California: No End to Disaster

Down over the hills ringing Los Angeles swept the parching devil winds. Humidity dropped below 1% ; it was drier than a desert. The brilliant colors of sumac, greasewood and wild lilac had long faded to dusty brown, and the chaparral crackled and clacked like desiccated bones in a bowl. Then, just before dawn one day last week, the nightmare that Angelenos have well learned to dread happened again. The brush in the hills, ignited by power lines torn to the ground by whistling winds, exploded into flame. With incredible speed, fire raced through the white-collar suburbs of Los Angeles—into Glendale and Burbank, Eagle Rock, and Verdugo City and Pasadena.

Propelled by winds that gusted up to 100 m.p.h., the flames hedgehopped spiny ridges, leaped from tree to tree, jumped across streets from rooftop to rooftop. "It sounded like a locomotive," recalled a terrified homeowner, "like surf battering a shore, snapping, crackling and popping."

Rabbits and raccoons and skunks fled in terror from the hills into city streets. On a distant ridge, a fawn turned and walked dazedly back into the shroud of smoke. In the backyard of her demolished home, a woman wandered nude and vacant-eyed, clutching a harp. Firefighters battled the blaze stubbornly, even dipped into backyard swimming pools with portable pumps for extra water. One hysterical woman seized a fireman's coat, nearly ripped it off his back as she screamed in his ear: "If there is a hell, there is a picture of it!"

When the fire was finally quenched—40 hours after it began-the flames had burned more than 11,500 acres, destroyed and damaged 30 homes and caused total losses estimated at more than $5,000,000. That fire would be recorded in the disaster logbook alongside the 1961 Bel Air fire that wiped out 484 homes, the 1958 Malibu fire that destroyed 72 houses, and the 1938 Topanga Canyon blaze that leveled 350 homes.

Like people who live near the mouth of a volcano, the citizens in the hills of Los Angeles County know that there is no end to disaster. Eventually the rainy season will drench the denuded hills with flash floods. Then the mesquite and chaparral will grow back on the hillsides. After that, the humidity will fall again.

And then, down over the hills will sweep the parching devil winds . . .