Two more SoCal fires ...

Man, Pepperdine almost burned up:

All-out effort to save Pepperdine University from Woolsey fire

 

Look out, Malibu ...

 

Holy shit.

 

Just take a drive up to Pepperdine University sometime. Its location -- beautiful and awe-inspiring on a clear day, has to be among the most mountainous, forested and brush-y of any college in the country. It is land that practically begs to be burned during a wildfire, and the fact that it seems annually to survive roaring flames all around it is nothing short of a miracle.

 

WT,

Did your aunt and uncle decide to move away or did they decide to stay?

 

At this point, I'm surprised there is any part of the state that is left to be burned. Particularly north of LA between the coast and I-5.

 

They've stayed, such as they've been able to do so. That is, the past year has been a nightmare, even though they were among the "lucky" ones in their area.

First, their house and block had so much poor air quality, smoke damage and minor physical damage that they couldn't stay in it for about three months afterward, and instead they were itinerants, staying in one son's house and RV for a while, then another son's house, then spending weekends as a small vacation home they own about three hours north of Ventura, or in hotels for a few days at a time.

Then, with the prospect of all the other houses on their block probably being rebuilt as new, they decided to take the opportunity to renovate and update their 45-year-old home so that it will be somewhat on par with others in the neighborhood when they are eventually restored, so that took a while and they had to keep moving around some more. Then, when that got done and they tried to move back in for good, they started being beset by itches, rashes and unexplained, severe skin conditions (especially my aunt) that, according to "experts," were caused by "dust mites" (or something) supposedly, probably, stirred up by the fire/ashes/dirt, etc., and that made them have to keep on going. Or, if they did stay in the house, they were told to wash their clothes, and bed sheets, twice a day, take two showers a day, dispose of all the new curtains and area rugs they'd just bought to put in various places on their newly installed wood floors because that's where dust mites tend to take up residence, and there's nothing you can do about them until all the adults die out, etc.

So, they just kept moving around, until, finally, my aunt, who then got diagnosed, supposedly, with scabies, kept going to doctors, and finally found one who said he thought this was all just so much nonsense, took a thyroid test on her, and determined that most of her poor health and general malaise over the past nine months or so has probably been due more to physiological problems in that area than because of scabies, or a dust-mite problem that they were being told who knows when it'll go away...

So, now they're staying put, and trying to give things a chance and see what happens, with my aunt being treated more aggressively for her thyroid issues.

But, a year later, they are still practically alone on their block. Some neighbors who wanted to rebuild, and who put in city permits for it, did not get their new plans approved as they wanted, and so, have, instead, stopped in the middle of trying to rebuild and have been trying to sell their land. Some decided to just buy another house, somewhere else, rather than bother with trying to rebuild, and for some, the process and problems are just ongoing, and haven't been resolved.

In short, it's been a terrible year. The upcoming one is likely to be the same for most of the victims of this year's fires.

 

We got evacuated 2x in Calabasas — once from our hotel and once from my brother-in-law’s. Very impressed with the first responders.

 

This will sound stupid, but it's kind of amazing to a first-time experiencer of these fires how much the situation changes minute-to-minute, largely depending on the wind. I mean, I get that wind fuels fires and everything like that. But the slightest change can have the most massive effects. Yesterday, it was smoky enough in Santa Monica to be uncomfortable. Today, you wouldn't know that an enormous fire was still burning not far to the north. It must be such a helpless feeling for the people more directly involved. A tiny increase in the wind, going in the wrong direction, and your whole existence might get erased. And so, too, might it be saved with the subtlest change in atmospheric currents. Not a single part of the equation is up to you.

 

My friend, who doesn't yet know if his house survived on Point Dume in Malibu, has always said that the Point has never burned. This time it did. In an email, he said, "The fire has never behaved in this area like this before, and there were no firemen to help." That was his experience on Friday night. He has lived in Malibu since the 1950s and endured many Malibu fires.