The guy in the white hat

Wow, it’s getting weird up here in my little corner of the mountains. Ash is everywhere. The air stinks of smoke. One’s eyes continually burn.

I live along Live Oak Canyon Road, about a mile and a half up from Cook’s Corner—the famous biker bar—toward O’Neill Park (this area is usually considered part of "Trabuco Canyon"). So I’m kind of close to the action, firewise.

Didn’t get to sleep until 2:30 a.m., what with the air quality and uncertainty. Woke up at about 8:00 to a phone call from the other denizens of our little compound in the Santa Ana Mountains: my folks. They were mighty grim. I think the smoke was getting to them. “Get packed,” they said.

I needed information. The TV news wasn’t much help, and neither were my internet sources, so I drove up the grade and then down again to Cook’s. I found about ten fire crews—some from Santa Ana—coming in to relieve others. “If you want to know what’s going on,” they said, “watch the news on TV.” It’s not that they were unfriendly; it’s just that they saw the fire only up close. They had no overview.

“For that,” one firefighter said, “find the guy with the white hat.” He pointed to his own helmet, which was not white.

I didn’t want to bother the white hatted guy—I hate to bother busy firefighters!—so I drove up Modjeska grade instead. It was blocked, half way up. There were maybe thirty cars lined up along the side of the road. An attractive woman in high heels was carrying a cardboard tray of fast-food coffee up the hill. Others were doing similarly absurd things. Some people were plainly looky-looing.

When I saw the cop car at the end of the row of cars, I turned around. But I did catch a glimpse of a plume of a smallish (?) fire coming from somewhere in or near Modjeska Canyon, I think. Other indications I have received have been positive about that canyon, which was evacuated last night.

I headed back down to Cook’s, but it looked like I might not be allowed back in if I left, and so I just headed back home. As near as I could tell—the visibility is very poor—no flames threaten the hillside opposite my own. Whew!

My folks were glad to hear what I found. My mom even beamed. She’s always been the Family Fire Fearer. She refuses to go on vacations because of it. She had to escape from “the Russians” as a child, and that seems to have something to do with it. The fire is like the Russians. Nobody wants to abandon their home to either.

Yesterday, my dad told me, “Earlier, your mother was all worried about the fire, and I told her to quit worrying. I can’t tell her that now.”

The both of them are working like bees, securing everything. I leave ‘em alone. Plus I’ve got my own place to worry about. And Sunny.

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, take all info with a grain of salt, I always say. For instance, all day yesterday, I heard that Modjeska Canyon had been evacuated. Even the OC Register said so.

Well, near as I can tell, that didn’t happen until early this morning. Reb and her crew evacuated last night at about 11:00, voluntarily. (See her “Pillar of Salt.”)

In the last ten minutes, the smoke has cleared out of this canyon and planes keep buzzing overhead. The air is pretty clear except up toward Modjeska, which is still smoky, but it’s the kind of vague smokiness that isn’t particularly worrisome.

At times like these, things are often not what they seem.