Caution: Flammable

The other day Rhumba and I were driving home from work when we heard something growl. Loud. Through the trees overhead I spotted a flash of white in the sky, and then there it was: a big old military-surplus propeller plane, flying low and slow. An air tanker.

The tanker went away, came back, and went away again at a regular interval. It was orbiting something north of us, out toward the country. Something we couldn't see. But we could hear the whopwhopwhop of heavy helicopters in the distance. And, finally, the scream of sirens. A fire engine sped past. A minute later, another one.

We channel-hopped around on the car radio, but the disk jockeys and news channels told us nothing. So we gave up, went home, and life went on. The next day we learned that there'd been a small fire in the Pogonip, a hilly and wooded square-mile of city-owned park at the edge of town.

When I say "park," don't imagine pretty little gravel trails and clean restrooms and friendly rangers and convenient parking. The Pogonip is a more-scenic-than-usual hunk of central California coastland in summertime : steep hills, with clumps and groves of oak and bay and other dryland trees interspersed with pretty meadows and a lot of hiking trails. And that's it. The cash-strapped city of Santa Cruz has maybe half a ranger to look after the entire operation.

So homeless people camp in the Pogonip. Not your can't-make-the-rent-and-nowhere-to-go homeless. No, more the damaged-by-life-and-can't-get-straight homeless. The guys who, for one reason or another, don't play well with others.

That scruffy, bearded old-before-his-time guy panhandling on Pacific Avenue probably lives at a camp up there. Why not? Pick an obscure corner of the Pogonip, and the occasional hiker or the half-a-ranger may never find your spot. And it's convenient: the city homeless service center is right nearby, and downtown Santa Cruz isn't far.

So nobody thinks much about the homeless in the Pogonip -- out of sight, out of mind. Everybody's happy. Until somebody leaves a campfire smoldering and a spark makes the leap to a clump of dry vegetation and you've got a grass fire on your hands. That's what had happened that day when air tankers orbited overhead.

Fortunately the fire was small; the day, cool and moist; and the wind, non-existent. The fire didn't spread much, and our local firefighters -- as stalwart a group of blue-uniformed adrenaline junkies as you'll ever find -- put it out in a decisive way.

But...we were lucky. Just two or three months ago a couple of hundred acres burned up that way. And 4,000 acres burned a few miles further on and a week or two earlier, higher up in the same mountains. It hasn't rained in Central California since February. The ground is dry, the streambeds are dry. The annual grass and brushes are all dead and brown and dry.

We're entering high fire season; the right combination of east wind, dry grass, and heat wave can burn entire cities. Remember Oakland, in 1991? Remember, oh, three months ago, when dry lightning strikes set hundreds of fires across the state and smoke darkened the sky? Like that. Only, this year, even drier than ever. The right wind, a lightning strike, even a dropped cigarette butt. And who knows?

So this evening after work I drove over to the gym for one of my increasingly rare workouts. And my gym happens to be on the edge of the Pogonip, in the same industrial neighborhood where you find the homeless shelters. I pulled up in front of the place, got my gym bag out of the trunk and headed for the front door. Which was blocked by a trio of gym rats who were staring up at something behind me. I turned around.

Across the street, the hill was on fire.

Behind a sparse row of modest warehouses and office buildings, flames danced under the trees at the top of a long, grassy slope. I could have hiked up there in five minutes -- if I was a raving idiot.

The fire grew visibly in the space of a couple of minutes. In the distance, one siren after another found its voice and began to wail. But no firefighters had arrived yet, at least not to this side of the blaze.

"I... don't think I'm going to start my workout right away," I told the gym rats. Who nodded wisely. We stood in front of the gym and made small talk and watched the fire burn. There is something between humans and fire. Not necessarily a good thing.

Suddenly the street was -- well, if not full, at least populated with a lot more bodies than you'd expect at an industrial park at eight in the evening. All looking at the fire. There were wild shouts: "It's coming this way!" "It's going to burn right down here!" "It'll be here any minute!"

In that neighborhood on any given night, you can find eight or fifteen old vans or motor homes on the street with people living in them. It's one step above camping out. That's where the people had come from. After a few minutes they disappeared again. And down at the end of the street, up against Harvey West Park, I heard engines start, and the sound of heavy vehicles pulling away.

The gym rats went back inside, but I stayed outside and watched -- not ready to turn my back on the fire and go inside, nor ready to leave the neighborhood and go about my business. And sure enough, after a few minutes I spotted the bulky shapes of fire trucks trundling up the slope a little farther to the north, where the grade was more shallow. White and yellow lights flashing, the fire trucks finally pulled up in a line at the top of the hill, between the town and the fire.

And that's when I went into the gym and did my workout. Because this is modern, civilized life. When the fire trucks show up, we know it'll all be taken care of. It's an article of faith. And when I emerged from the gym an hour later the flames were out. All that flickered at the top of the hill were the lights of the fire trucks standing sentinel against any further outbreak.

Tomorrow we'll know: it was another untended campfire, or a carelessly-discarded cigarette, or a fire-cracker, or the heat of a motorcycle muffler. Or, something. Because the hills outside Santa Cruz are full of people -- not just homeless, but hikers, college students, workers, pagan circle-dancers, mountain bikers, and more. And dead, dry brush is everywhere. And fire season is here.

We were lucky again. The gym rats and I had watched the pall of smoke rise close to straight up; there was little wind to drive it. And humidity's been high, and temperatures cool. And the firemen were there, and there were enough of them. We caught all the breaks. We were lucky. But we won't be, always.

I drove across town to Shopper's Corner because Rhumba had gifted me with a shopping list. And as I loaded the toilet paper and tomatoes and black-eyed peas and yogurt into the back of the car I watched the heavy traffic swirl by on Soquel Avenue, entirely oblivious to a fire at the very edge of the city. Life goes on, as usual.

Until it doesn't.

Postscript, 8/17: According to the local paper, a total of three grass fires broke out in that same neighborhood last night, all within a hour of each other. The one I saw was the largest. The fire department says the fires were "suspicious."