We are happy to share with our readers that September is officially National Preparedness Month, and here in our home state of California, it couldn’t come at a better time. Our sister companies back east and in the Midwest are bracing for the winter weather, while here in SoCal, we’re watching our hillsides get dryer and dryer, and waiting for that smell of smoke in the air that signals a wildfire.

And the word “wildfire” is misleading—it’s not that the fire is out in the wilderness, although sometimes they are. It’s more that they are wildly out of control, what with our strong Santa Ana winds that come out of the desert and rush across to the coast. It seems to be Mother Nature’s cruel joke that our end-of-summer heat that sucks all the moisture from our terrain coincides with the hot Santa Ana winds, which can create a disaster out of a small fire. [Read more…]