Fire Shots

October 25 & 26, 2003

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I was up early on Saturday to go bike riding. I had heard the Santa Ana winds would be blowing so I knew it could get hot and I wanted to beat the heat. I just did my Sulphur Mountain bike ride by myself. It was actually chilly when I started out around 7:15 but by the time I got a couple of miles up the mountain it had warmed up. As I was getting near the top I could smell a little smoke in the air, and I could see a thin layer of smoke off to the east in pink and orange. This first picture is from Sulphur Mountain, just north of Ventura, at around 9:30 AM Saturday.

After I got back I pretty much stayed in the whole day Saturday, and because I had turned in my cable TV I had not heard any news and was not aware of the severity of the fires.

Sunday morning I got up even earlier, thanks to the time change, and I was supposed to meet my friend and co-worker Dave for some more bike riding. Because it had been warm this month, I had actually opened one of my upstairs windows, and I could smell a trace of smoke as I woke up. When I got in the car around 5:35 and turned off of my street onto highway 118 (which I am at the far west end of, it later becomes the Ronald Reagan Freeway through Simi Valley), I saw perhaps the most spectacular sight I have ever seen. The top of one of the foothills about 5 miles east of where I live was completely ringed in flames, and smoke was just pouring from the top of it like it was an erupting volcano.

I was thinking then that I should turn around and get my camera, and I will probably always regret not getting a picture of that, but I was supposed to meet Dave before 6 and did not want to be late. As I drove a couple of miles east though, I went into the smoke bank, and I started to see ash falling like snow in my headlights. It was at that point that I got out my phone and called Dave (and also remembered that the phone has a camera, silly me). Dave went outside as we were talking and mentioned that there was smoke above him and to the west, too.

We thought about changing plans but I decided to continue on for now. There was a break in the smoke between Ventura and Camarillo, but then on the east end of Camarillo the smoke got very heavy. Just beyond there US101 climbs the Conejo grade up and over into the Conejo Valley, where Thousand Oaks and some other cities are. The next two picture I took from the southbound 101 just past the top of the Conejo grade as it descends towards Thousand Oaks (the orange glow is the sunrise, not flames). The smoke here is from the Simi Valley fire.

At Dave’s house we decided to not chance riding around the Conejo, so we got in our cars. As Dave followed me I could see in his headlights all of the gray ash that my car was kicking up. We drove back west through the smoke bank in Camarillo and the smoke bank in Ventura, and then north a little towards Ojai, where I usually do my Sulphur Mountain ride. Because we had our road bikes, though, we parked and headed up what is called Casitas Pass, on highway 150 on the north side of Lake Casitas. It is about 15 miles west of Sulphur Mountain. This next picture was taken from Casitas Pass around 7:45 AM.

By the time I got back home my apartment was in the smoke bank. I had forgotten to close my window that morning but fortunately not much smoke had come in. There was some larger black pieces of ash on the sidewalks and patios. Sunday afternoon it seemed to clear some. I went back to office in Camarillo Sunday evening. The smoke was still heavy and you could see helicopters shuttling back and forth to battle the Simi Valley blaze. Sunday night when I got back home you could see the remnants of the flames near the base of the foothill that had been burning that morning. I woke up again Monday morning around 5:30 so I took a walk outside and I could still see an orange glow in that direction, but there is too much diffused smoke around now to really get a picture of anything.

The next item is a potion of a satellite photo I got off of the Internet that I marked some relative locations on. It shows most of Santa Barbara, Ventura, and LA counties. The item after is the original large satellite image of all of Southern California.