POSTCARD FROM THE FIRE : Optimism and Dread in a Grand Canyon

For the people living in the pathway of an enormous fire advancing with great speed, the only real question becomes do we go, or do we stay?

By noon Wednesday I was thinking Go, so I loaded up my truck with those possessions I believed most indispensable. These were family pictures and paintings, proof of insurance, tennis gear, books signed by favorite authors, computer and printer, manuscript of current novel, birth and death certificates, some clothes, dog food and dogs.

The Laguna Canyon fire was still accelerating south. Black smoke roiled up, then toward the coast, turning tan as it dissipated into the blue high above.

I stood on the deck and yelled across to my neighbor, Alphonse: “What are you going to do?”

Alphonse stared off toward the fire, then shrugged.

“Stay,” he called back. “This isn’t as bad as in 1955.”

“What if it jumps the road?”

“It won’t jump the road.”

Heartened by Alphonse’s conviction, I turned off the truck engine and got the dogs out. The two retrievers were gloomy, believing that a hunting trip had been aborted. I left the keys in the ignition.

Lagunans--bound as always by civic pride, quirky personalities and staggering mortgage payments--kept in close touch by phone. Disaster, an even stronger social binder, was blasting in from the north with more speed, more furious flames, greater promise of catastrophe.

The naturalist Doug Thompson called from downtown, offering help. CPA Craig Murrel called from Top of the World to offer assistance, still believing, as did many residents, that they themselves would be safe while those of us in the canyon would bear the brunt of the coming tragedy.

The people on my little canyon street--Castle Rock--were twice asked to evacuate by the LBPD, but few did. Shortly after the first evacuation plea was issued by police loudspeaker, Alphonse came walking up the driveway with two cold beers.

“What are you going to do now, Alphonse?”

“Relax and watch the canyon burn.”

“Did you load up your car, in case?”

“I’m not leaving. It was worse in 1955.”

By 3 p.m. Wednesday, the fire had passed our street on the other side of the canyon, jumped the road at Big Bend, raged northwest into Emerald Bay, southwest into Laguna proper, then began to slowly backtrack in our direction.

“Oh my,” muttered Alphonse. “I think this is a lot worse than 1955.”

By then, the neighbors had congregated at my house, which offered front-row seats for what increasingly looked to be an unavoidable apocalypse. Most of the fire companies had left the canyon, bound for the city and points north. The flames crept our way, untended, working against the wind, but working diligently just the same.

The only answer to eradication seemed to be dinner, so a 6 p.m. barbecue was set for my place, casual attire, no RSVP necessary, bring food, booze and your life.

At this point, the west side of Laguna Canyon had burned from the freeways to the sea, and in some places right down to the asphalt of Laguna Canyon Road. The hillsides looked like the dump pan of a barbecue--black and white ash was about all that was left, bushes, trees and plants reduced in minutes to constituent molecules.

A stand of oak that had apparently survived suddenly burst into flames as we watched. Flames continued to burn down toward the road. A herd of deer fled by, headed toward the fire, confused, fleet, doomed. Birds rose from the hillside and battled the Santa Ana winds in wild variation of velocity and stasis.

Ralph brought chicken, the Ragles wine, Greg and Diana salad, the Cucitis pasta and steak. We ate quickly, amid remarks about this “last supper,” gallows humor regarding “s’mores” cooked on the hillside, and “keeping the home fires burning.” The levity would shift immediately to anguish when the approaching fire took out a grove of scrub oak atop the ridgeline, or the tiny TV that Greg brought up announced tragedy in Emerald Bay, Irvine Cove, Newport Beach.

Each person seemed locked into alternating currents of optimism and dread. Diana watched the fire with tears in her eyes. Nina, who had lost all in a fire years ago in New York, could hardly speak. The men seemed more comfortable with the logistics of survival, and with criticism of how the professionals were doing their jobs. (Hours later, when the firefighters successfully lit a backfire above the Big Bend of Laguna Canyon Road, all grumbling turned to a standing ovation from my deck. We could hear the voices of the firemen, and hoped they could hear our cheers. Quite suddenly, everyone was a hero.)

The only thing that seemed to spread faster than the fire was rumors about its destruction. We learned that the high school had burned, that the police and fire stations were reduced to rubble, that City Hall had exploded like a bomb and then smoldered down to nothing--none of which turned out to be true. The TV news was confusing and imprecise, and the locations of the flames indecipherable in the parade of night time images blazing across the screen.

Evacuations of town continued--some mandatory--as homes burned down by the score. Most of my downtown allies, those who just hours ago had called to help, were being ejected from their own neighborhoods.

Telephone lines went fully schizoid by 7, sometimes on, sometimes off. With nightfall the full cinematic sweep of the event seemed heightened as the conflagration burned into the sky in unforgettable panoramas of black and orange. The western sky glowed from the inferno below. The reassuring roar of air support diminished with dark, and we all realized that this war was now to be fought in the trenches--hands, backs, shovels, hoses. The hum of distant chain saws echoed down the canyon toward us, and between the raging brush firefighters labored along the ridgeline.

We drank all the wine, started in on pots of coffee, and started to wonder how long we could stay up to witness this battle. To watch firefighters work is an exhausting ordeal, and we could only humbly speculate what kind of person it took to be shoveling up that ridgeline through cactus, sage and inhuman temperatures--1,200 degrees in some places, it was reported--for hours on end.

A TV newscaster noted that to firefighters, fire “is the ultimate enemy,” and you could see the truth of this in the astonishing willpower of the fighters. Whatever misgivings our more critical neighbors had about the overall effort were by 9 p.m. revised into unqualified confessions of awe.

Our lives were in their hands, and their hands were very, very good.

Around 10, some of us began to head for home and bed. I was tasked with staying up the rest of the night and to call everyone if I was going to leave. The truck remained loaded, aimed toward Laguna Canyon Road for a quick exit north should one become necessary.

The dogs stared out at the approaching fire, still disappointed by a canceled hunt. If it is generally true that animals sense danger before people do, my dogs then represent a minority. They happily greeted arriving guests, begged for scraps and napped contentedly when the desire hit. At one point, the chocolate Labrador looked at me, then at all the people, then yawned and conked his head on the deck en route to sleep.

The Jones family--Mike, Kathy and Hallie--struggled up the drive after 10. They had walked back home from Canyon Acres Drive, a mile away, after helping friends whose house was gone. The odd combination of exhaustion and anxiety showed clearly on their faces. They sat down finally, looking out toward the burning town, and said little. It had become obvious hours ago how tiny our words and thoughts could be against this magnificent, almost infernal power. To witness Kathy Jones bereft of something insightful, funny or hopeful to say is to realize the limit of the language.

Around midnight everyone had left. The fire advancing from the south was contained by the backfire still rising up against the night sky. Embers shot upward from the brush like in fountains. Firefighters, outlined by flame along the hilltop, stood in postures of momentary victory as they watched the backfire burn toward town, sealing off a zone of at least temporary safety. But they still had another quarter mile of chopping, clearing, shoveling and burning to do before the perimeter would touch Laguna Canyon Road and complete the mission. This they accomplished around 4 a.m. I lay on a couch inside my living room, watching through increasingly dim eyes, finally nodding off to sleep as the sparks continued to swirl up into the night.

Two hours later, around sunrise, I awoke to a smoke-choked world of blackened hillside, ash-filled air and the terrible scent of scorched earth.

You couldn’t see much. Flames still lapped upward from the south. Helicopters dumped water onto them, and fire companies waited near Big Bend, where the fire had made its original, horrific leap across the road. The neighbors wore wet bandannas or dust masks and labored up the driveway to assess what had happened.

According to the TV, the fire is contained but not out, which was obvious by the polluted atmosphere, the spiraling columns of smoke still rising from hot spots, the constant dumpings of the helicopters.

The canyon was a wholly post-nuclear tableau, a seared black canvas completed by an artist using only black and white. Skeleton trees stood along the crest. The charred outlines of the once formidable oaks stood deep in the draws, now sentinels to a rather complete nothingness. There was no wind. Ash settled over everything, penetrating the homes of those lucky enough to still have them.

Nothing on this little street was lost, by consensus a genuine miracle. At the intersection of Laguna Canyon Road and Castle Rock was a patch of blackened earth around the mailboxes, like a postcard dropped to the ground--a sharp reminder, as if we needed one--of just how close to us the threat had come.

Thursday found most Lagunans confined to wherever they happened to be. Families were separated; those in town could not leave it; those outside of town could not get in. The bravest of them fast-talked their way past the police, or scurried along secret byways that led them in and out of town. Main Beach was home to half a dozen Huey transport choppers; town was deserted except by the few locals who had remained; the Marine Room Tavern became the unofficial town center for news, telephone communication, beer, commiseration. Those of us marooned in our homes--not a bad place to be--shared food at potlucks, sympathy at will, news as available.

A kind of survivor’s bonhomie prevailed. Scenes were not clearly reasonable. Alphonse detailed his driveway with a broom and dustpan. Greg Nichols attended the Thursday potluck dressed in complete camouflage, with a skull pin that jabbered when lit up and jabbered if you pressed a button. Dick and Leslie Cuciti lavished potluck guests with the greatest care and attention. Two people I’d never seen before appeared on my driveway to announce that the air--a literal soup of ash and dust--was unhealthful. People rode bikes up and down Laguna Canyon Road.

A production company in Los Angeles called to find out why I hadn’t sent the movie contract for “Summer of Fear” back yet. I was overtaken by a strong desire to put on formal wear for dinner, although I own none. I showered thoroughly and shaved meticulously, twice, sprayed on my best cologne, then proceeded to the deck to stare in disbelief at the ruination of the land.

Very early that night I unplugged the phone and went to bed. Against the blackness of my eyelids rose orange flames. Reality married imagination for the next 12 hours--images of heat and fire, smoke and running deer. The landscape meeting the dreamscape.

Friday morning there was a trickle of cars moving up and down Laguna Canyon Road, signs of life, a pulse of a city down but certainly not out. With the work of destruction not yet over, the work of creation had already begun.

Parker’s fourth novel, “Summer of Fear,” was published this year.