Back when we moved to San Fran I thought it was great that the very first week we got a string of good "swarm" earthquakes (that is, after I gave it some thought and felt dumb for yelling 'big trucks aren't supposed to be driving up our street all day and night!').

Relatedly, it was totally cool to move down to LA and in the first week be just minutes away from one of the biggest wildfires in generations.

Since it was the only thing anyone asked about ... here're some pics from The Station Fire that consumed over a hundred thousand acres starting a few weeks back. Today the word is that it is 94% contained BUT the temps are moving back up to the 100's and the dry Santa Anna winds are poised to pick things up again. COOL!

The beginning of this month we had to wipe the "snow" off of our cars every morning, all day every day over the house the sky was grey-like-Seattle-autumn from the smoke and the air truly smelled that "day after camping" stink. But boy, the "clouds" were sometimes beautiful when you got out far enough and looked back... so darned huge over the hill that none of the pics do it any justice."

You gotta admit that's purdy, like a volcano blowing off all day every day for weeks

Starting a bunch of the view of it all from the Lowes on Victory Blvd. That hill is the one our place is on, so it was kinda freaky to go pick up house stuff and wonder if the house was even going to be there long :)

A few from picking up excellent Mexican food on Olive on August 28th. That's my wife's Prius, the hill is where our house is, about five minutes or so up that road from this shot.

The tall center puffy catches your eye, but notice that from one edge of the pic to the other all along the ridge there is a tall band of "clouds". There were no clouds in the sky, that thick smoke line just kept going for miles in both directions.

See the light line of homes about halfway up the hill? That's our place. C'mon over and help us sweep!

And so, Olivia, *that's* why they call it "Flintridge"!

Robert Smith
Burbank, CA

added to smithvoice september 20th 2009