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03/05/2007: "Something We Don't See Every Day"

No matter where you live, you have to face a certain number of natural disasters. In the midwest, it's tornados; in the east, hurricanes. For those of us living on the west coast, we face the trifecta - earthquakes, smog and forest fires.

Here at the Home Office in Redondo Beach, we have it pretty good. The ground is relatively stable, the ocean breezes keep the smog at bay, and we're a long way from the woods. So imagine my surprise when a forest fire hit Redondo Beach yesterday!

OK, it's not as bad as it sounds, but it was still pretty strange. I was driving home from one of the seemingly infinite number of home improvement store runs I make each weekend, heading north on Hawthorne Boulevard approaching Sepulveda, when I noticed some pretty significant smoke rising off to the west. Being a news whore, I was attracted much like the moth to a flame, so I turned west on Sepulveda and headed towards the increasingly meanacing smoke.

About this time, traffic is starting to bunch up as a number of fire engines scream past. Looking out the windshield, I can see the trees in the Redondo Beach Wilderness Park - a little bit of country right in the middle of the city. It's a favorite of scouts and students; a little dink of a campground only the size of a couple of standard home lots. But it has a pond, a natural amphetheatre and a nice stand of tall pine trees. Only today, instead of gracefully swaying in the breeze, the pines are ablaze from base to tip, with big ol' flames blasting out the treetops - something right out of a Smokey the Bear commercial.

To be honest, it looked pretty nasty. Even from a couple of blocks away, you could see multiple fire sources on the ground, and those with houses surrounding the park were in serious jeopardy. Hats off the the fire units from Torrance, Hermosa and Redondo that managed to limit the fire to just the stand of trees; they had it out in about 20 minutes.

You just never know what you'll see in La-La Land!