Let me introduce you to the Devil’s handiwork. Others know it too, but not with the same tinge of fear: In the Alps it is the Foehn Winds, and in Japan it is Enshu-no Karakaze, but in those places the vegetation is not suitable for wide range fires. In my area the Tinnewa tribe had a name in their own language for this phenomenon which I will use here: Santana, the Devil wind. This name has been confused with Santa Ana, a city in Orange County, but this same wind appears all over the state and under various names. I think the original people here had it right. The Devil himself sends the Santana. He sent it to Paradise.
Try to visualize it. The fire approaches, not as a flame front, but an invisible blast of super-heated air, up to 1200 degrees. This is basically the exhaust products of several acres of brush or houses burning simultaneously, and a roaring wind blows this concentrated heat along the ground, rather than letting it rise up into the sky. Once it spreads from brush or forest into housing areas, it can become even more powerful since houses are by far the best fuel available. One house burning touches off two or three others, and the result is what you see in the photo above.
Nothing in its way will survive, and the end is quick. A house in its path shimmers as the heat hits it, seems to give off a vapor which catches fire as the windows start to shatter, and immediately the whole house is ablaze. The rest doesn’t take long. It will leave three inches of ashes, glass and even bronze melted into puddles, light steel and aluminum burned to powder, granite counter tops disintegrated, and marble completely burned away. This transformation will take less than five minutes.
Some people may wonder why we were almost powerless to stop this Beast, as the firemen call it. Why did our best efforts only get people out of the way, and not all of them? The answer is a simple but painful truth:
No disrespect for those brave individuals who risk their lives to do it anyway, but here is no force human beings can yet bring to bear which can stop a roaring wind driven fire.
Determined firemen with the best of equipment and plenty of water can only retreat, praying for a break in the wind. If they try to throw water on the fire, the wind turns it back on them within ten feet, and it is ineffective. Aerial water drops are nearly impossible because of the violent turbulence, especially over hilly terrain. Attempts to set backfires are flanked and over run due to the speed of the blaze, which advances almost as fast as the wind can blow. At its worst, no one can outrun it, and you might not get away by car.
Such winds are not the normal weather for us. Generally cool and humid air comes in from the sea, gradually heating up and drying as it passes inland, finally reaching desert climates. There is good air movement but little high wind. A fire then will be controllable by established methods. However, about five percent of the time the wind blows from the other direction and it has very different characteristics.
The Santana winds start as a cold, high pressure area over the mountains East and North of us. The high pressure cell pushes this air toward the coast, and as it descends, it compresses, heats up, and becomes drier. About half the time this is accompanied by strong, gusty winds. The vegetation in many areas is predominately sagebrush which is extremely flammable and open textured, so the fire can blow rapidly right through it, burning everything.
Now I must introduce myself a bit more fully. As I see the death toll rising, the thousands of homes lost, the people who now have only the clothes they are wearing, it brings a special pain. You see, I once was them, losing my home along with those of 300 of my fellow townspeople in the Canyon Fire of 1993. The Santana blew through my neighborhood like a hot knife through butter, and it was on its way to the Pacific when the wind quit and the firemen could stop it.
It was pretty miserable right after, but I know now that my town and I had little to complain about. We had no deaths, and almost everyone had good insurance and rebuilt immediately, but much more fireproof.
Although many celebrities have lost their homes as well, the larger Paradise area was mostly inhabited by retired and working people. It was a vigorous but not a wealthy community. If they are still alive and have insurance, it may not be sufficient to rebuild at today’s prices. These seem like folks who only wanted to earn a piece of the pie and not die broke. A lot of them are now busted flat. They will need help from many directions if we can hope for any restoration of their community.
They will have to go much more fireproof, using the latest methods. What I found from our own fire was that we have been building our houses for years to serve merely as tinder in one giant conflagration or another. I learned much from a retired fireman who briefed me on all the insidious ways a fire can enter your house and take it, and I used this information in my own rebuild. Most of what I learned is now also part of my City’s ordinances.
What will take to face the Beast the next time the Devil sends it down? We won’t always be able to prevent it, and we will not be able to stop it, but we can survive it. This is your ray of hope. After our fire, much of what we learned about survivability came from analyzing the two homes which were left standing completely alone amid the ashes of dozens of neighboring homes. Fires like this move so quickly that the moment of crisis is brief. It seem that if your house is built in a certain way so that it can withstand only a few minutes of high heat without allowing the fire to enter the structure in any way, it can survive because the fire moves on so quickly.
Wealthier towns like my own and Malibu have the resources to come back from such a trial, but Paradise and neighboring communities are not so blessed. We could say, “Oh well, there is only so much we can do for them,” but if we leave them to take an unjust loss and be forgotten, then the Devil wins, doesn’t he.
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P.S. (snark alert) Some under informed voices from out of state have recently issued a proclamation. In their considered opinion, our losses in this fire are truly our own fault. Completely ignoring how such a fire actually operates, they seem to think that lowering taxes and destroying environmental regulation can prevent or stop a fifty mile per hour wind driven monster. They haven't said how much more pollution should be good for us or which roads and bridges we should cease to maintain.
On the other hand, our fearless leader seems to think that it is all in the leaves. Taking a concept from the man himself, I suggest we present the following award to him and any other simplistic hacks.
I give you. . . (fanfare)
***** THE ORDER OF THE GOLDEN RAKE *****
We can even assign them a few acres out in the woods near Truckee to rake up so that they can show us how to better manage our environmental hazards.