Some of those fires are in my old stomping grounds. Sad. But there are always
fires in those places, every decade or three.

The worst So Cal fires were in the late 1930s. Every mountain seemed to be on
fire. But now there are more people building more houses where there shouldn't
be any houses and any fire becomes a conflageration.

A bit of trivia. The correct name for those hot, dry, i.e., "devil" winds off
the desert is Santana, not Santa Ana.

Apparently, the dust bowl and WWII boom immigrants had never heard of the
renegade Apache or knew what his name meant, but they knew of the town (or
river) by the name of Santa Ana.

One can't blame them, though. Native Californians like myself spoke in what was
called the California mumble. The newbies apparently misunderstood what we were
saying and thought we were mumbling Santa Ana when we really did say Santana.

Bill, K5BY
Naturalized Texan