LOS ANGELES There is smoke everywhere.

Its Monday morning at 10 a.m., and Im driving north up Californias famously stunning coastline toward the Thomas fire, the largest and most uncontrolled of five massive wildfires that have brought devastation to Southern California for the past week. I can see the enormous gloom ahead from 50 miles away brown smoke hovering over the southern edge of a fire that had consumed a staggering 230,000 acres so far.

Im on my way to Ventura County, where the fire first began on Dec. 4 and from where it would eventually grow into the fifth largest in state history over the week that followed. Ventura is an iconic place, a once rugged beach town known for its citrus fruit farming and local surf spots, so often overshadowed by its big neighbor, Los Angeles.