Autumn In The Valley Of Smoke--by Bryan F.

 The neighborhood I spent my teen years in was evacuated in the early morning hours a few weeks ago because a fire named, The Hillside Fire, was rapidly advancing. I sit and watched this story unfold and felt grateful that when I lived there we did not have to think about running from our homes in the night for our lives. 

House burning in the Hillside fire in my old neighborhood

We moved to that neighborhood on 50th street in San Bernardino in November of 1967, when I was 14 years old. It was a dream come true. A nice home we could afford at the base of the foothills in a beautiful wooded neighborhood. I was excited because I was now within walking distance of my best friend's house over on 46th and Mountain View. We would be going to junior high school together and I was thrilled about that.  

A present-day picture of my family home on 50th Street in San Bernardino. A two-story addition was added in the 90's, I believe.

The San Bernardino Valley was coined by Native Americas that lived in the area the “Valley Of Smoke”. This was the result of the topography that created a bowl-like shape with high mountain ranges acting as a reservoir to trap campfire and chimney smoke from the valley and points west in the Los Angeles area. 

In later years as the industrial revolution took hold in the area, the new smoke was smog, pollutants from factories, mills, automobiles, and trains.

When I was a kid in the mid-sixties one could not really play outside in August. The fall winds had not arrived yet and the skies would turn grayish-brown with pollution and block some of the sun. It also blocked the view of the mountains, you were just in the cloud of haze, no sky, no mountains. The smog would cause my eyes to turn bloodshot and burn and my lungs to ache. I rode my bike in the mornings because doing so in the afternoon and evening was not possible. 

The new smoke in the valley now is from wildfires when they happen. The daily stuff is mostly gone due to pollution regulation that began to cause a significant improvement in air quality in the valley in the 80s and 90s. You can now see the sky and mountains year-round. Even the morning haze from orange grove smudge pots is gone as are most of the orange trees. 

Autumn in Southern California is not like it is in much of the rest of the country. The dry Santa Ana winds are fierce and suck the moisture out of the watershed leaving it a dry tender for the cigarette butt, vehicle backfire, sparking power line or arsonist, to name but a few modes of ignition. A wet winter can grow a lethal tender box of fuel for a wildfire.

I watched my first fire on the high ridges of the San Bernardino Mountains before I was five years old. That was about 1959. We lived on Dogwood Avenue then, in the Del Rosa area of San Bernardino. I lived there from six months to age five.   

Fortunately, there were no wildfires sweeping into the hillside homes in those days and the house line was a little lower than it is now. By 1980 a fire coined the Panorama fire would sweep down into the foothills and wipe out many of the homes of my former schoolmates. It came within only a few houses of my street and burned to the ground, my good friend Cherie’s house which was on the cross street at the end of my street. 

The Old Fire, in 2003, a very bad wildfire burned down entire streets in Del Rosa. The ones closer to the foothills and because of wind and tall flammable palm trees, random houses throughout Del Rosa. There have been others but these two affected areas that I and my parents had lived in and caused the greatest losses.

The wind, the Santa Anas, have always been both friend and foe. Driving out the pollution but also driving fires through the canyons and imperiling the mountain communities and since 1980 the foothill communities, as well. 

When I walked home from school, I walked up Waterman Avenue. The east side of Waterman was a huge wash to control the water coming down off the mountains through Waterman Canyon in the spring from the snowmelt. I would walk on the very high brim of the wash on my way to junior high so that no one would notice the Marlboro between my fingers tucked into the cup of my hand for maximum coverage. On the way back I usually walked on the west side where there was a sidewalk behind guardrails. Waterman Avenue, otherwise known as Highway 18 was a huge four-lane highway even back then and the route to Lake Arrowhead and all the ski resorts in the mountains. The car speeds averaged 60 plus but the Santa Ana when they blew down through Waterman Canyon was often greater. I could actually lean into the wind, way in and at a 45-degree angle and it would hold me up. You actually needed to lean in to be more aerodynamic in order to make your way and not be blown into the guardrail. You couldn’t smoke a cigarette when it was like that. 

So one can imagine how those foothills and canyon at the base of the mountains and the mountains themselves might be a real fire hazard with those winds to drive them.

The famous Arrowhead Springs Hotel in the shadow of the Arrowhead.

I loved the Northend as it was coined by the locals. We were known as Northenders and there was a lot of pride in that designation. The neighborhood I lived in was actually named Arrowhead on the maps, but no one used that name. The neighborhood was located along Waterman Avenue on the east and was in the shadow of a natural formation up on the mountain, just above the very famous Arrowhead Springs Hotel where the stars of early Hollywood stayed. It formed a huge arrowhead-shaped formation that could be seen from the valley floor. I know it sounds weird but it actually exists as a result of rock formations where no trees can grow.  The newer neighborhoods to the west, just west of Electric Avenue was named Northpark for the main road that ran through the center.

View of the Arrowhead from the Arrowhead Country Club golf course.

Ninety miles per hour Santa Ana winds and an arsonist setting a fire at Panorama Point up on Highway 18 (a make-out spot in those days aka.
Lookout Point) in the mountains started the first of many fires that would continue to this day to threaten the foothill neighborhoods of San Bernardino.

The Northpark neighborhood in the wake of the arson set Panorama fire of 1980.

The Panorama fire began on November 24th and was contained on December 1, 1980, but not before destroying 310 homes from Waterman Canyon on the east, my neighborhood and on to Northpark on the west where four people died. It was the beginning of a new era of fire in the valley. 

Richard and Pat Nixon leaving their rented home during the Bel Air/ Brentwood fire on November 6, 1961, that destroyed 500 homes.

Zsa Zsa Gabor's home lost in the 1961 Bel Air Brentwood fire.

KTLA 5 "Telecopter" that covered the Bel Air Brentwood fire. One of the first news helicopters in LA.

Of course, California has always been very fire-prone. The canyons in the Los Angeles area have been burning forever. I recall watching homes burn in Bel Air and Brentwood when I was only seven years old. One of the LA news stations, KTLA 5 was one of the first news stations to start using helicopters for news coverage. The close-up look showed houses burning with Christmas trees in the big picture windows. Those images affected me deeply. The canyons and hills have always burned but the recent situation where a fire burned Malibu all the way to the ocean is new.  

In 2018 a fire in Malibu burns all the way to the ocean. 

I hope that next year if you vote in the election that you will consider a candidate that you believe will be the most likely to address the urgent threat of Climate Change. Here in California, we need no proof that it exists. I’ve personally watched it happen before my eyes. 

Drivers and passengers flee burning cars in a 2015 fire in Cajon Pass fire. This is the one that keeps me up on the nights before I have to drive the pass the next day.

I am constantly alert to wind conditions when I travel the tinder box which is the Cajon Pass that I must traverse to get to the dentist and other destinations in the valleys below from where I now live in Victorville. I carry water and meds and other essentials because I know that even with the winds calm that a fire could block my way back home. The fire season is nearly year-round now.

Go to next C7 post