Blog: The Not Very Close Call

During the course of my military service and journalistic endeavours, I've had a variety of experiences which the average person would be quite happy to forgo in life.  I've had a bullet ricochet a foot from my head in a gun fight.  I've been hit by multiple road-side bombs, including one that rendered my truck barely drive-able.  I've been first on scene (beating the police and fire departments) to both a murder in progress and a three-alarm fire on a tinder-dry hillside.

But as frightening as those experiences were, I hold firm to the knowledge that things could have been much, much worse.  I've never been shot.  I've never had been in an armored vehicle that was ripped in pieces by a bomb.  I've never actually been in a burning house.

Each of these experiences impressed upon me one key idea: it can always be worse. Prepare that way.

Similarly the real lesson of yesterday's conflagration was just how bad it was not.  It was April, not August. It was 87 degrees, not 107. The hillsides are drying, not fully baked.  There was a light breeze, not sustained gusts.  It was an accident that was relatively quickly reported, not an arsonist using multiple start-points. The initial location was accessible from wide streets, not far off Hidden Valley and it's one-way choke point.  And, perhaps most importantly, Monrovia's fire was pretty much the only game in LA County, so we weren't competing for resources as we would be in a Santa Ana fire storm.

All those things were lined up in our favor, and yet, as I stood at Hillcrest and Avocado watching LA County helicopters make drop after drop after drop around 322 N. Madison, I fully expected that house to be gone.  The neighboring homes on Crescent Drive were a toss up.  And that was at 11:45, when it was a one-acre fire.  Next time, we may not get two helicopters (including a top-of-the-line Firehawk, the same airframe as the Army's Blackhawk) within minutes of the call, or five more aircraft for a 150-acre fire during the day.

Much of this, I'm sure, is clear to anyone who lives in the wild land interface.  I'm suspect a lot of Monrovians will be at Home Depot tomorrow morning getting ready to take care of the brush clearance they've been putting off.  Home evacuation check lists are probably being revised as I write.

But, this should also be a wake-up call for Monrovia's policy makers, too.  During the recent council campaign, the most common concern I heard from residents of Cloverleaf, Hidden Valley, Briar Cliff and Alta Vista was the threat of fire from the Wilderness Preserve, and the potential for arsonists to do unstoppable evil. Tonight, those same Monrovians are sleeping in hotels, and considering themselves lucky.

I also learned that public safety is easy to take for granted.  Barely 10% of the people I spoke to on the campaign trail were aware of the depth or breadth of the cuts both our police and fire departments have experienced in recent years. I was even accused of using "scare tactics" for raising the issue.  Maybe 150-acre fires are scarier -- and more realistic -- tactics for spotlighting public safety. I hope so.

This was a scary day for Monrovians.  And that was with everything in our favor.

The question is, will we learn this lesson with the blessing of a relatively easy experience that drives us all to take serious preparatory action and get serious about vital services.  Or will we one day look back and say "that April Saturday lulled us into complacency. We didn't learn the real lesson of that day."

The next time we may not be so lucky.

The real lesson of April 20, 2013 isn't how bad it was, but how bad it could have been.

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