After the Santiago Fire, I waited for another clear day (which took several weeks), and set out to do it again and see just how far north the fire had reached. I managed to get a great pair of before and after photos from the intersection of Foothill and Lemon Heights.

October 6, 2007. Click for a larger version

November 24, 2007. Click for a larger version

While the orchards seem to have been spared, you can see the field in the foreground looks scorched, and most of the trees making up firebreaks seem to have died. More dramatic are the hillsides. Before the fire, you can see expansive dark patches of scrub, wide expanses of lighter dried grass, and occasional dark green bushes. Now it’s all dirt, except for the blackened remnants of the bushes. There are several gullies whose sides were hidden and softened by the ground cover, but are now starkly visible. And after this week’s rain, they’re probably eroded even more.

A few notes: The air was somewhat clearer for the “after” photo, and it was earlier in the afternoon, so the angle of the sunlight helped pick out terrain features a bit better.

Here’s a shot from the Irvine Spectrum area from April 6, 2006:

That’s not a lawn behind that hedge, that’s a vacant lot. You can see it’s just as green as the strip of maintained grass along the sidewalk. Now here’s a picture taken about half a block away, taken last week, on April 6, 2007 (no, the timing was not intentional).

This year, only a few weeds and flowers have managed to take hold in the vacant lot. Meanwhile, the hills are their usual golden brown. Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to see much in the way of wildflowers this year. Here’s what they looked like last May, specifically May 5, 2006.

Instead, everything pretty much looks like these hills out in the Foothill Ranch area (IIRC this was called Borrego Park), taken last Wednesday:

You can see what a difference sprinklers make. Which brings me to this item: I walked to the Spectrum shopping center for lunch last Friday, and noticed that the parking lot across the street was bordered with these brilliant magenta flowers. I didn’t have the good camera with me, just my phone, but I’ve tried to correct the colors as much as I could: I went back on Monday and got a better picture.

Right after taking this the original photo, I looked down and noticed that the embankment was practically crawling with bees. I carefully backed away and continued on my walk.

For contrast, here’s a shot from a few weeks earlier (February 23), when it was unusually clear. This was taken from a park in the Quail Hill area of Irvine, looking across the Saddleback Valley from the south toward the same range of hills seen on the left of the picture above.

Click to enlarge