The winds, known as the Santa Anas, loom large over the collective psyche of Southern California. They have also been the defining antagonist in this season of fire, a sinister reminder that wind has the power to provoke fear and present danger in an instant.
“Devil winds,” said Peter Sanders of the Los Angeles Fire Department, referring to a popular nickname for the Santa Anas, which reached hurricane-level speeds in parts of the region Wednesday and made fighting fire almost impossible.
At the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, firefighters and police officers stood guard near a wall of glass that protects the plane President Reagan used as Air Force One. Yards away, a ridge was lit up by bright-red encroaching flames and gray plumes of clouds, as aircraft flew low, dropping water and powerful retardant.
The blaze threatening the library was the latest to ignite in more than a week of fierce wildfires that have burned up and down the state. As it crept close, thousands of residents in the valley had to flee their homes nearby.
Firefighters spoke of the gusts with a sense of fatalism, an act of nature they cannot get ahead of, and certainly cannot control. The fire near the library, known as the Easy fire, was at 5% containment Wednesday afternoon. “We can’t get in front of it because it puts us in harm’s way,” said Brian McGrath, a spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department.
On the hillside at the library the wind was a terrible companion. To walk meant to move hunched over, slowly, both hands holding your hat. Shouts became whispers, drowned out by the hissing of flags flapping, and tree branches bending and cracking. A sign for the visitor parking lot, secured by sandbags, had easily toppled over.
The winds were pushing the smoke to the west, moving like gray mist across the blue sky — and making it possible to breathe — as firefighters and police officers watched the flames crackle through the dry, brown brush. When a helicopter appeared, buzzing low, and dropped its payload of water, a rainbow bloomed like a halo over the bruised landscape.
Up north, strong winds, known there as Diablo winds, flamed the Kincade fire, which had spread to more than 75,000 acres Wednesday.
With multiple fires burning, meteorologists and residents were looking at forecasts with a sense of foreboding: Predictions called for some of the strongest winds in a decade, and at least in Simi Valley those fears were well-founded.
Though the Santa Anas are an annual occurrence, this year they were proving to be far worse and many residents said they felt different. With the effects of climate change combined with fierce fire seasons, the winds now seem more ominous.
For Karin Feldshuh, who moved to Los Angeles from New York last year, the feel of the wind triggers an emotional reaction.
“Anxiety,” she said Tuesday. “I know with the fires brewing that embers can flow and wreak havoc.”
Seeing the wind forecast Tuesday, McGrath said the department put in place bulldozers and fire crews to be ready in case of wildfire. Helicopters, which were flying Wednesday near the library, had been on standby all night. Fixed-wing aircraft had been grounded off and on Wednesday morning, as the winds shifted.
Robert Santos, a meteorologist for Spectrum News 1, a cable channel, said big temperature drops in the mountains and high desert would create cold, heavy air that would push out like the opening of a freezer, creating strong gusts toward the ocean.
The National Weather Service issued a rare “extreme red-flag warning,” saying the winds could trigger “extreme fire behavior.”
The Santa Anas have always had a grip on the literature and pop culture of the region. Most famously, writer Joan Didion mused on the Santa Anas in her essay “Los Angeles Notebook.”
“It’s a fact of life for Angelenos, and for people who are newer to LA or Southern California it’s a favorite thing to comment on or complain about,” said Nathan Masters, a historian and writer at USC Libraries and the host of “Lost LA” on KCET, a public television station. “I think the reason is the Santa Ana winds are the dirty little secret behind the notion that LA has perfect weather.”
Masters produced a show on the history of the Santa Anas in 2012, and found that the winds — which have been blowing this way for thousands of years — were first described in print as the Santa Anas, named for a canyon southeast of Los Angeles, in a newspaper in 1880. He likened the winds to a bill that comes due every year for all those days of great weather.
“We have how many days of sunshine a year?” he said. “More than 300? And yet, from roughly October through January we can count on half the days being somewhat uncomfortable because of the dry air.”
Julien Kinori, 35, a writer in Los Angeles, brought up Didion on Tuesday, saying she talks about how “they’re these warm winds that are seemingly innocuous but there’s a certain darkness to them. Also a madness associated with them, that they make people go crazy.”
Officials with the Los Angeles Fire Department said they were monitoring the wind forecast and deploying fire crews all over the city and the San Fernando Valley, where the winds could be the strongest.
“The forecasted winds are as bad as we’ve ever seen, supposedly,” said Graham Everett, a deputy chief and chief of staff of the department.
Everett, 53, who has been with the department for 30 years, said the department had identified which canyons — the spaces where the winds can be the most furious — in Los Angeles have not burned in a long time, and could light up at any point.
In the area of the Getty fire, which erupted early Monday in a wealthy enclave of western Los Angeles — burning down several multimillion-dollar homes near the Getty Center and its priceless artworks — fire crews were patrolling neighborhoods, looking for spots that were still smoldering.
“Because we do know the winds are coming in,” Everett said.
While many Angelenos this time of year feel that pinch of anxiety when the winds kick up, for firefighters it is a different emotion, he said.
“I wouldn’t call it dread,” he said. “It’s anticipation. It’s what we do. It’s game day. We prep for this.”
The winds could reach 50-80 mph in the areas of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, putting them, possibly, at the “upper end of people’s historical experience,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. He said he predicted more heavy winds through Thursday. “There’s still a pretty long period of winds still to come,” Swain said.
As the day wore on in Simi Valley, firefighters were confident the blaze would not threaten the Reagan library, where a helicopter peered out from the glass enclosure as the fires raged outside, and the flags of the presidents hissed in the wind.
This article originally appeared in
.