Fire Season

The winds are hitting 65 mph and the air is moving from north east to south west, so we are getting the residue from the fires burning in Hansen Dam. Hansen Dam is a big horse area in Los Angeles, but I think the horses are being evacuated to the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank, which is probably six miles south of the fires.

At the moment, Pierce College is really in no shape to accept horses because of the construction going on by the stables to put in the new arenas. The school horse lots are also under construction, so the school horses are taking up the 18 stalls of the mare motel. I just heard my boss indicate that there's a new flare-up somewhere, so despite the construction, we may be getting evacuated animals before the day is out.

Right now, the north west corner of the valley where Ace is still has clear air. The wind direction is still to the east . When I went up to the Performing Arts Building parking lot this morning, there was a clear division between smoky air and clean air, but it was creeping westward. I won't be able to upload pictures until later.

Licenses & Micro-chips

Two years ago, I had an opportunity to get Ace micro-chipped at the college. I also had to pay for a license, which is more about counting horses than anything else. I'm glad I got the micro-chip, although I've read some scary things about them. Ace seems to be doing just fine with it. Since horses don't have collars on all the time (unlike dogs), I haven't quite figured out what to do with the license tag. If I were Ace, I'd hate to have it banging against my cheek if I put it on his halter.

The other day, Gina asked me if Ace was licensed, because they need to have all of the horses licensed in order to get a conditional use permit for the barn. I managed to dig up my license, which expired, and now I've got to drop by the Department of Animal Services to renew the license. I noticed the paperwork has the wrong address and it uses Ace's call name rather than his registered name. That's probably not as important.

The City of Los Angeles recently claimed some sort of ignorance about how many horses are in the San Fernando Valley, saying there were less than 500. That was based on license sales. Lots of horse owners gathered to let the City know they were quite wrong about that, but there is now a push to get the horses licensed.

Fire Season upon Us

This is the view that KNX is showing of the Los Angeles County fires mere minutes ago. It's accurate, because I am looking at the layer of dirty air above me. On the photograph, the spot marked closest to the ocean is the Malibu fire. The one almost perpendicularly north is the Stevenson Ranch fire, and that's the one I've got to keep an eye on, because its march to the sea could include Chatsworth where the Arabian Prince is in residence.

It's a bit like tornado weather around here, except there is no wet and the sky is brown instead of that sickly green that the mid-west gets as a storm approaches. Without the fires, I might even call it "Earthquake Weather," a phrase and title from Tim Power's work. "Earthquake Weather" doesn't usually have this kind of wind. It is warm and dry. The humidity is less than 10%. This is tinderbox time.

As I look out the window to the north, I can see blue sky between the cloudcast and the horizon, but just beyond the hills is black smoke from the fire to the north. Looking out the south window, it is evenly overcast, with the sun making the view a bit warmer than I would expect this time of the afternoon.

The air smells and tastes terrible. My throat hurts every time I take a deep breath. My eyes itch and weep. And I want to rip my skin off.

My friend Jack Dann arrived from Australia last night. He's beginning to think he brings these fires with him, because the last several trips he's made here have been in the Fall, and there were major fires--closer to us, in fact, than they are now. I could see flames from where I am sitting.

We deal with all of the four elements--or are they elementals?--in Southern California: earth, air, fire, and water in the forms of earthquake, wind, fire and floods. Fire and flood sort of alternate. I expect in moderation we would have neither or fewer of each.

That's the price you pay to live in Paradise.