La Cañada – Flintridge

As a Southern California resident, I tend to lose track of how many wildfires are burning at any given time in the summer, where they are, or when they started. Half the time I rely on my mom, who lives in Northern California, to bring fires to my attention. Having no frame of reference for how close together some cities are, she will often ask if the fires are bad, to which my most common response is, “What fire? I didn’t even know there was one.” However, it becomes difficult to ignore or pass over or not notice what looks like a thunderhead a thousand feet high. Especially when that thunderhead is hanging right over your own town in temperatures upwards of 100˚F. The worst part is when the wind changes southerly and all of a sudden it is hot as hell, and there are tendrils of smoke creeping through the city and it becomes difficult to even see down the street. I was watching for a few minutes from the roof of the Borders parking lot in Pasadena and I could see the flames… they were several miles away so I could only imagine how massive they must be up close. Instantly the flames I could see tripled in size. My guess is that a pine tree exploded once the sap boiled. I can’t imagine what else would have caused such a reaction. At any rate, there are certainly some beautiful destructive forces in the world. Thank you iPhone.