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OJAI, Calif. – There is the opening speech that Aldous Huxley made in 1951, rescued from a boarding school in flames in Ojai. There is also a ragged American flag and sung. And wall after wall of the museum Ojai, you will find photographs of fire and destruction.
It's barely a year since a forest fire blew this rustic town north-west of Los Angeles. But the fire is already part of a retrospective exhibition that tries to make sense of the tragedy, even as the houses remain destroyed and the trauma remains fresh.
The Thomas fire that had devastated parts of Ojai was briefly the most important in the history of the state; it was eclipsed in August by the Mendocino complex fire. Then came the devastation of recent days in paradise, in northern California, an unprecedented flame in the history of modern California. The camp's fire has reduced the paradise to ashes and so far, the authorities have identified 71 people killed and more than 1,000 people missing. Previously, a fire in 1933 in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, was the deadliest in the United States, with 29 dead.
So it's California that as a community, Paradise, is only beginning to understand its losses in the most lethal and destructive fire in the history of the world. State, another community, Ojai, a bohemian idyll in a valley not far from the Pacific Ocean. , gather to remember his last big forest fire – and worry about when the next might come.
"When we started talking about this exhibition earlier this year, I did not think we were going to – we did not even think so – that it would be the fire season," said Wendy Barker, museum director. from the Ojai Valley. . She added that she felt uncomfortable about opening the show at a time when the state, again, is on fire: to the north, to paradise and to the south , with the fire of Woolsey, near Malibu and parts of Ventura County, too far from Ojai.
But this is California, where fires nowadays seem to be raging all the time.
Mrs. Barker, whose exhibition included the maps of fires that burned near Ojai throughout its history – in 1929, 1932 (for decades, the most important in the history of the State, 1948, 1979 and 1985 – said that after a fire, residents would at least have the respite to believe that they would have many years before the next one.
"But are we doing it?" She said. "I do not know, it's scary, these incidents are no longer isolated."
Stephen Pyne, a historian of forest fires at Arizona State University, said it had been a century since the fire in the United States had caused death on a scale comparable to that of the campfire. It was the Cloquet Fire, in 1918, in Minnesota, began with sparks from a railway and killed nearly 500 people.
"We seem to be at a turning point," said Professor Pyne, adding that it was necessary to rethink the zoning and location of housing, as well as forest management in the face of increasing dangers. "If last year did not do it, if it did not lead to a massive and immediate response, what would it do? Well, that, within a year after the fires of 2017, and this one that has destroyed so much.This announces itself as a major moment in the timeline. "
Edward Struzik, a historian and researcher at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada, noted that most of the largest fires in California's history have occurred in recent years. In fact, nine of the top 10 have occurred since 2003.
"The situation will get worse," he said. "I do not think there's any question about it, we're seeing a trend very clearly here, nobody was expecting it to happen so quickly." It's a trajectory that turns heads in recent years in California. "
Heather and Bob Sanders, who have lived in Ojai since 1976, are among those who lost their home in Upper Ojai in the late Thomas, where about 100 houses were burned down. These days, they live on their property in a trailer, hoping to rebuild them. Others are doing the same thing or live elsewhere in mobile homes waiting to rebuild.
Describing the reconstruction process, Sanders said, "It's just a stack of papers." The other day, a geological survey of his property was finally completed, which will now allow him to apply for a permit. to build.
The story of the couple is included in a new book, "From the fire: Ojai looks at Thomas' fire, published by two local residents. One of them, Elizabeth Rose, is a Massachusetts lawyer who moved a few years ago with her husband to Ojai. Thomas's fire was his first wildfire experience, and she evacuated immediately. Right away, she began to notice all the poems and reflections of the fire that flooded Facebook. "The words were so beautiful," she said.
His publishing partner, Deva Temple, who grew up in Ojai but now lives in Oregon, was seduced by the photographs from the fire.
Ms. Temple, who has organized climate change conferences, which scientists say has led to long periods of unusually high temperatures, dry conditions and ever-increasing fires, said, "I knew that it would not be the last huge fire, but one of the first huge fires. The whole western landscape will change.
Ms. Sanders, speaking of the loss of her home, said in the book, "But life goes on and we are now grappling with it, although there is still too much to do. And I do not think many people know what many of us still have to deal with this fire. We are still looking for ways to rebuild. "
Other people who have lost their homes in Ojai have decided to pack their bags and start again elsewhere, where housing is cheaper and forest fires are not a danger.
"We did not want to live that anymore," said Lauren Crow, 32, who moved to Portland, Oregon, with her partner after losing her hand-built cottage – and her skin care business Thomas Fire.
All this is a tiny version of grief and trauma that has swept over Paradise, where thousands of homes have been lost and possibly hundreds of deaths. Even in this case, officials are already talking about reconstruction. While some were talking about catering at a community meeting in Chico, near Paradise on Thursday night, Mark Brown, a local official, described the devastation as "of unprecedented scale," according to the Los Angeles Times. reported.
The destruction in paradise is likely to reverberate around California, while other regions are wondering if their city could be the next.
"It's not like people are buying McMansions in a rural location," said William Stewart, a forestry expert at the University of California, Berkeley. "These are places where people have been going since the gold rush in some places, or at least for several decades. We now have these historic cities where people start looking around us and think, "We are not so different from paradise. Could this happen to us?
Thursday afternoon, Tania Parker, Director of Promotion at the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, walked a dirt road on the north side of the city where firefighters defended the city from the flames last year. Mrs. Parker, 37, was a girl during a fire in 1985 in Ojai. She then studied forest fires and forest management at the university. Her father owns the movie theater in town and remembers evacuating and sleeping in camp beds during the fire.
Mrs. Parker woke up in the middle of the night last year, as the fire of Thomas began to spread through the mountains surrounding Ojai.
"Having studied fire and knowing the conditions of the wind, it was a perfect storm," she said. "It was so surreal and intense."
There are still some sycamores burned, but there are only a few traces of the fire. The grass pushed back onto the hills, but Parker said it would take five to seven years for native plants to repel and stabilize the land. Until then, the city faces another threat: the mudslides. Metal poles have been installed in the ground, which does not stop the mud, but holds large rocks that tear a destructive path nearby. Montecito this year following the fire of Thomas, killing more than 20 people.
Can what happened in paradise happen or have happened to Ojai yet?
"One hundred percent," said Ms. Parker.
"It's really a miracle and the hard work of our firefighters who saved our city," she added. "It's really a miracle that the wind stops that night."
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