“Holy Crap!”

Without even any conscious thought, those words spilled out when I gazed up at the wall of flames eating down the hill towards my neighborhood. I’ve never been really sure about the origin of that phrase, however, I’m fairly certain it has nothing to do with divine excrement. Of course now it’s much easier to have these etymological thoughts. Even jokes about running out of marshmallows and hoping the local businesses are having fire sales seems a way of dealing with the near miss tragedy, but at that one moment in time, with a real life Irwin Allen movie blazing right towards me, the only thing I could seem to utter was… 

“Holy Crap!”

 Sure the day before we had seen smoke coming out of the valley behind our hills but brush fires were not unusual this time of year. We also heard there were two other fires in the Southern California and frankly they were getting far more press and local TV coverage. The La Canada fire was never the lead in…it was more like, “oh, if you live in La Canada don’t worry…if KCAL 9 wasn’t sending a news crew to your area there should be no cause for alarm.” That’s why the cell phone call I got last Thursday night from a friend caught me off guard. “Are you guys okay?” Sure, why wouldn’t we be? He told me about the fire in my town and it looked pretty bad on the news. I remember making some sort of sarcastic comment, hung up went outside and looked up at the apocalypse on the hill above our street. 

“Divine Excrement!”

At 12 am all of our neighbors were gathered in the middle of the road. Everyone was fixated and muttering soft prayers. It was a sincere moment of selfless caring. Sure, we all were wondering about our families…but we also cared about the well being of each other. I found myself hoping the couple who thought Sarah Palin is the greatest thing since White Out and supported Prop 8 were going to be okay…because their house was closest to the bottom of the hill on one side of the street. Political affiliation goes out the window…especially when you stand there hoping you still have a window in a few days.

The next day was very surreal at our local elementary school. That afternoon was a welcome out door ice cream social to all the kids and their families that were entering Kindergarten. We were there with our little girl Zuzu. Granted all of the parents were beaming excitement of their little ones growing up, but the fire helicopters and planes thundering low directly above us felt like we should all be running to the American Embassy trying to get out of Saigon. To make matters worse, on the hill right behind the school, the first flames started to crest over the top. It was going to get pretty hot around here soon. I turned to my wife and told her it might be smart if we finish all the ice cream.

That afternoon it was literally like having the Blues Brothers drive through your neighborhood. Sherriff’s vehicles were making their way through town with notice of evacuation blaring through the speakers. The Red Cross had set up an evacuation center at our local High School (Go Spartans) and the ASPCA had also set up a facility there for everyone’s pets.

Then it finally hit me…we really might lose everything. I was going to be really sad about our artwork, most of it was too big to do anything about it at the last minute. Even if I could, every truck rental place within 30 miles was sold out of every size.  So we went around the house and got the usual suspects, photo albums, necessary paper files, laptops, portable lexar drives (all my scripts are stored there), jewelry, signed books and small items given to us from friends and relatives who had passed on and everything we collected of our kids when they were babies…their porcelain converted shoes (sneakers in our case), silver containers with their locks of hair, rattles etc…and one thing that I made sure was coming with us was a magician's novelty magic wand. It’s a custom wand made to fall apart on purpose as a gag that my son “fixed” by taping it together when he was four years old. I’ll never forget how proud he was to show me the cellophane covered wand. He was all smiles as he told me it’s not broken anymore. In my will, that’s the one thing I’ve asked to be buried with…but I aint dying today…we are getting out of here.

But first I need to move my RoboCop car.

In the original film RoboCop, they went through a lot of customized cars that Peter Weller and many of the stunt men drove. There are very few that survived the filming. I have one…and the fire was heading its way. I didn’t have room for it at the first house we had when we moved here, so my neighbor across the street was kind enough to store it for me. I had been meaning to get it once we moved to our present home, but life kept getting in the way…but since his home was the first one at the base of the Angeles Forest and armageddon was heading in that direction…I felt a little urgency in moving it. But Murphy beat me to it. Not Officer Murphy from RoboCop…the other guy, the one with the law.

I get to the car and the battery’s dead and can’t be revived. So I figured since the bottom of the hill was on the other side of the fence...I should at least try to push the car as far away from the fence as possible. This was a great idea until it hit a post and knocked the front bumper off. That’s when I looked up at the hill and saw huge flames billow up from behind it. Like magic, a truck filled with a hot shot crew that showed up, jumped out and hit the hill with their chainsaws buzzing (if you look carefully, you can see one of them about to head up the hill. He's right above the back trunk of the car). I yelled over to one of the guys and told him, “don’t worry about saving this home…just save the car” He smiled back and yelled, “Don’t worry, we’re going to save everything”

And let me tell you, that’s just what these guys did. La Canada is here today because of the amazing job the firefighters did in the air and on the ground. The choppers and planes dropping water and fire retardant along with the crews battling below saved every home, man, woman and child in this fire now known as the Station Fire. The fire no one had been covering had now become national news. La Canada got lucky but other nearyby towns were not as fortunate. So far over 150,000 acres have burned and claimed 64 homes, three commercial buildings and 49 outbuildings. The cost to battle this blaze is around $27 million. The biggest cost of all were the lives of two Heroes: Fire Captain Ted Hall, 47  and Specialist Arnie Quinones, 31. Sadly as of today they found the fire’s point of origin here in La Canada and the fire is officially being declared Arson.

After the hills were no longer alive with the sound of hades…I drove over to check on the RoboCop car. (my friends who lived there had evacuated and stayed with us for a while). The hill looked like an ash covered moonscape but right at the bottom, 30ft from the homes…they had stopped the fire. I walked around the base of the hill and found nine firemen, laying on the ground resting their heads on their gear…these guys were tuckered out. Turns out they were the ones battling this hill. They were from Prescott Arizona and are known as the Granite Mountain Interagency Hot Shot Crew. I whole heartedly thanked them for their heroics and asked them if I could get them anything. Turns out some of the neighbors who had trickled back had brought them food since dawn. But apparently it was all junk food because even though they turned down my offer, one of them said, “If you got any vegetables we’ll take it” These guys are a different breed of men.

As I thanked them again and walked away, one of them asked me if that police car was mine. I told them the story of the car and saw their faces light up. I asked them if they would like their photo taken with it. These soot faced, pizza filled men jumped up like boys and followed me back to the car. One of them asked me if I thought Peter Weller had actually driven this one in the movie. I told him I was pretty sure he did. He just smiled bigger and said, “Holy Crap!”

Holy crap indeed.