Cedar fire 2003: October 2003, San Diego, California: on a Sunday in late October, with the sky yellow, smoky and filled with ashes that made it look like it was snowing, I was oblivious to what was going on. I'm not a very television-oriented person and rarely do I read the newspaper, but I knew something devastating was happening in Southern California.

I DECIDED to go to the local watering hole to catch the news, and was shocked by what I saw--raging fires in San Diego and up through Los Angeles. A lost hunter with a flare gun, so goes the story, started the whole thing. Thousands of houses were being burned to the ground, residents being evacuated and major roads closed. Firefighters had to work around the clock to contain the fires that were being spread around Southern California by the Santa Ana winds. The fires lasted 12 days and were responsible for 20 deaths. In San Diego alone, 2,232 homes were destroyed and 400,000 acres burned. Insurance companies really got hit hard--upwards of two-billion in claims.

I NOTICED SALBA CALLED a few times on my cell phone that Sunday, as well as other pool skaters in San Diego and back east in NYC, Massachusetts, and Florida. Most of the messages said "Dude, there are going to be a shit load of pools going on soon." That's exactly what I thought, but I knew from past experience with the Northridge earthquakes that those areas would be hot for awhile with insurance companies, families trying to find any sort of remaining belongings, looters, and aggro neighbors pissed about nosy people cruising around the charred remains. So I gave it about a month and a half, then started searching. Driving around there, it really hit that the fires ripped through and burned houses to the ground, leaving only an occasional chimney--the concrete slab that once was separated by walls--and mangled metal on the ground. There were cars, lawn furniture and swing sets burned, and only the frames of things were still visible. Some streets had one house standing--untouched by the flames--and 10 or 15 other houses missing around it.

Most of the pools were still intact; some filled to the top with black dirt, ash, and water. I spoke with one resident whose house did not burn, and he mentioned that some people placed personal belongings in trash bags and submersed them in the full swimming pools to escape the fires. Another couple actually had to jump in the swimming pool to escape being burned to death. Whoever said swimming pools with water in them are useless? Another resident of that area pointed to the canyon behind a house and said it took 19 minutes for the fire to burn about one mile, and that the flames were so huge that they went right over the house like a giant wave and burned the houses across the street.

Jesse Fritsch, Matt Dove and myself found a handful of pools that were all built in the recent years with crazy waterfalls, loveseats, and bells and whistles that the older, more skateable pools didn't have. So we crept around in the dark and on weekdays and bucketed and shoveled ash out to skate these holes, trying not to be caught by a neighbor or the police. Even worse would be skating a pool and having the person who lost all their belongings (that will never get replaced by the best insurance companies) show up to find skaters ruining one of the only things left.

These fires devastated the area and even took people's lives. Barging some poor victim's backyard to skate their once-maintained and groomed swimming pool may not do much to help the situation, but at least the worst of the damage was already done. Skate and destroy.