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One year ago today, there were fires burning in several San Diego locations and it was just getting rolling out in the San Bernardino mountains.
The fire up near Piru was burning a large forest, but was otherwise not of major concern to most people. And then the Santa Ana winds kicked in and the fire raced south and west very quickly during the day on Saturday. A far off fire at midday became an early afternoon orange glow and led to the Simi Fire of 2003.
A year later?
It's been mostly cool, often overcast with frequent rain for more than a week.
It's strange, but the only time we've seen the devil winds this year, it was overcast and cold. California has had a difficult fire year but it looks like we're going to get a pass for the worst part of the fire season this time around (hillsides that were dead in April are already showing signs of life).
If you're interested, here's the collection from last years burn.
Are we in for a really bad fire season come fall? It certainly feels that way. When coastal cities like San Luis Obispo reach triple digits in April, that's not a good sign for the summer (when it really gets hot).
Most years, the hills in this area are wildly alive with colors and most of the growth is still very deeply green. Not so this time around. We've already got the small brush fires popping up around SoCal and we aren't anywhere near July. We didn't get a much rain as we typically do and the hillsides are already wilting under the early hot temperatures.
It's going to get interesting I fear...
I've been meaning to put this up for a couple of weeks and figured that I'd better get it done before the year ends. Burn Scar from Southern California fires. Here's the original MODIS image.
David and Yuko Knight of Redtail Canyon have quickly become a favorite place to check when things happen in the world. Pictures (ground level and satellite) seem to be the focus. I don't know how they do it (nor why) but they get together a basic snapshot of what's happening (the kind of basic information you won't get in anything but an in depth article from most news sources). Perhaps it's just a focus on the basic facts (or near facts) without a lot of personal information. Without a need for a viewpoint and no editorial oversight, we get what they've got.
I originally found the article while checking local links via GeoURL. Kudos to the folks at Redtail Canyon for using ICMB meta tags on this and many other articles. At the same time, things are already getting crowded (like the geo links for the Passmoore art exhibit... if every artist and photographer did this it would be difficult to find anyone else). Perhaps we need some additional mechanisms for classification?
On a total tangent, I also found this local weather station (Woodland Hills area) via GeoURL. Location tags are popping up all over the place. I think we can reasonably expect the trend to continue. I wonder how long it will take before the search engines start to take advantage of this information (if they haven't already).
In Frequent fires disrupt Southern California's ecosystem John Krist (of the Star) answers a number of the questions I had the other day about chaparral.
Doc Searls was talking about various fire related thoughts and hit upon this:
As was pointed out to me not long after I arrived in California in 1985, the redwood— our state tree — is adapted to fire, as are many other forms of vegetation around here.
We have some fast growing, nearly impossible to kill vegetation growing on our hillsides. The second link above says that it's chaparral. I knew that, but what does chaparral really mean?
From the perspective of a curious observer, chaparral seems to be a combination of hard to kill, wildly alive plants and bushes.
Spring in this part of California is stunning. The hillsides are covered in bursting colors — plants and bushes rapidly overcome unused trails. For all the color, most of these plants are far from delicate; they have a variety of nasty defense mechanisms. As summer passes and fall ensues, much of the vegetation appears to die (some of it may, others simply become dormant). It also becomes kindling for a burning cycle which begins anew the seeding process. Yearly floods pose another hurdle which checks the introduction of new varieties (adapt fast or die... with no deep roots to cling to, the flooding and topsoil shift will kill it off). Within a couple years after a fire, a whole new ecology is roaring with life and few traces of the last burn are visible.
Trees seem to take a little while longer to create. They pop up on long untouched portions of our landscape, and eventually weed out much of the unruly wild vegetation because they have much deeper roots (which take a long time to create) and can suckle under all but the most adverse conditions.
We (people are still relatively new to the area really) also influence these growth patterns. We seem to be setting a lot of the fires but we also work really hard to stop them from their normal progress. While there are no more super fires, the time between burns is much shorter and their size is mostly smaller.
Quantity versus quality? Will it make a difference?
Update:
The 3.6 temblor yesterday afternoon was a popular topic of conversation last evening at Harleys along with lots of fire stories. I heard some nervous jokes about the four seasons of SoCal (fire and earthquake being two of them). A lot of people had stories about frantically trying to move horses out of the way the fires. One woman we know was slightly injured when she moved some horses from Simi only to run into another fire out near Happy Canyon outside of Santa Barbara.
The original Piru fire continues to burn up in the Los Padres National Forest. The Simi Valley fire is still burning up in the Newhall area. Neither fire is expected to be contained for several more days. Meanwhile, things in the San Bernardino Mountains and San Diego County are not going as well. Many more lost lives and homes.
The Star has a very interesting graphic showing how Santa Ana winds develop. 
It sprinkled a little here this morning and is raining right now in at least one part of Orange County. This is good and bad. It'll help with fire fighting efforts but may act to quickly destabilize now barren hillsides (leading to mudslides).
This article about the cookie brigade reminds me of something not yet said here...
I'd like to thank the many fire fighters, police officers, officials, journalists, activists and support staff here in Ventura County and elsewhere around Southern California for their hard work and perseverance in the face of what must have seemed at times an impossible task.
The jobs not over yet, but the weather is at least cooperating (cooler temperatures, westerly breezes).
Thank you.
jozjozjoz has posted photos sent by a friend in Simi.
LA Blogs has a whole bunch of links to sites with pictures and commentary on the fires.
I've been out all day, and part of the trip involved slogging through the normally bad LA traffic turned into a much more interesting mess by the fires and road closures. If you haven't seen the terrific pictures put up by Doc yesterday (of a fire north of Hearst Castle), do so. I've been offline for the most part and trying to catch up with normal mailbox deluge the rest of the time.
It started with my trip to Pasadena. Umm, yuck. If it hadn't been the quarterly senior staff meeting, I would have passed... oh well. The most surprising part of the whole trip was winding up down around De Soto and 101 and seeing no smoke. A clear sky. Wow, that's unique! I was in lots of traffic so I had plenty of time to admire it. By the time I got to Burbank, it was haze city again. Pasadena itself wasn't all that bad. It wasn't like home and I didn't see a single errant ash all day.
I caught bits and pieces of the fire news through the day, but was mostly in meetings or talking about the meetings. After finally wrapping things up at 7 (when groups come in from out of town, a meeting blizzard ensues), I wandered over to a party where a bunch of people were celebrating some major new functionality that's been built for a partner. Lots of groups have been involved and lot of people worked hard to make it happen, it was nice to see them all happy for a change.
Anyway, I decided to drive back through Simi on the 118 and although it was dark, I opened the windows just to get a sense of things. The smell coming through Santa Susana Pass was so powerful that I find it impossible to describe. It'll fade quickly, as it did after the Greenmeadow fire in 1993, but I can still smell it now. Overwhelming and inescapable are the only things I can think of, and that's not nearly enough. I'm going to have to get out there and see the destruction close up in the daylight soon just to get a real personal perspective.
Also on the way home, KNX informed me that the Val Verde fire has now come full circle and is back up in the Santa Clarita area. We've got some friends up in Stevenson Ranch, which is just east of I-5 and about three miles south of Magic Mountain. There is a pretty amazing picture from that area in this CBS slide show.
For everyone in the family who keeps asking, we're fine... that was why I started putting up this information. I'll leave you with two sets of reader submitted photos at the Star (they're really terrific).
The Star has created a nice map
of the fire area in Ventura County.
The fire fighters did a wonderful job of stamping out the fire south of 118 this morning. This story touches on the various high points and status around the county.
The fires in Val Verde and around Piru continue to burn as separate entities with larger flare ups happening from time to time.
The main fire north of Simi continues to rage and there are now live reports coming from the Porter Ranch area (east of the Santa Susana Pass on the LA County side of the line) tracking the eastward progress of the fire storm. It is slowly but surely creeping east.
According to NBC, President Bush has now declared four California counties as major disaster areas which gives displaced residents access to federal aid.
Boing Boing is pointing to a cell phone picture blog of the SoCal fires.
I'm sitting here watching the fire (NBC is focusing on Simi) that has now jumped 118 between Kuehner and Santa Susana Pass and is burning south in the area of Kuehner Drive and Los Angeles Avenue. If the fire gets loose in Box Canyon...
Susan Kitchens (20/20 Hindsight) has links and a great map of the SoCal fires.
I was looking all over the place for that sort of thing.
Various updates on the fires here in Southern California...
It's now reported that there are 10 separate fires burning in California.
Visible smoke in SoCal... 
One of the NOAA sites has a live image (which is dark right now). Here's one I captured Sunday afternoon.
See the satellite page for the National Weather Service (Western Region) for more views.
Doc Searls has been watching some of the affects up the coast in Santa Barbara and pointed to some coverage.
I've found some additional coverage at the Ventura County Star (as I've been pointing out, they are doing a pretty good job with scarce resources). With the Simi Valley fire now spilling east into LA County, the valley based Daily News will probably jump into the act. See @LA News for more information on SoCal news sources.
The Simi fire is now over 80,000 acres and I have heard reports putting it as high as 90,000. With all of that, the fire down south in San Diego County sounds much more out of control and dangerous.
The Times has a pretty nice flash based grouping of a few local pictures. You can access it here at the LA Times and on KTLA's mirror.
Finally, various sources are reporting that the Monday Night Football game is being moved to Arizona (from Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego).
There's not much new in the official news category. Before going to bed last night I called some friends over in the Tapo Canyon area and invited them here if they need to evacuate but they had not heard anything at that point.
The Star has been doing a pretty good job of getting news reports out... but I haven't found anyone else covering Ventura County. According to a report this morning 47,000 acres have been burned.
Sarah was out a couple hours ago and went up 23 to Tierra Rejada where she had to exit and drive west. She indicated that the fire is burning on the ranches on the south side of Tierra Rejada, which would put the fire less than a mile from the Reagan Library.
KCLU (88.3 FM) has been doing full time coverage this morning. Someone just called in from Box Canyon and indicated that they can see fire up in the Santa Susana Pass area. There have also been some reports about a release of Chlorine gas in Moorpark.
According to the latest fire update from the Ventura County Star, this fire burned 10 miles from somewhere outside of Piru to Simi Valley in three hours this afternoon (which explains the sudden, heavy smoke we saw).
It's been a little crazy around here this evening. With the highways closed down and much of the city driving around trying to find a good vantage point to see the fires, this sleepy little city has gone quite crazy (a weekday afternoon traffic flow on Erbes Road at 10 PM is one of many examples &mdash I am quite surprised there aren't cars strewn everywhere after what we saw in a few places).
The best view Adam and I found was over at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. We got stopped (like everyone else) at the circular drive near the top, but parked close to the top and walked back over to the gate. We saw enough there to be scared. The fire had definitely gotten south beyond the 118 in places and appeared to be burning up the ridge just to the north of Tierra Rejada Road. There was a better view of the westernmost end of the fireline further down from the library, but we didn't stop to ogle any longer.
Sarah and I were just discussing what we might want to grab if we need to run for it. Saturday morning that would have been silly, but right now... who knows. If this thing manages to burn it's way onto the ridges around Sunset Hills, we'll be fleeing to somewhere.Here are some photos taken by Steve and I this afternoon when the light suddenly turned orange.
The wind seemed to be blowing almost directly south, which pushed everything in our direction. Jon wanted to go see the fire (how close I asked? about 45 feet was his reply... we had a little talk about the power of fire) but we passed on that. Those folks already have enough problems to deal with.
While working on these pictures I had to turn on the light in my office because I could barely see... 4:30 and it's already twilight.
I went out to pick up Steve from his drivers education class and on the way home we noticed a lot of smoke drifting southwest. It appears to be coming from north west Simi... maybe a little further north.
Update:
So OK, maybe I should check the local news more often. The fire is north of Piru (which is about seven miles north of Simi Valley) somewhere near the lake.
