Blazy days

By Bill Kisliuk

Last week, it felt as though the  California fire season for 2008 was well in the rear-view mirror.

It was a memorable fire year, with thousands of blazes cooking all at once, smoking up the sky for weeks at a time, exhausting firefighters, stretching their resources mighty thin and costing the state millions of dollars in  unexpected expenses

Six thousand lightning strikes in a June  thunderstorm started more than 2,000 fires. More than 25,000 firefighters — “from across the state, nation and world,” as the CalFire Web site puts it — battled the blazes.

CalFire’s totals show 2,096 fires in the  Mendocino Lightning Complex, Butte County Complex and related blazes,  chewing up more than 1.2 million acres.

The most amazing statistic of all? Lives lost: 15.

Napa had one fire of its own, the so-called Wild Fire, which straddled the Solano County line in the Wild Horse Valley and burned 4,100 acres.

Then, finally, things quieted down.

Weeks went by without much thought to dangerous fires. The weeks turned to months.

The first rain of the year came in early October, and my mental calendar turned a page.

Field workers were hustling to haul in grapes that can’t handle late rains. Harvest and crush entered full swing. The leaves turned colors, a chill even descended in the last few days and nights.

Then the call goes up that Deer Park is in flames. A coworker who lives in Vacaville phones in to say he can see the smoke.

Deer Park Road is closed while firefighters from around the region come to battle the blaze. Prisoner crews are out digging trenches and clearing brush in rugged, heavily forested territory that makes it difficult to communicate or see what is going on elsewhere on the front lines.

The guy on the radio reports Angwin is a “neighborhood” of St. Helena, a fact that would surprise people in both towns, not to mention the proud residents of Deer Park, on the slope between Angwin and the valley floor.

As I write, the Deer fire has eaten up 300 acres and a home, no one is seriously hurt and the firefighters appear to be getting the upper hand.

It is mid-October. Some hot days are probably ahead. In most years, a hard, steady rain wouldn’t arrive for at least a month, maybe two.

Today the neighbor’s beautiful oak trees are blanketing the driveway with leaves. The tomato plants are sagging and all but spent. The fruit is off the vines in the places where I walk with my wife‘s hound. Local classrooms and backpacks are full again and everyone is wearing their jackets at Memorial Stadium on a Friday night. The longer nights are making it harder to get up early in the morning. My friend in South Lake Tahoe reports snow flurries are slowing work on the home he is still trying to rebuild after a June 2007 blaze  scorched the Tahoe basin.

Meanwhile, we’re still in fire season.

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