3:30 p.m. The wind shifted from blowing all the smoke from the Thomas Fire (now over 245,000 acres burned) offshore to inland . . . in a matter of a couple of hours, a clear day had moved to this. Our eyes are stinging and watering. It’s only going to get worse.
Yesterday’s image is on the left side of this panorama. On the right, you can see smouldering hillsides. The distance from right to left is easily 30 miles / 50 km. Beyond the towering smoke clouds the fire is moving into wilder territory which is harder to control and into Santa Barbara County. For reference purposes, Ventura County is the coastal county directly north of Los Angeles County.
To date, 230,000 acres burned, 1000 buildings destroyed. Here in Ventura County, there is a real concern that much of the economy is being destroyed as there are large swaths of orchards, citrus and avocados, which have been destroyed.
Today we went to see how the sky looked after 8 days of wildfires in our area. Earlier, the smoke was piled high into the sky, looking like an atom bomb had exploded nearby – a mushroom-shaped cloud on the horizon. The air is brown and hazy. Now, the wind has picked up, again with 60-80 mph gusts, and the clouds have flattened out. This is the view from behind the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, looking west toward the cities of Ventura and further into Santa Barbara County where the coastal town of Carpinteria is being threatened. While my in-laws are now home, friends elsewhere are in danger. We await our turn . . . we have been lucky so far.
Today we went up to the Reagan Library to view the Thomas Fire from afar. Here, you can see it from the hills around Santa Paula, California, past Ventura on the coast, moving toward Carpinteria in Santa Barbara County. Nearly 200,000 acres have burned in 8 days through rough back country. Valiant efforts by fire fighters from around the country are helping, but here and elsewhere in Southern California houses and animals and people are all suffering.
Altogether, this has been a strange week. The air is filled with ash and smoke throughout the area surrounding me, but we are a small oasis which is (currently) not hit by the voracious wildfires burning throughout Southern California and air filled with ash and particulate matter. We have had our share, but nothing like most of our locale.
I live in Ventura County, and the Thomas Fire forced my in-laws to flee, with very little and a lot to lose, in the middle of the night. That was last Monday when they showed up on our doorstep at 1:00 a.m. Today they left after driving to their home town, lucky to find their house standing, the evacuation order rescinded, and ash covering everything. The ongoing winds have moved the soot and ash, along with the fires, further east and west and out to sea. Others have not been so lucky. Blocks of houses are no longer there. While the Santa Ana winds have moved out the sooty air, they are still roaring around, sometimes up to 60-80 miles per hour. Not pleasant, I assure you, in either cold or hot weather (today we had 80F – fake news – there is no global warming).
We are so glad to have been able to take in my in-laws. They were gracious and pleasant, and we actually had a lot of fun, even if their sleeping conditions were air mattresses on the floor and an old twin bed in the office my husband works from. I guess it is sort of like a hurricane party – clustering together for comfort and safety and riding out the storm outside. At some point, we may have to call upon them if our area goes up in smoke, because almost all of California has been suffering from a massive years-long drought. We have too many trees on our property, but it costs thousands to take them all out at once, so we are sort of stuck – maybe take a few out at a time. Having visitors is a bit disruptive of daily life patterns but reminds us of how important family and friends and community are.
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