Sitting in a Boston hotel, Annabel Graham ’08, a resident of Malibu, Calif., anxiously watched the massive fires in her home state race closer and closer to her home during Parents’ Weekend. “The area all around our neighborhood has been burned now, but our house is still standing,” she said. More than 7,000 firefighters are fighting to reign in the wildfires in southern California, which have burned more than 500,000 acres, destroyed more than 1,200 homes and forced nearly half a million people to evacuate from their homes. The fires, reaching from north of Los Angeles to south of the Mexican border, have killed three people and injured more than 50 other people, according to The New York Times yesterday. Graham, whose family and friends were some of the first to be impacted by these wildfires, said, “There was a mandatory evacuation of Carbon Canyon in Malibu, where I live. My best friend was woken up at five in the morning when the fire started and only had about 30 minutes to evacuate her house because the fire was so close. Luckily, the wind changed direction at the last minute, so her house didn’t burn.” Anna Henderson ’08 of Encinitas, Calif., said, “My friends had to keep calling their answering machines to check if their houses were okay.” She added, “I’m really scared, especially since I’m not even sure if my house will still be there tomorrow. The media doesn’t give a lot of useful information, just lots of pictures of destruction and a predicted fire pathway. You can only cross your fingers and hope for the best.” The first wildfire of a series of 16 fires struck Malibu, north of Los Angeles, last Saturday. Graham said, “My parents were visiting me during Parents’ Weekend when we found out about the fires. My brother, who was at home, moved some valuables out of the house and took pictures of a fire truck parked in our driveway and several jets dropping water in the canyon. We could see our house on TV from our hotel in Boston.” The wildfire crisis is one of the worst in the history of Southern California. President George W. Bush ’64 ordered federal aid to assist the urgent situation in California on Tuesday.Santa Ana winds propelled the fires to grow thousands of acres in only a few days. These winds blow erratically from the desert through canyons and mountains towards the coast. According to categories determined by the U.S. Drought Monitor, the drought of the Southwest in past summer was “extreme.” The entire Pepperdine University campus was evacuated. The deadly mixture of Santa Ana winds and dry vegetation created the perfect conditions for these destructive fires. Many evacuees, however, chose to move in with friends and relatives living in northern California. The evacuation is the largest recorded in Californian history. Most evacuees were restless worrying about their houses. Many tried to find out more information by calling and watching the news. Even those that were not in the direct vicinity of the wildfires were impacted by them. Air quality deteriorated considerably due to the Santa Ana winds that spread ash everywhere. Hundreds of miles away from the fires, high density smoke blanketed the skies. Low air quality caused many school cancellations in surrounding regions. Jung Hun Koh ’11, whose family lives in the northeast part of Los Angeles County, relatively far away from the actual fires, said, “There is a lot of dust in the air blocking the sun and temperatures reached 86 degrees, similar to what happens when a volcano erupts nearby. My brother’s elementary school forbade all students from athletic activities during recess time, because of the high carbon dioxide concentration in the air.” Margaret Bowers ’09, who lives northeast of the fires in Newbury park, said, “I read an article about the increase in natural disasters possibly being directly linked to global warming. Maybe these fires, in areas where we more than have the resources to control them, are so large and devastating because the more we alter the environment now, the less we are able to control it, and the effects of our actions are now spiraling out of our control.” Firemen continue to struggle with the unpredictability of the Californian wildfires. The thoughts and best wishes of the entire PA community are with the students from Southern California whose family and friends are coping with the devastating wildfires that have spread with frightening speed over the last several days.
