Hold back the dawn

 

A massive relief effort like the Berlin airlift to a beleaguered city   Orange County revisited November 15,, 2008..

 

 

But this humanitarian effort is on a grander scale, closer to what we think of as our home

 

 on this planet, the area the size of Rhode Island……..the devastating seven day fires of

 

 destruction  and death in Southern California   the populace scrambling for escape, survival in the midst of

 

a Dante like inferno, engulfing their very  mortality

 

 

                                                                   I

 

A raging tornado of  17 fierce fires, blackening over a half million acres, killing twenty humans in its

 

uncontrollable madness. Nothing that Raymond Chandler, Joan Dideon, Nathaniel West ever imagined in

 

their Eucalyptus wrought dry brush and Palm tree stories, engaged  by seventy five feet high flames. They

 

could never perceive such a landscape become a battleground of firefighters  into a Maginot line, a front

 

from Santa Barbara County South to Baja, East to Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear to the San Bernardino

 

Mountains southward, engulfing San Diego hilltops and canyon communities like Julian, Lakeside,

 

Cuyamaca,  Wynola,  Novalo, Lake Henshaw, Palmer Canyon, South of Claremont,, westward to San

 

Fernando Valley’s Porter Ranch., North into Simi Valley, scathing Chatsworth, the evacuation orders being

 

scribbled on lap tops, orally on cell phones, the front line firefighters in hand to hand combat with  sparks

 

embers and ash in backyards, where once barbecues and the 21^st century scene  mirrored a Santa Susana of

 

horse & chicken ranches  orange orchids religious retreats of a  Paradise gone askew……

 

 

Fathers Serra and Crespie would be beyond their ken, hanging by their thumbs, their visions shattered

 

nullified   staggering  to their dying breathe. “Hold back the dawn”.

 

 

                                                                               II

 

The Santa Ana winds blew thru Angeles National Forest, whipping the beetle infested trees, 

 

the Eucalyptus in a 7 day  flagellation, the snickering flames leaping across highways, fire lines,

 

spreading its swath  like some tortured pyromaniac(s) mowing down , sucking victims in the mouth of its

 

emblazoned rage…….

 

The Biblical ancients acknowledged their own death toll…But here 2000 years later, the Garden of

Paradise Lost was being immolated, the suburb tract homes in a cliché like matchbox, deliberately set up

 

for the kill, as thou  terrorists on the make, into  their 9/11/01 suicidal fury, .getting even with the

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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infidels,  it all going up in charred blueprints of ashes and unbelievable ambushes of smoke. …...….

 

 

                                                                                          III

 

The haunts of our youthful  viajos to March George Norton Air Force Bases, on the

 

brink of Riverside Victorville in the Mojave San Berdu... Dusty Acres beyond Riverside’s Mission Inn..

 

The cowgirls in their hot blue jeans, a phantasmagoria of a double feature hoot, Western cheek to cheek

 

Dancing, drive in movies. drive ins  for a shake and a cheese burger, cholesterol. lo fat food  into the

 

shaded futuro

 

                                                                                            IV

 

The flames leaping across the Pacific Coast Highway 101 toward the Sea, annihilating Nature in its

 

Wake .You wanted to cry aloud, shedding tears, the price for such glorious memories literally

 

vanishing, going up in smoke..

 

 

The historic town of Julian was preserved, the Miramar Naval Base endangered, the licking flames

 

Precariously close, a land locked corridor separating the Base and the town houses and condos on the

 

Other side of the wall..

                                                                                               

 

Closed gate communities like Porter Ranch endangered, where once Republic Studios exercised its Gene

 

Autry Roy Rogers white hat “action”. In the canyons between Simi and San Fernando Valleys, above

 

Chatsworth Where  Smiley Burnette , Gabby Hayes , the other sidekick, Andy Devine, hiccuping a la Hugh

 

Herbert, waiting to come to grips with the outlaws, led by Lash LaRue.

 

 

                                                                                          V

 

The helicopters landing for only a moment of a moment, filling their tanks with water .the backyards

 

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and shingled stoned roof tops saturated with sogginess, the denizens hoses in hand not ready to abandon

 

 

their watered down homesteads

 

 

 

”Evacuate, you have no choice,” screamed the Fire Captain, the street like parking lots in malls,