All photographs are 2024 copyright Douglas Stockdale –
On Monday, September 9th, I was just finishing a business conference call when my wife yelled up at me that there was a fire in Trabuco Canyon, here in Orange County (OC). To let you know, that’s about 4 to 5 miles from our home. First bottom photo below is what I saw out my back yard. Yikes!!
This particular fire is named the Airport Fire due to the proximity of where it started, a very tiny ‘air field’ used to fly remote control model planes. Turns out this fire was an accident created when work crews were moving some huge boulders and a spark occurred. A wild fire ensued.
One thing we learn quickly in the Western United States is that wild fires, especially if there is wind, can move very, very fast. And there was a moderate breeze that afternoon. Thus no surprise when the OC neighborhoods bordering this wild fire were (and still are) immediately evacuated. The good news for us, the breeze was blowing East that afternoon, away from us into the adjacent National forest. What concerned me is that when a wild fire moves East from this location, it can quickly mover over Saddleback mountain or through the canyons into Riverside County, which it did (second photo below) with devastating results burning multiple houses and structures.
On Tuesday morning, I had planned to have my car serviced and after evaluating the fire locations, I decide to drive down to San Juan Capistrano to have the work completed. On the return, I was driving straight at the burning mountain landscape, above. As I kept coming closer to home, I also anticipated where I wanted to document this phase of the Airport Fire. Part of the OC wilderness park is on the other side of the street where I live and an ‘urban’ landscape I have photographed many times before. As anticipated, the walking trail along Oso Creek provided an excellent foreground that led the eye to the dramatic events unfolding before me. The breeze of the day before had subsided and the heat of the fire allowed the smoke to dramatically rise upward and then spread slightly out to create an umbrella effect. Btw, my color version of this landscape photograph is below.
Indirectly, this wild fire is similar to the other two wildfires raging concurrently in Southern California that have a fingerprint left by climate change. The 100+F weather over the past two weeks in conjunction with the low humidity created a tinder box. Regretfully, one of the other two major wild fires appears to been started by arsonist, who is now in custody, which does not provide much solace to those whose homes have been destroyed as a result.
I have been thinking about how I might be able to use a few of these Airport Fire photographs in conjunction with my Urban Ashes project, my photographs of the resulting Boulder Colorado neighborhood that was leveled by a wild fire in 2022. Weaved together, these could create some interesting photomontages, which is something I will experiment with later this Fall.
As a footnote, I printed the above black and white version of the Airport Fire at Saddleback Mountain on Hahnemuehle’s Metallic Rag and it is a hauntingly beautiful, if not sublime, print.
Best regards,
Doug
Singular Images 