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A month ago my brother visited from back east. We drove the 45 minutes out through Ramona and witch creek to Julian for lunch and apple pie, the town specialty. Our trip was cut short by a wildfire on the backside of town, and we were passed by a steady stream of CalFire trucks heading up to town as we went back downhill home to Scripps Ranch. I took the opportunity to show him how absolutely arid the vegetation was and the extreme fire risk. He got to walk on a beach and see a wildfire in the same day.
Anyone with any sensitivity to their local surroundings would see the hazard. They think, or so they've said, that the wind downed power lines for the witch fire, and that an exploding transformer started at least one of the secondary fires. Too many others to be spontaneous.
Four years ago I rode my bike through the area 1-2 miles away where 350 houses were burned. They wouldn't let people in for quite a while, there was some looting, but I got in earlier on a bike than they would have let a car in. It looked like the California version of Germany and London after the firebombings, even down to being mostly black and gray. Blue sky and sunny, being southern California.
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