Last Updated: Aug 5, 2008
From Monsters and Critics.com
US Features

Paradise in peril: Perfect firestorm engulfs California
By DPA
Oct 22, 2007, 18:13 GMT

Los Angeles - Southern California is often seen as a region that epitomizes the American dream of the good life with nice houses set in idyllic natural settings in a region blessed with some of the best weather in the world.

But every year at the end of the long summer, residents start to worry as a meteorological phenomenon known as the Santa Ana winds turn this piece of paradise into a hotbed of peril. The hot winds roll in from the east, sometimes at hurricane speeds, and are capable or turning the tiniest ember into an unstoppable wildfire in minutes.

That’s what happened over the weekend, creating 12 separate fires that were still raging out of control Monday morning across a more than 300-kilometre front stretching from the Mexican border north to Lake Tahoe.

The town of Ramona, near San Diego, population 36,000, was ordered to totally evacuate as thousands of firefighters, aided by air tankers and helicopters were powerless to stop the relentless walls of flames. In other areas of the state, hundreds of others were also ordered to evacuate.

In Rancho Bernardo near San Diego, fleets of police cruisers roamed the streets of the upscale neighbourhood at 4 am, their blaring sirens broken only by the urgent calls issued over their loudspeakers, reports said.

‘Go. Go. Go. Get out of here,’ police officers urged residents, as embers and other fire debris rained down through the smoke, MSNBC reported online.
Thomas Callahan, who has lived in the area for 20 years, said he had never seen anything like this.

‘This is bad, bad, bad,’ he told the news site. ‘It is going to be so much worse than the Cedar Fire ever was,’ he said referring to the 2003 fire which destroyed some 5,000 structures in the region. ‘It is devastating!’

But while everyone was shocked at the extent of the fire and the speed at which it spread, few were surprised. For months, if not years, fire control experts have warned that a combination of factors had made southern California a tinderbox ready to explode.

‘This is a conflagration we knew was going to come at some point,’ Los Angeles County Supervisor Zen Yaroslavsky said at a Malibu press conference Sunday, noting Southern California’s ongoing dry spell.

‘We were cruising for a bruising. We are very, very lucky as we stand here tonight that the damage has been as limited as it has been. It’s a perfect fire storm.’

In July, a report by the US Geological Survey in July identified southern California as facing one of the worst fire hazard problems in the US.

It was not just that the region was coming off the driest year in recorded history, one that followed a 10-year drought that has killed millions of trees and turned the forests and grasslands into a vast repository of fuel.

Adding to the potent mix is California’s population explosion, much of it in the south of the state, where communities are pushing further and further into the wildlands.(made to burn every year as part of the cleansing process) This increased human activity not only increases the likelihood of fire, and it makes them far more costly to property and life and much harder to fight.

For now firefighters weren’t even thinking about gaining the upper hand as a red flag warning for extreme fire danger was scheduled to continue for several more days.

‘The best we’re hoping is that if we can isolate and contain the fires in the next day or two things might be better Wednesday,’ said Michael Jarvis, an official of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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