Hold your fire.

Phoenix Coverley

It's been a hot one and California has experienced several fires to go along with our new climate. Of the 3 major Central Coast fires this month, the latest (Trabing) started friday, reputedly by an arsonist on a motorcycle who stopped and lit several blazes along the freeway. At 2 pm I saw a small plume of smoke on the horizon. 20 minutes later it was 100 feet into the air. By the time I got in my car the freeway was at a standstill. I was one of the last people on the backroad. The fire was about 2 miles away and the sky was completely obscured by a 400' wall of white hot heat and smoke. Blackened bits of exploding Eucalyptus trees flew through the air above as we inched along, praying the blaze would not overtake us. Although the fire was 90% contained in a period of hours,over 650 acres, many beautiful homes, horses and even some ocelots and llamas were lost. The following day, 14 fires were lit by the uncommon occurrence of summer lightning- reminding me of Colorado. The Los Padres fire (50k acres) is still raging to the south, The Martin fire just finished burning 600 acres in Bonnie Doon a week ago and there are two more fires to the north in Santa Clara. Considering the summer has just begun, it's turning into a hot one here so I thought it would be a worthy effort to remind folks with the image above that it's a good idea to make sure all summer fires are contained.
It looks like Big Sur will be burning for 2 more months. 90,000 acres have burned over the last month and it's only 5% contained.

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