I remember only one major fire growing up in San Diego: hundreds of thousands of acres were burning twenty miles inland, and the Santa Ana winds were blowing its ash down on us in La Jolla — us surfers and beach bums and rich kids — far away on the glittering coast. I was just about to turn fifteen and my newly greyscale, ashy beach town became a sort of delinquent teen paradise. All the cops and firefighters were busy inland managing the catastrophe, leaving us to our own devices on the boardwalk to drink and smoke and enjoy the week of cancelled school as our city burned. My asthmatic brother had to flee the region entirely in search of fresher air; I remained with friends to party in an apocalyptic landscape that, for the first time, reflected the naive cynicism only a teenager could possess.
The fire became known as the Cedar Fire, which in 2003 held the grim title of the largest California wildfire in over a century. Fires this big were rare, and historic, and you can ask anyone who was in San Diego at the time whether they remember “the fire” and they won’t have to ask you which one. We all remember the ash and the flames and the destroyed homes because we share the Cedar Fire as a rare focal point in our collective memory. The Santa Ana winds will always, for us, spell fire.
