Just getting around to reading comments. I hope your in-laws house is ok. We had to evacuate my daughters horse from his stable in Tujunga last night.

Interesting you should bring up the 1975 fire. That year I was working on the Bear Divide Hot Shot crew, but had to leave before the end of fire season to complete a mandatory class for my major at UC Berkeley. It was only offered once a year.

Imagine my surprise when, a week after starting classes, the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle showed a weather satellite photo of the smoke plume from that huge fire flowing off the southern California coast into the Pacific Ocean!

It turns out that my former crew had been put on the over night mop up shift (a thankless, miserable task) for a small fire that started that day on the Angeles Forest highway near the tunnel by Hidden Springs. Late that night, the Santa Anna winds began to blow fiercely and apparently fanned some undetected embers across the fire line.

In minutes all was lost and a huge fire burned out Big Tujunga canyon and all the way to the foothill communities. I heard that a fuel truck with a load of Jet A (for the helicopters working the fire) had to make a run for his life to escape the flames, they were spreading so quickly. It sounds like the fire got to your house early the next morning!

All I could do was watch the news reports and feel guilty about abandoning my crew-mates. Nothing I could have done, but it still was a bad feeling. Got a major ribbing when I showed up for work the start of the next fire season too!

No I didn't. It still plays fine on my computer.