Don't want California to become cinder

Just in case I was missing life in Southern California, eastern New Mexico has been getting a little bit of California in the air over the past several weeks.

Westerly winds have carried smoke from California’s catastrophic wildfires to Quay County in varying quantities. On good days, it was a light haze that created an eerie orange glow with a red sun in the morning and evening. On bad days, it shrouds even the passes through the mesas.

In that way, it reminds me of most days in Southern California. Smog routinely fogged the valley we lived in and occasionally created wonderfully surreal sunsets.

Some ugliness in Southern California couldn’t be helped, but some of the nightmares involving the wildfires should have been avoided.

Forestry officials have long been disturbed at population expansion into forest and deserts, especially as fire danger grew.

Jon Keeley, a research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, estimated that 25% of California’s residents — 11 million people — were living in areas that only a few years ago were wildlands.

Forest environmentalists had realized that promoting tree growth left forests overcrowded, and in ever-worsening drought conditions the competition for water and nutrients killed most of the weaker trees. The result was that tree-size matchsticks proliferated among the living trees, accelerating the growth and ferocity of wildland fires.

Our family came close to wildland fire disaster one Saturday. I awoke that morning to find our house enveloped in smoke and our streets lined with what seemed to be every fire apparatus in the state.

A fire that had been 20 miles away the night before was burning past us about a quarter mile away, driven by winds that kept the fire from spreading in our direction.

I watched a few blocks away until a backdraft sent a rush of smoke and ash into our neighborhood. Then I ran home and hosed down the house and the back yard. We got lucky. We didn’t even have to evacuate.

The most recent fires have destroyed a few things I remember.

The fires leveled nearly half of Big Creek, headquarters for a century-old system of hydroelectric dams owned by my former employer, Southern California Edison. My working trips there were welcome breaks from the urban grind.

I also have pleasant memories of Napa Valley, where fires only last week destroyed homes and wineries.

Fires have come uncomfortably close to homes of people I know. One friend even moved out of Gold Rush country to Reno because he could not adequately fire-proof his mountain home.

In the short run, there probably is not much one can do. Efforts were under way to thin out dead trees before I left the Golden State, and I hope people will now think twice before buying mountain residences.

In the long run, letting nature choose which trees survive will help, as perhaps would setting strict limits on homebuilding in wilderness areas.

I still get back there once in a while, and I don’t want to see the Golden State become a cinder.

Steve Hansen writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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