Once again, we have a brush fire in progress in the area where I live. We could see a towering plume of smoke in the near east toward Chino Hills when we came home from dinner, after picking my son up from UCl last night. On waking this morning, the first thing I was aware of was the scent of smoke, permeating the air. There’s a brown haze hanging over us, and no doubt there will be ash, if the wind changes.

The fire itself isn’t close enough to do us any damage. Right now, it’s is burning between Norco and Corona. I guess the blaze began in a drought-stricken area of the Prado Dam that’s normally a reservoir. The brush that’s burning off is dry and the results were inevitable.

As someone who had a pretty serious house fire a few years back, it’s especially scary to wake up to that smell. Even if it’s only chimney fires or someone grilling, there’s something especially frightening about the smell of smoke when I’m in that fuzzy place between sleep and awareness. It catches me completely off guard and I generally shoot out of bed, overreact like an idiot, and run around checking that it’s not our house that’s on fire–that our garage isn’t burning again.

Tricky stuff, fire. My thoughts and prayers go out to all the folks in the affected areas, and especially to those firefighters who are battling the blaze.