After two days of unprescedented windstorms driving a half-dozen massive brush fires in Los Angeles, with something on the order of 300,000+ people evacuated from their homes, 10,000+ homes and businesses destroyed, at least five dead with a total expected to climb significantly, multiple injured and burned people, it was starting to calm just a bit this morning. The winds were calmer, firefighters might get a chance to make some progress on containment. We were safe, we were fine.
That changed.
A little after 14:30, just maybe two miles from us as the crow flies, where Victory Boulevard ends at the Ventura County line and there are a whole slew of trails into the open parklands there, a brushfire started. About the time I started hearing a ton of sirens I got the alert from the Watch Duty app. New fire. West Hills.
The winds weren’t howling, but they weren’t calm either. Probably 8-10 knots with gusts to maybe 15. Fortunately for us, by 15:26 the winds were blowing the embers, ashes, and smoke away from us, toward Calabasas and Agoura.
Los Angeles and Ventura County fire fighters hit this one hard with aircraft, both the fixed wing water bombers and helicopters. You can see several here. I was out meeting with our neighbors, making sure that we all had each others’ phone numbers and names in case we had to scatter.
About this same time the Palisades Fire, over the ridge and off to the left in this view, shifted to the west and started moving up Topanga Canyon. That’s the massive smoke plume on the left. “Our” fire, now named “The Kenneth Fire” for some reason, is on the right.
The initial evacuations were southwest of us, south of the baseball fields on Valley Circle, past El Camino High School, pretty much all the way to the freeway. Bell Canyon, due west of us, was put on an evacuation warning, and we got a heads up to be ready. We started packing a half-dozen bags with medications, important documents, a change of clothes, a couple of my laptops and iPads, and my cameras.
I turned the cars around in the driveway so they could be driven straight out if needed. The bags were our two-minute evacuation plan – if we had ten minutes, the computers and external hard drives would follow. I wasn’t feeling particularly threatened or nervous, but there was definitely a “better safe than sorry” feel to it all. Several of the neighbors decided that they were going to leave, and did so. I heard from some later in the evening, asking if we had ever had to evacuate. (The unspoken question was, “Is our house still there?”) Most of us have been through this before at least a couple of times, and given the location of the fire and the winds at our backs, we were ready to bug out if needed, but sheltering in place for the moment.
The massive air assault worked. By 16:30, just two hours after it started, it was almost over, at least where we were.
The winds picked up once and there was a little bit of a flareup at the north end of the fire zone, but again, it was immediately buzzing with helicopters and water-dropping aircraft. The fire kept spreading to the south through open land, eventually covering just over 1,000 acres. But when it got close to houses and apartments and the 101 Freeway in Calabasas and Agoura, the air assault resumed on the southern edge of the fire and its threat was finally over.
By 17:20, just after sunset, it was over for us. (You can even see Venus in the twilight, just off the head of the streetlight.) We had our own personal little airshow going over for another three hours or so as the water-dropping aircraft went from the fire near the 101 Freeway to the Chatsworth Reservoir where they reloaded their water tanks. In particular there was a Chinook (CH-47) helicopter that kept going right over us and really rattling the windows.
It was wonderful, the sound of not having everything you own burn to the ground.
(From the Watch Duty app)
We’re the blue dot in the upper right, about 1.4 miles from where the fire started. But it all went to the south, away from us, or we would be in a hotel tonight with nothing to our name except for what we had fled with. There are literally tens of thousands of people in Los Angeles tonight who are not as lucky as we were.
In closing, a word about Watch Duty. It’s a non-profit, a 501(c)(3), run with less than two dozen volunteers, many of them former firefighters. Throughout this event, and through previous events in Northern California last year, and the horrible tragedy in Maui last year, they have become THE definitive go-to source for timely, current, and accurate information on fire locations, evacuation orders and warnings, and available resources to help those in need due to a fire. The basic app is free – if you’re anywhere at all that might have a brushfire (and let’s face it, that’s just about anywhere these days), you need the app. And if you get it and can spare a few dollars, the paid version with a bunch of extra features and layers is less than $30/year. Please support good people doing good work.
I have nothing but eternal gratitude for all of the firefighters and pilots and crews that are working so tirelessly to keep us safe. With winds on Tuesday night of 100+ miles an hours, and a mountainous landscape that’s in serious drought conditions, they’re fighting an impossible battle, but continuing to fight anyway. I feel for all of the tens of thousands of fellow Southern Californians who tonight either have lost everything, or just don’t know yet if they have a home to go back to or not.
For me, that’s enough adrenalin for one day. Good night.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 