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Fire season in Southern California is here, and it’s the same almost every year.
The fires start north of the San Fernando Valley, circle the hills through Northridge and Chatsworth, race through the canyons and eventually run to the sea.This is the umteenth fire that’s burned around my home and they’ve never come closer than a block away, yet watching on TV as the fires come closer is always pit-in-the-stomach making.
It’s the “just in case” factor. Just in case an errant ember decides to land on your mandated fire-retardant roof, you have to be aware that it could happen, even though it never happened before.
All day there’s been the intermittent sounds of fire engine sirens driving by and spotter helicopters overhead.
They’ve already declared us a disaster area and issued mandatory evacuations of several canyon communities just to the north of me.
The closest being Bell Canyon, a two-mile hike, and Lake Manor, a ten minute drive with lots of stop signs between here and there, making it a longer drive than it would be without all the stopping.
* More than 5000 acres burned.
* No containment in sight.
* Sustained winds of 40 m.p.h. expected to get worse tomorrow. Wednesday they might start to die down. Gusts up to 60 m.p.h.
* Humidity low, 20-percent and expected to go lower. Coolish today, expected to hit 80s and 90s tomorrow.
* Three deaths, a homeless man and his dog living in a cardboard structure by the freeway near the Little Tujunga fire; and a man in a head-on collision going the wrong way on the Simi Valley Freeway, rushing home to evacuate his family.
* Unknown toxic chemicals released from structure and semi-tractor trailer trucks burned in Little Tujunga fire.
* Resources stretch to thinnest point ever. Both police and fire stretched to the max.
* Two borrowed Canadian 50,000-gallon water/chemical dropping planes rendered useless at times by erratic, high winds.
* Water-dropping helicopters being use, but it’s dangerous as hell for them.
* An uncounted number of structures destroyed; more being threatened, some valued into the multi-millions.
Waiting and watching from Southern California. 2:50 p.m. PDT.
