Baja Wildfires: From Wildflowers to Wildfires

Wildfire season seems to come earlier and earlier. Weather patterns don’t stop at the California/Baja border. Baja is prone to wildfires just the same as California.

A few months after I bought my townhome in the seaside community of Bajamar in 2005, a wildfire swept through the scrublands in front of this brand-new home and threatened to burn it down. I arrived the day after and found complete destruction in the open fields in front of my home.

Driving up to the scorched land, I feared that the inferno had burned down my new home.

This painting by friend Michael Robinson depicts what was going on in my imagination.

In a stroke of good luck, the homes on my street escaped the ravages of the November 2005 firestorm but some trees got charred. Smoke lingered from other wildfires that were still burning.

Fourteen years passed before another wildfire threatened Bajamar. During the daytime of October 25, 2019, blazes broke out in the mountains east of us and 80 mph gusts of hot, dry Santa Ana winds blew the wildfires towards us and the ocean next to us.

This Robinson painting suggests the fires breaking out on hillside after hillside as I watched in horror from my second story bedroom window.

As night fell, the wildfires brightened the sky with their ominous flares of brilliant orange. These paintings by Robinson evoked frightening memories.

At midnight, all the residents of our community evacuated to our on-site restaurant to escape the oncoming firestorm. The one and only highway in and out of Bajamar was threatened by wildfires to the north and south of us. We were trapped!

All night long we watched in horror as the night sky lit up with blazes that inched closer and closer to the restaurant. Palms trees lit up like torches and flamed out. Dense scrubland shrubs ignited – blazing and glowing for hours. Fortunately, the grass growing around the restaurant, wettened by sprinklers, kept us safe. 

When the fires burned out, we returned to our homes as dawn broke. I gaped in amazement at the destruction of the wildlands on the north side of our community. Homes stood unscathed but the landscaping around them was seared. 

Fourteen years after the first wildfire, in a second stroke of good fortune, this wildfire did not reach the scrublands in front of my home. However, some families were not so lucky. Forty homes in the nearby village of La Misión burned down. The wider community came together to help out the survivors of the wildfire. The destructiveness of nature’s infernos imprinted upon my mind for good.