Southern California Is Ablaze

I was working on my blogs and web sites this morning, visiting GretaWire and the Fox News web site. When I visited Jamie Colby's blog about 11:45 AM (PDT), I learned for the first time that once again Southern California is ablaze. Adam Housley, a Los Angeles-based Fox News reporter, reported live from Malibu for hours on end and managed to find time to blog about it on his Housley in the House.

Fortunately for me, I live on the westside of Los Angeles about two miles east of Venice Beach and the Pacific Ocean. But I know the entire area very well. I have been to Malibu many times. Each time, I have been amazed that an alternate route to Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) has never been built.

In the early 1990s, there was a lot of talk about building an alternate, wider PCH above the ocean along the coastline. That proposal was killed by environmentalists. I guess they feel it is better to let Malibu burn and people die.

On Friday, my roommate and I drove down to Tijuana. As we passed through the San Diego area, I remembered the devastating forest fire that ravaged that area four years ago.

On normal days, a ride along PCH is quite beautiful between 10 AM and 3 PM. Morning and afternoon rush hours often turn PCH into a parking lot.

Despite devastating forest fires in Malibu almost every October, people who can afford it are willing to spend millions of dollars on Malibu homes.

I remember the forest fire that hit Santa Barbara in June 1990. I was visiting my aunt. She lived along San Marcos Pass Road about a quarter of a mile north of Highway 101, at the bottom of the foothills. The forest fire started a couple of miles above where she lived, rushed down, missed the subdivision where my aunt lived, and then leap-frogged across 101 and burned a swath through the Hope Ranch area.

That fire destroyed about 600 homes in Santa Barbara and killed several people. When we heard the fire was racing down the foothills toward my aunt's home, my cousins and I could not persuade her to leave her home. Finally, as the fire came within a couple of blocks of her home, she agreed to go with my cousins and me to her brother's home close to the ocean. The forest fire leapfrogged past her subdivision, sparing its houses, but burning many places nearby.

That experience taught me that forest fires move fast and are deadly. The best thing you can do is get out quickly and head for a safe place.

George Spink
Los Angeles, California
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