TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/070990/0709104.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5KB | 116 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 28

In the Blazing Eye of the Inferno


As one of the worst fires in California history destroys more
than 500 homes and causes $500 million in damage, a TIME
contributor watches his house turn into a gutted skeleton --
and then narrowly escapes with his life

By PICO IYER/SANTA BARBARA


    The ironies, of course, begin to multiply as soon as a life
comes unraveled: in retrospect, everything seems an augury. One
night before, the local TV station had announced that the
conditions -- 106 degrees heat, gale-force winds and
drought-stricken hills -- were the best for a fire in 100
years. That day, at lunch, I had been talking with a friend
whose mother had just died, about the pathos of going through
old belongings. And when, at the optician's office that
evening, my doctor stepped out to go and sniff at what he
thought might be a fire, I sat back and fumed with impatience.

    By 6 o'clock I was in my home, a remote hillside house alone
on a ridge, surrounded by acres of wild brush. The fire started
along our road, just half a mile away, at 6:02. Two friends,
arriving at that moment, pointed to the jagged line of orange
tearing down the hillside like a waterfall and splitting the
brush open like a knife through fruit. Then the electricity
went off. Then the phones went dead. By 6:10, huge curls of
flame were hurtling over the ridge a few feet from the house.


    I had time only to grab my ancient cat, Minnie, and the
manuscript of a book just two weeks from completion. By the
time I tried to jump into my car to drive away, walls of flame
were jumping over the driveway, scorching my face and shrouding
the house in an angry orange haze. The three of us leaped,
pursued by flames, into a van, and started to race down the
mountain road. Within 50 yards, we knew we could go no farther.
Flames 70 feet high were cresting over the curve of the hill
on one side, and on the other, currents of orange were slicing
up the slope toward us. Everywhere I turned, rivulets of orange
were pouring across the hills like molten lava, sweeping up
trees and feasting on houses. At times we were unable to breathe
as the 70 m.p.h. wind whipped ashes all around, so strong we
could not open the door. Our van was alone in the heart of the
inferno, and there was nothing we could do but pray.

    Only one other person was in view, a man in shorts with a
water truck, standing alone in the road trying, through
smarting eyes, to contain the flames with a hose. Alone, he
aimed his hose at waves of flame that crashed like waves around
us, now coming to a crest, and now, for a while, subsiding,
until suddenly they were there again, leaping over a ridge and
bearing down upon us.

    Soon we were gagging at the fumes. The cat was panting
feverishly, we were hosing down our van and our bodies with
water from the truck. I had never before known how swift fire
could be, and how efficient. Occasionally, the air would clear,
and we would see the blue above the mountains; then the smoke
was around us again, and a column of orange looming above.
Someone pointed out that the one book we'd inadvertently
managed to bring with us was called All the Right Places.

    We waited, stranded, for about two hours, two of us with
Minnie in the van, while the other two heroically battled the
flames. The fire surged up the hill like dogs jumping at a
fence. A helicopter appeared, but then was lost again in the
smoke and the spitting ashes. A fire truck came up the road at
last, but its consolation was brief: we could not go down the
hill, they said, nor up. We squeezed together in the van, Verdi
playing on the radio, and watched my room turn into a gutted
skeleton.

    As darkness fell, the scene grew ever more surreal. A car
came racing up the hill, snatched and chased by licking flames.
In front of us, the hulks of other cars were blazing. A man
caked in soot appeared, looking for his horse. As night began
to deepen, the dark hills acquired necklaces of orange, and the
sky around us was a locust-cloud of ashes. And, when we were
told that it was the time to make a break for it, we finally
raced down the mountain through a scene more beautiful and
unreal than any Vietnam-movie fire fight: beside us, houses
were turning into outlines of themselves, the blackness was
electric with orange, and cars were burning as calmly as a
family hearth. Burning logs and the corpses of small animals
blocked the middle of the road as we sped through clouds of
ashes, the sky above us turning an infernal dusty yellow.

    By dawn next morning, everything was gone. Smoke hissed out
of melting cracks, and an occasional small fire burned. All the
signs of life were there, but everything was hushed. Later,
officials announced that the fire was probably caused by arson.
On Saturday, Santa Barbara was declared a federal disaster
area. Fifteen years of daily notes and books half written, of
statues and photos and memories, were gone. My only solace came
from the final irony. In the manuscript I had saved, I had
quoted the poem of the 17th century Japanese wanderer Basho,
describing how destruction can sometimes bring a kind of
clarity:

    My house burned down.      Now I can better see      The
rising moon.