So… Becky and I were on our way back from Burbank yesterday afternoon at around 2:15 PM, taking the 110 freeway through the area around Elysian Park and Dodger Stadium, when suddenly traffic began to slow down. Considering that this is L.A., that didn’t necessarily mean anything unusual was happening… but we both noticed that the air was suddenly a bit smoggier than usual even by L.A. standards, and Becky wondered aloud whether traffic was slowing because of a fire. I had been wondering the same thing myself.
Just then, we rounded a turn on the freeway, and it became obvious that there was indeed a fire, coming from somewhere between us and the downtown skyline ahead. As we later admitted to each other, each of us had the same, predictably Sept. 11-induced reaction deep down inside: “Oh my God, downtown has blown up.”
But the closer we got, the more apparent it was that the smoke was coming from very nearby — possibly right along the side of the road.
As we crawled forward, we eventually saw that the fire was actually on both sides of the freeway. On the left, a hill was smouldering; on the right, several trees and shrubs were on fire. Ash rained down on Becky’s car. There were firemen all around, as well as at least one news cameraman, and several helicopters were flying overhead.
We drove right past one burning tree.
Traffic slowly snaked through the fire zone. Finally, as we moved out of the area, the air ahead of us cleared (and we could see for certain that downtown was not on fire). But looking behind us, we could see the huge plume of smoke billowing up as the procession of cars slowly continued. Becky commented that it looked like one burning tree (the one we had driven right past, I think) was about to completely go up in flames… and about 10 seconds later, it did, largely collapsing and redoubling the amount of smoke behind us.
For more photos of the fire, including larger versions of the images above, click here! For the Los Angeles Times story about the fire, click here.
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Categories: My Life
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