Life during fire time around Malibu
By Ben Marcus / Special to Malibu Times
Santa Anas at night, surfers’ delight. Santa Anas in the morning, fire fighters and homeowners take warning.
Surfers love the Santa Ana winds because they roar down Malibu Canyon and give the surf at Malibu a celebrity makeover, grooming the waves from shaggy into superstars.
Weather conditions had been blue and calm and perfect for two weeks, but the ocean had been perfectly flat. On Friday I bought a mask and snorkel at Malibu Divers, thinking I might poke around for lobsters in between sets. Hopes were high for a Southern Hemisphere swell on Sunday, the 21st of October.
On Saturday, the Malibu Lagoon broke free and covered the beach with dead fish and urchins and sea slugs. The beach was closed and the air stunk of dead fish, but that small environmental mess was soon overwhelmed by the smoke of fire.
The first puffs of the Santa Ana “devil winds” hit at around 10:30 the night of Oct. 20, rustling the trees and making the ocean shimmer under the moonglow. This was the “Surfers’ Delight” and very poetic and nice, but the air smelled like smoke. The Verizon generators came on around midnight, and my wife Anna and I fell asleep to the sound of heavy firefighting equipment whizzing by, lights rotating but no sirens, either heading for trouble or preparing for it.
Woke up on Sunday to the sound of surf booming, smoke in the air, power off, sirens and helicopters everywhere. My wife and I had just bought new cruiser bikes but our peaceful ride to Malibu Kitchen turned into me pedaling into a chaotic mess of wind, smoke, fire, panic, helicopters, airplanes, media and what appeared to be every piece of fire-fighting equipment in Southern California.
The normally buttoned-up Malibu was open and exposed. An open gate gave a glimpse into Jerry Perenchio’s private golf course: nine perfectly groomed holes that were probably worth several million dollars a hole.
From the middle of town I looked up into the hills, worried about a friend’s house. She had lost two homes and her car in the 1993 fire, and had moved to the middle of Malibu because she thought it was safer. Her house is on Malibu Knolls-turn right at the Presbyterian Church-and has a million-dollar view of Malibu and the Santa Monica Bay. But now that part of Malibu was in flames, and my friend was in Mexico.
The middle of town was like a scene from the remake of “War of the Worlds-a desperate battle along the ridge, with fire and noise, smoke and chaos. Through the smoke I clearly saw the Castle Kashan surrounded by fire, and then up in flames. It looked like a scene from an Errol Flynn movie, with fire leaping from rows of windows.
The wind blew me toward the Malibu Colony Plaza, to a scene out of Baghdad. A new Mercedes-Benz on Malibu Road was engulfed in flames, more than a mile from the fire, testament to the danger of flying embers.
Riding back, Lifeguard Capt. Jay Butki was hosing down the Malibu Pier from the Baywatch boat, and someone was pouring foam over a house along Pacific Coast Highway. I had always wondered who lived in that huge house, and it turned out to be the “K” in DreamWorks SKG, Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Further down, Annie O’Connor was stressing about her house and Allen Sarlo was on a cell phone, narrating the battle of PC Greens. Fire was licking down the hills from above, threatening homes and businesses, while helicopters were in constant rotation, dumping water on flames that would stay down for a few minutes, then leap back to life, like those prank birthday candles.
Back home, my neighbors Joe and Chris were hosing down their roofs and the bougainvillea that runs up the cliffs. My wife Anna was more than a little scared-and pissed. She is Russian and more accustomed to political and economic cataclysms than natural disasters, and while I was noodling around she had moved most of our belongings down a flight of 50 steps to the van. I felt guilty for not being there but also grumpy. Having been through fires, floods and earthquakes many times before, I sensed the fire would not reach us, and I would have to lug everything back up the steps and plug everything back in.
The power popped back on at some point, so I cleaned house. Nero played the violin when Rome burned. I vacuumed.
Anna wasn’t speaking to me, and at some point she hitched a ride into Santa Monica to stay with a friend.
Around 6 p.m., the wind shifted to the northeast, blowing the fire back on itself. Firefighters won the battle at PC Greens, stopping the fire’s advance on a ridge within view of my balcony. Now an odd calm enveloped Malibu. No sirens, fewer helicopters, no traffic, as the highway was closed. I didn’t want to leave, because I knew I wouldn’t get back in. So I went surfing.
At Surfrider very strong offshore winds were grooming four-foot waves into magazine-like perfection. There were three guys in the water and Andy Lyon was getting out: “The wind is wrong, and my girlfriend is freaking out so I have to get home.”
I knew what he meant, but I wanted to get out there and wash away the sweat and smoke of the day. I walked down a lonely beach and paddled out off the top at First Point and sat inside of the three-person crowd. The hills of Malibu were smoking and there were helicopters dipping and poking like the hunter/killer robots in “Terminator,” but all was strangely calm on the south-facing front.
The wind was good for fire fighters, but not a surfer’s delight. It was blowing hard from the northeast and so the waves were ragged and too fast. I caught one wind-strafed wave, rode it on my knees, then went home and hauled the TV up the steps so I could watch the news. And “Dexter.”
Tomorrow is another day.
Epilogue: The next morning, I crawled up the cliffs from the City Hall parking lot to photograph my friend’s house. The guest was gone and it looked like the main house was OK at first, but around the back, a TV room and a bathroom were torched and there was smoke damage throughout.