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.