The Winds of Autumn

Raging brushfires scorch Southern California

Lashed by hot, howling desert winds, they are such a seasonal feature in Southern California that fire officials give them names, like hurricanes. This week "Thunder," "Indian Truck," "Lakeland" and five other brushfires consumed 84,000 acres of hillsides and canyons in the region. Only a week earlier, 63,000 acres near Los Angeles had been blackened.

The worst of the brushfires was "Panorama," and it certainly lived up to its' name. In its panoramic sweep the fire burned out 23,000 acres in San Bernardino County, the area hardest hit by the flames. Started by arson, the fire storm burned down the hillsides into the San Bernardino suburbs, then back up through Waterman Canyon. In affluent North Park, a roaring wall of flame incinerated whole blocks of expensive houses, leaving nothing but ashen rectangles and soot-covered swimming pools. Four died: an elderly couple who perished as they tried to save a pet, and two other people who died of heart attacks. Some 7,000 fire fighters were struggling to contain the flames, sometimes battling winds gusting up to 90 m.p.h. At week's end their job was not yet finished.

The day after Panorama roared through San Bernardino, Mail Carrier Kathy Holland stopped her Jeep at a charred and empty lot on Sepulveda Avenue. "God, that one's gone too," she sighed, as she returned yet another packet of mail to her pouch. An engineer who came back to sift through the ashes of his home found his Thanksgiving turkey, frozen before the fire, charred to a crisp in the freezer. Another victim, Tony Marzullo, attempted to salvage humor from tragedy by spraying a For Sale--Cheap sign on what used to be a freezer and propping it up on what used to be a front lawn. "You have to make a joke about it," he said a bit unconvincingly.

When the fires are finally out, another danger looms. Within the month, winter rains are expected. This year they will descend on barren, burned-over hillsides and dry creek beds with no vegetation to slow the flow of the water. Homes that escaped the fires may yet succumb to the floods and mud slides that are as regular a feature of winter in Southern California as the fires of autumn.

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