Author Archives: K. Andrew Turner

We copied this from our editor’s (K. Andrew Turner) blog, Writerly Words, about the fire in Glendora last week.

I couldn’t think of anything to write about, then I remembered that we had a huge fire this last week. So I’ll write a little about that —though I’ll primarily post pictures. I’ve got a poem in the works about it.

First shot of the fire at about 7 am.

There are quite a few photos. If you aren’t familiar with the story, 3 men had a campfire that went wild. At 6am. In California drought. When it’s been in the 80s for months.

I got up on the wall to take a better picture. This is what the colors looked like. It was insane to wake up to this.

Ash was falling like rain, so I could hear it falling on the leaves in the front yard. I could hear and feel the heat from the flames and this is close, but not that close.

The fire didn’t move that fast at first. But it was very awe-inspiring.

The first three pictures were taken within a few minutes of each other. You could say that I was very surprised to see this as my return from vacation day. Needless to say, it was not a normal day!

After 20 minutes it moved across the entire hillside behind the house. I watched it jump so many times just like crazy.

Probably not a good thing to stand underneath and stare at when you are starting to get a cold, but it was near impossible not to just stare at the fire and smoke. It’s very mesmerizing.

After another 10 minutes it began to move down the hill toward the homes north of where I live.

I think I went inside for water and then was drawn out to watch. It was so interesting to see how precise the water dropping Super Scoopers were.

In a few minutes the fire had really come down the hillside fast. Soon after this I watched water being dropped on the fire.

Once I figured we wouldn’t be evacuated immediately, I ate breakfast. I was hungry, and you can’t just stop living. I was prepared to run up stairs at a moment’s notice to grab my computer, some clothes and run out the door if needed. But food, man, gotta have food.

This is the aftermath of the fire. It was still smoldering, but it had mostly been done burning on the side of the hill where we are. Most of the acreage was done burning by that afternoon.

It was a harrowing morning, but once the immediate danger was over, I completely passed out. I was tired from my awesome Portland vacation and being sick. And the ashy smell I’d breathed probably hadn’t helped.

Anyway, that was my week last week.