Hell Comes to Camarillo

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

When I dropped off our granddaughter Mary at her Elementary school this morning, an odd thing happened.

One of her best friends is another Fourth Grader girl who has worn shorts to school every day of her educational career and she gets teased in a loving way by Mary and her friends each morning as they wait for the school's gate to open.

We were all shocked today when she showed up at school decked out in nice blue denim pants. I chalked up this change to the mere fact that the wind was picking up a bit as the 8:00 a.m. start of school fast approached.

I thought that this radical change of sartorial splendor was amusing but was it really an omen of the days earth shaking events to come?

At about 10:30 a.m. we received a text message from Jacob saying that he may have left his lunch in my car. A quick search proved that that was not the case so we opted to drive over to his home to see if it was there.

As we were about to leave, I turned to Laurie and said, "Do you smell smoke in the air?" She agreed and now that we had a full blown Santa Ana wind condition in effect, we knew a wildfire somewhere may be the reason. On the radio we heard that it was in Moorpark.

We could not find Jacob's lunch at his home and started to return home when we saw the following.

Yes, Moorpark did have a wildfire

but so did Camarillo!

Quickly named the Mountain Fire, it was burning up the Highland Drive area that I had visited yesterday and posted a photo of in yesterday's blogpost.

Aided by winds blowing at 80+ mph, the fire was roaring across the hilltops from East to West to the Las Posas Estates directing above Casa Contreras!  Fortunately, the fire creating all of this smoke was West of Jacob's home, so they were safe.

But our house was not.

It was both dangerous and a bit . . .

. . . surreal

This was the first of two postmen that we saw still delivering the mail despite the winds, smoke and fire.

The second one was ours, going through our neighbor hood like nothing at all was happening.

This is what we found when we

got back to our home

Decidedly, not good!

What to do, stay or evacuate?

As it turned out, thanks to the planning help of Linda Zilisch and her Chilean friend Maggie, we had a trip to Chile and Argentina planned since last Summer expected to start on Thursday. Thus, our bags were already packed and we were able leave quickly and efficiently.

We headed back to Michael, Vanessa, Jacob and Mary's home in the fire safe zone of Camarillo only to find that they had no power.

After being there for about two hours, we decided to go back to our house to get more items to save from possible incineration only to be turned back by police barricades.

We headed into Old Town Camarillo in search of something to eat but almost everything was closed due to the conflagration. 

Almost everything . . .

I desperately needed a beard trim before the trip to Chile and Hank's was still open.

There were two barber's on duty with no customers in the shop.

When I told them what I wanted, Hank said "Do you have an appointment?"

"No."

"I think that we can fit you in."

Thus, much like Nero in Rome, while Camarillo was burning, I was getting a beard trim and a haircut.

130 homes were lost

We once again attempted to get back to our home at about 7:00 p.m. but this time used small backstreets to avoid the police barricades on Las Posas Road.

It worked.

This is what we found

We were still home owners but the fire was definitely close. 

While the wind was not as strong as earlier it was still blowing East to West which actually worked in our favor for the moment.

If the wind shifted slightly in our direction it would not be good for us at all.

It must be noted that the fire was also causing a side issue for us and our nearby neighbors, friends and traveling partners Koreen and Brian FitzGerald.

Should we still go to Chile and Argentina on Thursday or cancel our trip?

More information was definitely needed.

This was the last view we had

about three blocks from our home

as we left the house with another

load of cherished artifacts

We continued discussing our

travel options with the FitzGeralds

and finally made our decision

If our houses burned, there was really nothing we could do about it. Insurance concerns and rebuilding would be months away in this scenario. We had already removed the important documents and cherished possessions during our two trips to our home earlier today.

We returned to Michael's home to spend the night as the firefighters left our street under a voluntary evacuation order.

If our neighborhood survived the threat, then all was good for us but certainly not for many people in Camarillo.

We opted to take our trip by leaving for LAX at 5:00 a.m. the next morning.

C'est la vie