The Santa Ana winds blew all night, gusts so strong they lifted a six-foot glass table over our deck railing and catapulted it onto our side lawn, where it shattered into 10,000 pieces on the grass. In western Malibu, power lines touched down and sparked blazes that sprinted across the hills. It’s hard to believe just how fierce a dry, hot wind can be. Windows rattle maniacally, roof tiles take off like ceramic Frisbees, garbage pails soar. As I waited in the car at my older daughter’s bus stop on Pacific Coast Highway that afternoon, I watched fire trucks from all over Los Angeles County screaming up the coast. The smoke pouring out from the mountains fifteen miles to my west looked like a huge gray blister spreading across in the sky...

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