Fires lay a blanket of smoke, soot and ash far and wide

Here's hoping this is the last eerie red sunset of the year and, while we're hoping, for years to come.

I snapped the accompanying photo at 4:40 p.m. Sunday at Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve.

I was driving home after spending two days surfing in Carlsbad, where, by the way, the air was clear and pleasant. I took Pacific Coast Highway instead of the freeway because I was in no hurry to enter the toxic-looking vortex plainly visible to the north.

The sun became obscured in Newport Beach. My eyes began to sting as I entered Huntington Beach. I stopped to stretch my legs at Bolsa Chica and noticed gulls and pelicans looking as lethargic as people.

Birds that flew seemed to seek relief, not food. Santa Ana winds had spread a dense blanket of smoke and ash clear to the horizon, and as those winds calmed the blanket settled like burnt fog.

At home in Redondo Beach it was hot, the air was still and smoke-filled. Like many who live near the beach, I do not have air-conditioning. But I do have a home so I tried not to complain.

I thought of the hundreds whose homes went up in flames and wondered how much of the smoke obscuring the sunset had previously belonged, materially, to them.

Too much of it, I'm afraid. So here's hoping indeed....

--Pete Thomas

Photo: Pete Thomas / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Kris]

We decide to work extra, since most of us volunteer anyway. We came in Saturday, the heat was so intense that instead of concentrating on our work, we worried about our computers. We shut some of them down (some are older) because we found ash and dust presumably from the fires some 50 to 100 miles away.
We took off early and went south to the beach, a lot better.
Monday we will clean everything up just to be sure, readers should do the same.