winds of Satan.
The Santa Ana Winds are unique to southern California. They are generated primarily in the fall when extremely powerful Highs develop over the arid high desert. This mass of air is under high pressure and seeks some kind of release. It finds this escape thru the low passes and canyons in the southern Sierras, and into the low pressure ocean areas around Los Angeles. This event produces extremely high winds, with gusts up to hurricane levels of 72 mph. They can blow consistently at 35 mpm, which is almost strong enough to knock you down.
Not only are these winds powerful, they are also extremely dry. Coming out of the arid deserts of the High Plateau, they flow into the equally dry Los Angeles desert climate. These winds actually heat up during their journey. The original air mass is already very dense because of the low humidity and the nighttime cold temperatures that develop in the fall. When that dry dense air mass runs downhill to the ocean, it heats up due to compression. With every 1000 foot of elevation loss, the air will warm up 5 degrees. That means High Desert air that was originally 63 degrees can heat up to 89 degrees in the 5000 foot drop.
These winds are not only high in temperature, but extremely low in humidity. It is not uncommon for humidity to drop to single digits, and as low as 4%.
THE FIRES
The first fire broke out two weekends ago in the trendy celebrity colony of Montecito, near Santa Barbara. This is the area where Oprah has her house, and is also the location of Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch. Over a hundred homes, all of which we worth multi-millions of dollars, were lost to the blaze.
Last Saturday I turned on my TV to watch football and instead found out that new fires were burning in the Los Angeles Basin. There was a big fire burning in north LA, up against the base of the mountain, called the Sylmar Fire. This fire almost immediately burned over 500 mobile homes in a huge mobile park. These homes are closely spaced so when one gets going it is hard to stop. About 9 am I walked outside, but all I could see was blue sky.
About 10:30 there was another fire outbreak in eastern Los Angeles, later called the Yorba Linda fire. Hours later another fire broke out in the same area, called the Brea fire.
WORK
About 11am I walked outside and things had dramatically changed. The smoke plume from the Yorba Linda fire was sweeping over my house. It was a dirty brown color. It smelled of burn and was spewing down tiny bits of ash that the light winds formed into windrows on the patio. If you looked up into the sky, these bits of ash would sting your eyes.
I had a job that night in the winery area east of Los Angeles. I was supposed to take Highway 91 to reach my clients. But that highway, in the middle of the fire, was now closed. Instead I traveled halfway to San Diego before I could find a highway east that would allow me to hook up with my clients. It was a major detour but there was nothing I could do about it.
FIRE BEGINS
There you have it. The three components of devastation----high winds, high temperatures, and low humidity. Add that to years of light rainfall and you have a disaster waiting to happen. These are not brush fires, they are not wildfires, they are not even forest fires. These are monstrous rampaging firestorms that race across dry slopes, creating their own winds, and their own weather. They are practically impossible to stop as long as the wind is blowing. They produce walls of flame 50 feet high. “Everything was on fire” a fireman report…”it was the firestorm of all firestorms.”
The fire is always capricious and hard to predict. Although the winds are predominately off-shore, they often reverse themselves. Areas once thought to have been bypassed by the fire, have been attacked again and sometimes burned. The fire spread as winds carried the embers from house to house, igniting homes in no particular pattern, and even those with clay-tile roofs and clear of brush.
FREEWAYS
At this stage the CaHighwayPatrol was closing major highways. They did this for a couple of reasons, and not only because the highway was threatened by the fire. They did it first to provide quick access by fire units, secondly to provide fast all-lane escape by evacuees and to discourage looky loos from the area.
EMBERS
New fires are generated by the wind driven embers that are propelled in the high velocity winds. To stay ahead of the danger, whole neighborhoods are evacuated on the order of the Fire Marshall.
Embers, about the size of golf balls, are lifted out of the brush and sent miles ahead of the main fire. There they lodge in other dry vegetation, or under the eaves of a house. Fanned by the high winds, the ember can start a new fire.
Early on a roof ember could easily be extinguished by a home owner, but often the area had already been evacuated. In many areas exhausted firefighters were overwhelmed at ground zero by the fire. They were doing everything they could. So some residents fought their way back into their homes, making a stand with garden hoses and buckets of water from backyard pools. Some saved their houses, some didn’t.
EVACUATED
Initially most evacuees escaped to community crisis centers in local schools. There, watching the TV helicopter reports, it was not uncommon for homeowners to see their home ablaze for the first time.
Taylor, a 61 year old resident of Yorba Linda said “I’ve been sitting here all night. I don’t know if my home is still there. It’s scary. I may not have any place to go. All I can do now is pray.”
Another resident, numbed by the devastation, said of his home “It’s gone”.
Most of those devastated families are now staying in motels.
JIM
My friend Jim belongs to an Elvis fan club, called the Jailhouse Rockers. This is what happened to some of the other club members. Sylvia and Jessie live in a mobile home park in Yorba Linda. They knew about the fires from the TV reports, and knew that they may have to evacuate. They packed two loads of items into their van and took them to their relative’s house. They took “whatever could not be replaced”. They went back to their home and waited, as smoke and ash rolled over their place. Finally a policeman drove thru the mobile home part and told everyone, on his loudspeaker, to evacuate. Sylvia left a tear-filled message on Jim phone, telling everyone she knew to pray for them.
Another Elvis fan, Janet was out shopping, when someone called her and told her to go home. She rushed home to find out that her street had already been sealed off, and that no one was allowed to enter. There she was, with only the clothes on her back, not knowing if her home would make it. Eventually both were able to get back into their undamaged homes, although there was a tremendous amount of soot over everything.
ARSON
How did these fires get started? Last year there was a major fire in Malibu. It was caused by winds that whipped high voltage lines, and produced sparks. This year that was not the case…..frankly some of the fires were set by humans. The fire professionals are very good at this. They can quickly determine where a fire started, and sometimes can even find the match that started it. The Sylmar fire was started at the edge of a boulevard. The Brea fire was started behind a land fill. In the TV fire reports I have only seen them use the term “copy cat arsonists” once. This is a subject that is not discussed at all by news anchors.
Investigators now tell us that the Yorba Linda fire, which started in a dry wash next to a freeway, was caused by a hot catalytic converter. Apparently a converter came apart and parts of it rolled into the brush. Winds were gusting at 61 mph at the time. The wind threw burning brush more than a mile in front of the fire, spreading the fire in several directions.
“It’s like taking a handful of confetti and dropping it in front of a fan” a Fire Chief said “and then trying to predict where all those pieces will land.“ Arson is not considered a factor as the fire started right next to a very busy freeway.
DEVASTATION
The Yorba Linda and Brea fires eventually joined into one huge fire that covered parts of four counties. It destroyed 187 houses, 63 apartment units, and damaged 130 other homes. It took over 4000 firefighters, and $10 million, to bring the fire under control.
Where I am located, 6 miles west of Disneyland, there is virtually no threat at all. That is because the winds down in the flats are weak, and there is a minimum of fuel load. Most of the homes that are destroyed are in the hills, the places where the suburbs butt up against the rolling hillsides. It is only natural that people will want to build their houses on high mesas for that “million dollar view”. Unfortunately the sides of the mesa are covered with dry brush. When the fire hits, it races up the hill and engulfs the houses at the crest. Any residences in the canyons which provide the channel for the high winds, are at great peril.
DRIVE
Yesterday I drove up into the fire area. Most of the acreage that burned was rolling grassland that butts up against the suburbs. The utility trucks were already there, repairing the damaged electrical lines. There are still 1,600 firefighters out on the job, putting out hot spots and doing mop up work. The few streets that had burned homes were closed. A policeman was stationed at the corner to make sure no non-residents entered. Here and there were new hand painted signs thanking the firefighters and the police for everything they had done. Down in the lowlands, some of the insurance companies, All State and State Farm, had set up command centers in mall parking lots. They will have to deal with claims that could reach $160 million.
FUTURE
The next order of business is to put down sand bags to prevent erosion in the burned areas during the rainy season. Fires one month, rains and mudslides the next. Earthquakes the rest of the year. That is life in Southern California.
Last year I sent you pictures of the Modjeska Fire that burned dozens of homes in the canyons outside of Orange County. We have just finished with another Santa Ana Winds event, and the toll of burned houses is at least as bad as it was last year.
SANTA ANA WINDS
The Santa Ana winds are strong, extremely dry offshore winds that sweep into southern California. They originate in the Nevada Great Basin Desert and the upper Mojave Desert. They are remembered primarily for the very hot weather they bring, which often leads to the hottest temperatures of the year. As a matter of fact, during the fire last week high temperature records were set in downtown Los Angeles. They are a form of drainage wind that is propelled gravitationally into lower altitudes.
Meteorologically they are a well understood phenomenon, and can be predicted accurately well in advance.
The name Santa Ana Winds probably got its name from the Santa Ana River canyon, where the winds are particularly strong. During the times of the Spanish missions, they were called the Devil’s Wind because of the heat they brought. The Spanish called them “Santana” or Winds of Satan.
The Santa Ana Winds are unique to southern California. They are generated primarily in the fall when extremely powerful Highs develop over the arid high desert. This mass of air is under high pressure and seeks some kind of release. It finds this escape thru the low passes and canyons in the southern Sierras, and into the low pressure ocean areas around Los Angeles. This event produces extremely high winds, with gusts up to hurricane levels of 72 mph. They can blow consistently at 35 mpm, which is almost strong enough to knock you down.
Not only are these winds powerful, they are also extremely dry. Coming out of the arid deserts of the High Plateau, they flow into the equally dry Los Angeles desert climate. These winds actually heat up during their journey. The original air mass is already very dense because of the low humidity and the nighttime cold temperatures that develop in the fall. When that dry dense air mass runs downhill to the ocean, it heats up due to compression. With every 1000 foot of elevation loss, the air will warm up 5 degrees. That means High Desert air that was originally 63 degrees can heat up to 89 degrees in the 5000 foot drop.
These winds are not only high in temperature, but extremely low in humidity. It is not uncommon for humidity to drop to single digits, and as low as 4%.
THE FIRES
The first fire broke out two weekends ago in the trendy celebrity colony of Montecito, near Santa Barbara. This is the area where Oprah has her house, and is also the location of Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch. Over a hundred homes, all of which we worth multi-millions of dollars, were lost to the blaze.
Last Saturday I turned on my TV to watch football and instead found out that new fires were burning in the Los Angeles Basin. There was a big fire burning in north LA, up against the base of the mountain, called the Sylmar Fire. This fire almost immediately burned over 500 mobile homes in a huge mobile park. These homes are closely spaced so when one gets going it is hard to stop. About 9 am I walked outside, but all I could see was blue sky.
About 10:30 there was another fire outbreak in eastern Los Angeles, later called the Yorba Linda fire. Hours later another fire broke out in the same area, called the Brea fire.
WORK
About 11am I walked outside and things had dramatically changed. The smoke plume from the Yorba Linda fire was sweeping over my house. It was a dirty brown color. It smelled of burn and was spewing down tiny bits of ash that the light winds formed into windrows on the patio. If you looked up into the sky, these bits of ash would sting your eyes.
I had a job that night in the winery area east of Los Angeles. I was supposed to take Highway 91 to reach my clients. But that highway, in the middle of the fire, was now closed. Instead I traveled halfway to San Diego before I could find a highway east that would allow me to hook up with my clients. It was a major detour but there was nothing I could do about it.
FIRE BEGINS
There you have it. The three components of devastation----high winds, high temperatures, and low humidity. Add that to years of light rainfall and you have a disaster waiting to happen. These are not brush fires, they are not wildfires, they are not even forest fires. These are monstrous rampaging firestorms that race across dry slopes, creating their own winds, and their own weather. They are practically impossible to stop as long as the wind is blowing. They produce walls of flame 50 feet high. “Everything was on fire” a fireman report…”it was the firestorm of all firestorms.”
The fire is always capricious and hard to predict. Although the winds are predominately off-shore, they often reverse themselves. Areas once thought to have been bypassed by the fire, have been attacked again and sometimes burned. The fire spread as winds carried the embers from house to house, igniting homes in no particular pattern, and even those with clay-tile roofs and clear of brush.
FREEWAYS
At this stage the CaHighwayPatrol was closing major highways. They did this for a couple of reasons, and not only because the highway was threatened by the fire. They did it first to provide quick access by fire units, secondly to provide fast all-lane escape by evacuees and to discourage looky loos from the area.
EMBERS
New fires are generated by the wind driven embers that are propelled in the high velocity winds. To stay ahead of the danger, whole neighborhoods are evacuated on the order of the Fire Marshall.
Embers, about the size of golf balls, are lifted out of the brush and sent miles ahead of the main fire. There they lodge in other dry vegetation, or under the eaves of a house. Fanned by the high winds, the ember can start a new fire.
Early on a roof ember could easily be extinguished by a home owner, but often the area had already been evacuated. In many areas exhausted firefighters were overwhelmed at ground zero by the fire. They were doing everything they could. So some residents fought their way back into their homes, making a stand with garden hoses and buckets of water from backyard pools. Some saved their houses, some didn’t.
EVACUATED
Initially most evacuees escaped to community crisis centers in local schools. There, watching the TV helicopter reports, it was not uncommon for homeowners to see their home ablaze for the first time.
Taylor, a 61 year old resident of Yorba Linda said “I’ve been sitting here all night. I don’t know if my home is still there. It’s scary. I may not have any place to go. All I can do now is pray.”
Another resident, numbed by the devastation, said of his home “It’s gone”.
Most of those devastated families are now staying in motels.
JIM
My friend Jim belongs to an Elvis fan club, called the Jailhouse Rockers. This is what happened to some of the other club members. Sylvia and Jessie live in a mobile home park in Yorba Linda. They knew about the fires from the TV reports, and knew that they may have to evacuate. They packed two loads of items into their van and took them to their relative’s house. They took “whatever could not be replaced”. They went back to their home and waited, as smoke and ash rolled over their place. Finally a policeman drove thru the mobile home part and told everyone, on his loudspeaker, to evacuate. Sylvia left a tear-filled message on Jim phone, telling everyone she knew to pray for them.
Another Elvis fan, Janet was out shopping, when someone called her and told her to go home. She rushed home to find out that her street had already been sealed off, and that no one was allowed to enter. There she was, with only the clothes on her back, not knowing if her home would make it. Eventually both were able to get back into their undamaged homes, although there was a tremendous amount of soot over everything.
ARSON
How did these fires get started? Last year there was a major fire in Malibu. It was caused by winds that whipped high voltage lines, and produced sparks. This year that was not the case…..frankly some of the fires were set by humans. The fire professionals are very good at this. They can quickly determine where a fire started, and sometimes can even find the match that started it. The Sylmar fire was started at the edge of a boulevard. The Brea fire was started behind a land fill. In the TV fire reports I have only seen them use the term “copy cat arsonists” once. This is a subject that is not discussed at all by news anchors.
Investigators now tell us that the Yorba Linda fire, which started in a dry wash next to a freeway, was caused by a hot catalytic converter. Apparently a converter came apart and parts of it rolled into the brush. Winds were gusting at 61 mph at the time. The wind threw burning brush more than a mile in front of the fire, spreading the fire in several directions.
“It’s like taking a handful of confetti and dropping it in front of a fan” a Fire Chief said “and then trying to predict where all those pieces will land.“ Arson is not considered a factor as the fire started right next to a very busy freeway.
DEVASTATION
The Yorba Linda and Brea fires eventually joined into one huge fire that covered parts of four counties. It destroyed 187 houses, 63 apartment units, and damaged 130 other homes. It took over 4000 firefighters, and $10 million, to bring the fire under control.
Where I am located, 6 miles west of Disneyland, there is virtually no threat at all. That is because the winds down in the flats are weak, and there is a minimum of fuel load. Most of the homes that are destroyed are in the hills, the places where the suburbs butt up against the rolling hillsides. It is only natural that people will want to build their houses on high mesas for that “million dollar view”. Unfortunately the sides of the mesa are covered with dry brush. When the fire hits, it races up the hill and engulfs the houses at the crest. Any residences in the canyons which provide the channel for the high winds, are at great peril.
DRIVE
Yesterday I drove up into the fire area. Most of the acreage that burned was rolling grassland that butts up against the suburbs. The utility trucks were already there, repairing the damaged electrical lines. There are still 1,600 firefighters out on the job, putting out hot spots and doing mop up work. The few streets that had burned homes were closed. A policeman was stationed at the corner to make sure no non-residents entered. Here and there were new hand painted signs thanking the firefighters and the police for everything they had done. Down in the lowlands, some of the insurance companies, All State and State Farm, had set up command centers in mall parking lots. They will have to deal with claims that could reach $160 million.
FUTURE
The next order of business is to put down sand bags to prevent erosion in the burned areas during the rainy season. Fires one month, rains and mudslides the next. Earthquakes the rest of the year. That is life in Southern California.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Officially, the Season to Be Jolly is Over
It is now the first week of January....and it has been a busy holiday season. Now all the Xmas jobs are done, the seasonal parties have ended, and flu bug has finally run its course and has now disappeared....and most of the football games have ended. Now life can return to normal.
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