Last Blog On Earth

Unless you viewed a satellite image, every one of last week’s fire maps I found on the web magically stopped right at the Mexico/U.S. border, the globs of red and orange signifying fire and danger simply dissapearing into a nondescript mass of gray that is currently my home.

As the smoke outside my Tijuana apartment worsened, I began to worry that we wouldn’t get the evacuation warning even if the fire was just a few hundred feet away.

Most of even the Tijuana media coverage was focused on San Diego, so no one knew a thing. It was strange and scary, so after the smoke cleared I drove to Tecate to see just how close the Harris Fire came to crossing.

After getting mixed stories from Tecate police and townspeople — one guy in a cafe said a maquila and a house burned in the eastern end of the town while the police said the fire didn’t cross at all — I drove to the border to see for myself what exactly went on. And bam, the map came to life.

Believe it or not, the hills just to the north of the border fence were scorched, but everything was green and unburned on the Mexico side. The fire, quite literally, stopped right at the fence. The damage was enough to keep the Tecate Port of Entry closed since the structure itself is on the U.S. side.

I left Tecate, bewildered by the situation, thinking how strange and amazing it was, and decided to make a spontaneous trip to Mexicali since I was already about halfway there. Fifteen minutes later, while heading east on Mexico’s Highway 2, I hit a burn area. I could see where the fire had jumped the border fence and the highway itself, and I could see where it eventually burned itself out. Mexican fire policy, according to reports, is to let wildfires do their thing — burn until they burn out.

Later, I found out the fire had reportedly crossed the fence in one other rural spot between Tecate and Otay, too. As far as I know, no structures were damaged and no one was hurt.