Malibu is a living, breathing disaster area and everyone who lives there knows it. Why ANYONE would build their home in one of the canyons - especially Malibu or Topanga canyons - is beyond me. Yes, it's beautiful, but everyone there knows that wildfires move through those canyons every 3 years or so. The brush that covers the hillsides has a high oil content that fuels the flames.
When I was a freshman at Pepperdine we had a wildfire (they're almost always in October) that scared the crap out of everyone...that time the fire actually moved ON campus but managed to avoid any buildings besides some horse stables (yes, the horses had already been evacuated - to the baseball stadium). The University always seems to escape harm, and it was apparently built with fire safety in mind, but I wonder how long it will be until the fire can't be stopped at its borders. In '96 it was as if God himself saved the campus, as we found out when we came back and saw that the flames had charred a circle around the University but left the campus green.
Sad to see/hear that the church I attended while at Pepp burned to the ground this time.
ETA: At the entrance to campus...
I tried to send other photos but all the sites seem to have them locked. But MSNBC has a slideshow with lots of photos the Pepperdine students took from on campus:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21421272/nPage/1
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