Is that all there is to a fire?
it was a Santa Ana
When the first fire broke out in the Pacific Palisades, I was at the park with my three-year-old. He was climbing on the jungle gym, furiously rubbing at his face. It’s too windy, he complained. Above him, the palm trees were thrashing like they were trying to escape the dirt. And I felt helpless, because you’ll do anything to protect your kid. But how do you stop the wind?
We were about thirty miles away from the Palisades fire. The next fires were closer. On Tuesday night, I was in bed reading All Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky when the lights began to flicker. The fire was on the other side of the range, we knew that. It jumped the freeways and Katie rolled over in bed and said that was a bad thing.
Thankfully, pretty soon after that, the wind blew the fire away from us. The same wind that my son was complaining about. The same wind that burned down entire lives, something like six miles away. It was longer by road, but fire doesn’t travel by road. We had to stay at the in-laws for a night when our power went out, but the worst part of it was the wind. The wind howling in the dark at the windows while you’re laying in bed, and the knowledge that shit, it hasn’t rained here in god knows how long. Just about anything could catch on fire. And that wind will send the fire flying. You just hope you’re lucky, that you’re not on the wrong side of the wind.
The wind, of course, is the Santa Ana wind. It’s difficult to explain the Santa Ana wind to my family back east, because there’s nothing like this back there. Hurricanes, sure you feel the pressure but they don’t affect you like this affects you. A Santa Ana wind makes you feel different. Here’s how Raymond Chandler put it:
It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.
He’s not wrong, and what happens, almost invariably, are fires carried on the back of the hundred-mile-an-hour Santa Ana wind. And that same wind, that because of luck or whatever-the-hell ever, blew the fires away from us while it ruined other lives.
How do you square that? My aunt called me and asked why our house hadn’t burned down and I said ‘well, the wind went a little different.’ I’m used to hurricane weather, I’m used to blizzard weather. But fire weather is a different being, how it behaves, or at least how you feel it like it’s a palpable villain. Not a sophisticated one, just a blind raging villain like Grendel.
And, even more than a hurricane, the fire reduces you. It feels omnipotent and you realize your house is only standing because of luck. It’s a sort of overwhelming helplessness and I am not accustomed to feeling helpless.