In The Line Of Fire

I spent some time on the roof pruning pine trees today. It should have been done a long time ago, but I wasn't motivated until today. What got me off my butt was the view from my house. It's hard to ignore black smoke on the horizon, especially when it's blowing your way.

It's the Agua Dulce fire that is making me nervous. I was watching the fire on TV as it grew exponentially. There was only one lonely helicopter fighting the fire.

The Malibu fire is getting most of the attention and resources because Malibu is more densely built up, plus it is where the rich, famous and powerful reside. I'm sure that officials would deny that being rich, famous and powerful is a factor in deciding where to allocate scarce fire fighting forces, but I'm too much of a cynic to believe otherwise.

Agua Dulce is about 10 miles away with nothing between me and the fire but brush. I sure hope they decide to send a souper scooper our way. With 9 fires burning in Southern California, things are stretched pretty thin.

The winds have been unbelievable. It was hard to sleep last night with all of the noise, but one good thing happened. I have a couple of trees that I was thinking of hiring trimmers to prune for me. That's no longer necessary. The wind did a good job of removing the extra branches near the top. I'm going to get more sun in my yard now. And if my trees and house catch fire, then my shade problem will be entirely taken care of. There's always a bright side.