The early October morning was warm and dry and the scorched earth wheezed smoke and ash. Rice Canyon was steep and rugged and serviced by only one paved road, which intersected Highway 76 six miles from the Fallbrook city limit. She hadn’t seen the canyon in two years, since she and her husband had gotten a sitter for the kids and come out here to hike and watch birds, then gamble and spend the night at the Pala Casino. Now she looked out at the utter destruction on display. She remembered Rice Canyon as a lovely, thickly wooded area, clotted with lemonadeberry and sage and ceonothus, which, she knew, would all burn like matches in any drought month. And October was the absolute worst month of all. It looked like a hydrogen bomb had gone off. Fallbrook Fire Chief William Bruck swung around in the front passenger seat and looked at her. “Evelyn, we’ve just learned something interesting that I’d like to share with you. Last week, an online English-language Al-Qaeda magazine called for homegrown terrorists to start fires in the U.S.
