Silhouettes of Smoke and Flame

           

 I was raised as a city girl, smack dab in the suburbs of Los Angeles, so my first-hand experience with wildfire is embarrassingly (fortunately?) limited. However, given the drought and the desert-like climate in the Los Angeles Basin, wildfire is not completely unfamiliar to Southern California residents. The closest experience to wildfire that I had was in October of 2005, when the Verdugo Hills, hardly two miles from my house, were ablaze for several days, leaving the San Bernadino Valley, where my family lived, engulfed in smoke for 2 weeks. It's not hard to understand likelihood of a wildfire in this part of the state, given the flammability of the grassy foliage from the lack of rain, particularly after a long, hot, and absolutely dry summer. Summer heat lasts well into and sometimes past the month of September, and the topography ans slope of the Verdugo Hills made conditions for quickly spreading fire even more ripe for. The most vivid memory I have regarding this event was sitting on the street corner outside my house and seeing the flames silhouetting the side of the hills while the smoke funneled out in a swirly current down to our homes. Below is a shot of the fire, likely taken from or near the Griffith Park Observatory, one of the highest lookout points over Hollywood and the city of Los Angeles.