Canyons and Fires

Workers are clearing overgrown bushes and brush in the lush canyon where I walked this morning. Glad to see them chopping down the dry vegetation near the top, after fires raged through hillside canyons in Carlsbad last week, threatening hundreds if not thousands of homes along their borders. My development was spared. It was once a California ranch owned by TV and film  actor Leo Carrillo, with the original buildings and property around the homestead now maintained as part of a city park. A deep canyon runs right through the middle of the ranch, which includes thousands of acres of housing plus rolling hills dotted with low, crisp brush. Sure would hate to lose any of this, plus all the homes occupied by families. We're lucky since our house isn't right on a canyon or ridge, but with enough heat and wind, who knows what could happen.

Leo Carrillo Park

Last week was a wake-up call, with smoke clouds popping up in every direction during the blazing hot Santa Ana.  Temperatures rose to a hundred or more degrees in some parts of the County. What we know as May Gray, with a marine layer haze and cool temperatures, was nowhere to be seen. This morning the paper reports that the three fires at Camp Pendleton, just north of us, are mostly contained, but eighteen percent of the base, about 27,000 acres, burned.  San Marcos and Carlsbad fires are all contained, but firefighters continue to watch "hot spots." We were so blessed to have so many dedicated firefighters, but sad to have one loss of life, a homeless man whose remains were found in a canyon of the Poinsettia fire, closest one to our development. Here's to safer days ahead, with lots of brush cleared to reduce fire risk.  It will be a long hot summer, since we're in the third year of a drought.