There's an orange glow to the north and south where the trees are on fire.
Out towards the ocean, there is smoke on the water. It smells like bonfire night.
Arnie's paying a visit to the neighbourhood, touching burn victims at the hospital next door. Hopefully he's toning down his legendary 'trash compactor' hand shake for the sick folk.
Lots of people round here are enjoying the day off work, it's the Californian equivalent of a 'snow day'.
They are evacuating people to the Charger's stadium just down the road so I think we're probably in a safe place.
The restaurants were buzzing last night, we went to our favourite Thai. I guess a lot of people are staying over in this neigbourhood. We've taken in a friend and her dog who got tired of ash blowing into their faces up in La Jolla.
I'm worried about the wild animal park. The critters are probably very nervous. I might go and look at the meerkats in the zoo later, they might be creating a pee moat as a defense or something.
All the news reports say it's going to get worse, on one channel they have reporters going up to burned out houses saying, 'I hope this isn't your place...' This is the channel they are showing on the big screens in the chargers stadium where all the evacuees have gone. It seems a little insensitive. Especially when they cut to interviews with the evacuees in the stadium who are crying because they've just seen all their worldly possessions burning on the Bolt's jumbotron.
On NBC they are calling it 'FIRESTORM 2007' and are using the all the War on Terror fonts. The news crews are taking great delight seeing how close they can get and how roughly 'improvised' their face masks can be. I saw one reporter doing a piece to camera with a hemp motif bandana tied round his mouth outlaw style. Others are wrapping their heads up in wet towels.
There is some cool and calm use of language from the fire officials - they are listing fires and saying '0% containment' rather than 'out of control'. It's always amazing how careful phrasing can set the right tone.
Some people have tried to save their houses by lingering dangerously on their properties with hose pipes, dousing their roofs down as they cling to their last lung fulls of air.
Twice now I've heard helicopters fly low overhead and I run outside hoping to see a Fire Hawk fill it's tank from the swimming pool but it hasn't happened yet.
They are saying arson may be to blame for some of the fires. I can't help but wonder if the housing crash and looming recession is making some bankrupt assholes try and clear their debts with insurance money. Save the Tiger Jack Lemmon. Don't sell me America.
Of course the celebrities are dominating the news as well, the Malibu fire is getting more play than other fires. The real losers will be the undocumented Mexicans who sleep out in the canyons with the coyotes. A lot of them will die and nobody will know they are gone or really care. The maids just won't show up for work, the gardeners won't feel like raking leaves with their damaged lungs. More little death shrines will appear anonymously on the roadsides. The small photographs of the deceased will slowly turn yellow and fade in the sun and eventually crumble to dust, heralding the future desert that Southern California will become.
Rich white racists will no doubt look to blame the fires on the illegal immigrants, saying camp fires must have got out of control, the assumption of lazy, incompetent Mexicans so embedded inside them you could not dig it out with a scalpel or an axe. The Minute Men will be out recruiting for their border patrols. They'll say 'if only we had the wall on the border - this never would have happened...'
They blamed the Chicago fire on the Catholics who were the unpopular minority of the time.
If the wind changes and it blows through here we're taking the tent down to the beach in front of the hotel Del Coronado. I want mojitos and coconut shrimp and access to bathrooms on the famous grounds. Some might indeed 'Like it Hot,' I'll try and be one of them.
BTW, I've no idea how two Jack Lemmon films made it into this blog - if you have any clue - drop me a line...
