The Week Gone By

The week's over. It took a while but its finally over. The first part of the week was a harrowing experience. Its over for some, but for some others, the ordeal continues. Mother nature went on a rampage all throughout Southern California (SoCal) and showered special consideration on San Diego.

In what way you ask? Well obviously, you haven't been tuning into international news lately. Wildfires have been feasting heavily on the parched, arid, dry, drought affected lands of SoCal - some of them still going strong even as I type this post.

Last Sunday was an exceptionally busy day for me. I accompanied my roomies for some grocery shopping and then went to a retail electronic store to get a pair of headphones. (I got a supra-aural Sony headphones for a pretty good deal and I'm loving it. Its amazing how good earphones makes even mediocre music sound awesome :D) Sorry for the digression, anyways, so on our way back, I just happened to look up at the sky and noticed that it was smoggy. Now that might be normal in Bombay (courtesy Mr.Pollution), but its unheard-of here. The sky is normally impeccable blue and I thought its strange for it to be having a grayish tinge.

Anyways, it was pretty soon forgotten and as soon as we got home we started cooking. We were done in a couple of hours and since it started to get a bit smoky in the house with all the frying and stuff, we opened the windows. Suddenly in a matter of minutes, the air started to smell strange. We quickly checked our hot-plates and oven to see if we had left something ON by mistake, but found that everything was switched off. We were trying to figure out the source of the "burning" smell in the air and then we get a call from one of our friends saying that there's a wild fire burning out of control about 50 miles north-east of our place and slowly moving westward.

We all quickly scourged the net and found out that indeed there was a wild fire. In fact there wasn't just one or two or three. There were 7 of them in and around San Diego. WOW UNBELIEVABLE!!! Also, we found some 3-4 fires in and around LA too. In fact there was one in Malibu county which forced many celebrities to evacuate their million-dollar houses.

By midnight on Sunday, (in a couple of hours) the fire was deemed to be about 40 miles away i.e. 10 miles closer to us. The fire department had begun mandatory evacuation of the communities which were about 10 miles away from the fire. We all were under the impression that everything would become normal by Monday morning and we all slept soundly. On Monday, my roomie went to work at around 08:00 (much earlier than usual). I woke up at my usual time of around 09:00 and started to get ready to go to work. Suddenly, I get a call from my roomie (who's at work) saying that the security is planning to shut down office because the fire situation is getting worse by the minute.

I quickly tuned into an internet radio station for San Diego and there they announced that there are two fires, one to the north-east and other south-east of San Diego, both moving westward towards San Diego. Holy Cow!!! What in God's name is happening here?? I was thinking. The fire closest to our location was the one in the north-west. It was now just 25 miles away from our location and all residents who were living in a 10-mile distance from the perimeter of the fire were asked to evacuate. In fact it so happened that one particular school was designated as the evacuation center but when the fire started coming close to that, the location was shifted to a much safer place. This new place was a high school located in our area. When that happened, it was a bit of a relief to us because it gave us the confidence that when there's a evacuation center in our area, then our area must definitely be safe.

The whole of Monday went in closely monitoring the progress of the two fires. In fact the news in the internet radio reported that the 7 different fires had merged and become 2 large fires, one to the north-east and other to the south-east. They also said that the fires were caused because of the strange weather condition, which (considering the terrain around SoCal) is very conducive for wild-fires. In fact although San Diego is on the Pacific Coast, the relative humidity for Sun-Mon-Tue was an avg or about 4-5%. Which makes the air abnormally dry. This coupled with high temperatures (around 30-35 deg centigrade), unusual westerly Santa-Ana winds and the dry vegetation (which is abundant in SoCal) gave rise to the fires. It was declared on Monday that the office would remain shut on Tuesday, because of the fires.

By Tuesday, the situation had worsened. The fire in the N-W - named witch-creek fire (because it originated in the witch-creek canyon) which was about 8000 acres on Sunday evening had affected 15000 acres by Sunday night, 20000 acres by Monday and a humongous 145000 acres come Tuesday (because of merging of different fires). Similarly the fire in the S-W - named the Harris fire had grown from 6000 acres to 14000 acres to 25000 to some 40000 acres during the same timespan. By Tuesday afternoon, mandatory evacuation was in effect for communities which were just about 10 miles away from our locality and rumors were going around that our area too would soon be receiving an evacuation order.

It was Tuesday evening and no such order came. Still we all were tense and monitoring the "progress" of the fire very closely. Also we came to know that our office is closed indefinitely until further notice. The Harris fire was still just about 5% contained and the Witch fire was only about 1% contained. Situation was still dangerous. One look at the sky and the dangerousness was vindicated. The atmosphere was strewn with dust and debris and suspended particulate matter. There was so much soot in the air that the swimming pool in front of our house got very dirty with black dust falling from the sky. Although the fire was raging, thankfully it wasn't spreading towards our area and having come to know about that, our confidence - of not being evacuated - improved.

By Wednesday morning, the evacuation orders for the neighboring area got lifted and we started feeling much safer. In fact evacuation orders were also removed for areas which had been damaged by fire and people started to come back to see the state of their houses. The California fire department and the emergency services did a fantastic job of intimating people much before the fire broke out and by issuing mandatory evacuation orders. It is evident from the fact that - although a total of about 300000 acres were burning as a result of the various fires - there was only 1 casualty, but the damage to houses and property and land was huge. In fact my boss's house sustained substantial damage and the most common question on such people's mind was - "WHY ME??"

Thursday seemed like just another day. The office was open again, most of the shops were functioning like there was never anything wrong. Although office was open, attendance was low. The fires were still raging but far away from any nearby areas. By now the winds had changed direction, they were again flowing from west to east. The temperatures had dipped and the humidity increased. Buoyed by the weather, the firemen started to make fantastic progress in containing and in some places even extinguishing the fire.

By Friday everything was near normal. The air was clear - one could see the blue skies, it had become cooler again, the winds had died. In short a perfect California day.

Its amazing how - even after having made fantastic progress in science and technology and weather forecasting, etc - we are still at the mercy of mother nature's fury. Be it Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Volcanoes or even Wild Forest Fires.