Wildfires And Mountain Living...

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We've had several phone calls & e-mails from friends concerned about the ongoing wildfires near us, and wondering if Big Bear is being evacuated again, so I thought I'd post this photo taken today, at 2:59 P.M. The photo was taken about a half-mile northwest of our house, which is back in those trees, just below the little yellow asterisk I placed there.

The smoke column rising from the Millard Complex Fire looks quite ominous here looming over Big Bear Valley, but the wind is actually blowing toward the fire from my vantage point there at the east end of the Stanfield Marsh, and keeping it from moving into our area.

The most recent news I heard was that the Sawtooth and Millard fires had merged creating something like a 20 mile long front of flames, and that the two fires, now combined, have consumed a total of nearly 65,000 acres, 45 homes, and another 100+ outbuildings, mostly in the high desert to the east of us.

At its closest point, the fire is now about 8 miles east of the valley, and as long as the prevailing westerly winds continue blowing we should be OK here, but you never know, nature is always unpredictable.

We're somewhat accustomed to impending disaster though, having lived on the edge, in fire, flood, and earthquake country all of our lives, so this is just another of those semi-regular events.

It seems to me that almost any place one lives these days is prone to some sort of disaster; landslides, hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, gang violence, industrial chemical spills, terrorist attacks, war, floods, famine, fires, and earthquakes, so I guess we'll just stick with what we know.

In the early 1980s, Peggy and I stood side by side, by ourselves with a fire hose & nozzle, wet towels wrapped around our heads (a tip from the fire department that loaned us the hose), and flames all around, burning within a few yards of us, as we watered down and saved our friends home in Malibu Canyon, where were living at the time. And that's just one of several disasters we've lived through.

In the '60s, during one of Topanga Canyon's devastating floods, the house I lived in was buried by a landslide just seconds after I ran out the door, and the house we live in now survived the big '92 earthquake, structurally intact, but we sure had a mess to clean up inside, everything was upside down and broken.

So, if this fire does turn around and move in on us, you might find Peggy, Dallas, and I sitting out in the middle of the lake with a ringside seat and a cheap bottle of wine.

But Alas!

Poor Dallas is a teetotaler...