Fire danger high

In Sunday's Vision section, we had a piece that Annabelle Gurwitch wrote for the Los Angeles Times about living through last week's wildfire in her Griffith Park neighborhood.

"I've always wondered what I would take with me in the event of an emergency. Now I know. I packed our cat, our son's favorite stuffed animals, my grandmother's silver and a really expensive pair of shoes. No underwear, but our wedding invitation and some designer shampoo! What was I thinking?"

An actor from my favorite TV drama -- Steven W. Bailey, who plays Joe the bartender on "Grey's Anatomy" -- also had a couple of close brushes with disaster. After fleeing his home near Griffith Park with his family, he encountered another fire on Catalina Island.

"We were approaching the island, and we see the smoke," Bailey said. "And we actually, from pretty far away, I jokingly said to my wife, I was like, 'That cloud formation over there almost looks like there's a fire in Catalina.'"

This is going to be a dry year and a bad season for wild fires. On Saturday, I drove to Pismo with my daughter and mom. I don't remember the last time the grass-covered hills near Paso Robles were already so dry this early.

(Associated Press photo: Smoke from a wildfire rises over Avalon on the California resort island of Catalina on May 10. The 400-acre wildfire erupted on Thursday, forcing evacuations just as firefighters were mopping up a blaze at Los Angeles' sprawling Griffith Park.)