CA fires

OMG!  Shelly, stay safe!  I wish I could help house people or something.

 sorry joyce.. just saw this.  YES.. that is the same one that was in 2003 and was horrible.  This is on the same route.  how is your family? They are evacuating part of the city that your family lives in.. lots of the south bay is now at risk.. is your sister OK?

Shelly, yes.  I just had an e-mail from one sister - the one in CV.  All the schools in San Diego closed down this morning so she wound up with 5 grandkids who couldn't go outside.  Sound like she's having fun yet? My oldest DS and DGS are living in Ocean Beach & the schools there are closed too.  Isaac is overjoyed to have no school tomorrow.  Too bad he won't be able to go hang at the beach as he's living only a couple of blocks from it. My sister and  BIL have a cabin up in Arrowhead but they don't know yet whether it survived. Just the mental picture of having to evacuate 265,000 people boggles the mind, doesn't it? I know they're setting up shelters in the Chargers' stadium but I can't imagine where they're going to put all those people, especially ones that had to be evacuated from hospitals and nursing homes.

Joyce

Stay safe everyone...

Stay away from the smoke, flames, and the debris from the high winds!

I had to drive home staring at 3 patches of huge smoke on the mountains. One in front of me, one to me left, and one to my rear left. Then when I got to my neighborhood, the winds were blasting and I had to maneuver my car around uprooted trees and fallen branches.

The wind was so strong, one of of the intersection lights got bent in the direction of the wind O-o.

If anyone in the area needs somewhere to go, let us know, okay? I'm sure among all of us we could work something out.

Prayers and positive thoughts for all you guys in Cali......please, stay safe.....

Man, what a mess.

My dad is in SoCal but is coming home now.  He can't get anywhere he was supposed to go, and now his hotel is basically a refugee shelter for people who actually live in SoCal, so he's getting out of the way. 

Wow. I'm thankfully not directly affected by the fire, I'm far enough west that it would have to go through a LOT of things to get to me, without enough brush to quickly burn through, but my cousin's 4 year old is sick, stuffy runny nose, head hurts..yesterday she was telling me she needed to go to the doctor, but with just a runny nose I told her no she didn't..but when she got home she started gagging and throwing up..can't be from anything but the smoke at this point, I don't think, and her house is closer to the fire than mine, so I guess that's why she threw up when she got home as opposed to when she was here.. Her mother's coming home early from work today, taking her to the doctor if she's any worse. I'm hoping she's just fine and it's not from the smoke, just a coincidence, but that seems pretty unlikely considering everyone else has achy heads and noses too.

The person/people who did this should be burned at the freaking stake. Forget even the environmental impact, and possible (probable?) loss of homes, we can't be the only ones who're having respiratory problems from it. Let's just hope there's no long-term health effects, though I can't imagine there won't be.

Wow...Yahoo's article makes things sound grim...I am so sorry that this is happening...and probably at the hands of some idiot as well...sheesh. I hope all are staying safe and please please BE CAREFUL.

Good time for the rest of us to go over our evac/disaster plans for ourselves and our pets....

Ack!  The smoke and the ashes are sooo intense!  It honestly looks like it's snowing outside.  I'm trying my best to keep two 11 year-old boys and the dogs inside, but it's not that easy.  We're in no danger of the fires though, just really bad air quality.

The fires do make for some spectacular sunsets though:

OC Register (local paper) says at least 15-20 homes on fire in the Irvine area fire. I think these are the first in my area... I heard a siren (sounded like a fire truck, but who knows) a few minutes ago and just about had a heart attack. Any little fire could turn into something massive. It's really scary. I'm kind of glancing around my house trying to see what I'll grab if I can (after I get the animals out of course), should I have to leave, lol. I'm just paranoid about new fires, the current fire won't come at me (without burning through 6ish miles of houses and businesses first anyway).

 I think the only Irvine homes on fire are deep in the Canyons. While nobody ever wants a fire like this, that area is very very high fire risk - they even have a fire station out in the middle of the forest - so hopefully the residents there had made emergency preparations.

For the most-updated info on the OC fires, the fire authority website is really good: http://www.ocfa.org/ocfamain.asp?pgn1=3

I'm going out this afternoon to pick up some papers from my attorney, as the fires seem to be moving towards her office and I'd just feel a lot better if I could mail them safely out of state... we've just been fortunate here in Orange County so far that the firefighters have been able to mostly keep the fires constrained to the wilderness areas and away from residential complexes.

I sure do hope they catch the A-hole who did this... 

This picture is just....scary...

I did get some good news earlier.  One of my sisters lives in Jamul which was evacuated last night. DGS got a  text from my neice saying everyone was OK and staying at a friends house somewhere.  Not sure yet if their house is still standing but at least her family is safe.

Joyce

I know it's really stupid since I live in such a populated, non-wildernessy area, but I'm really kind of scared to leave the animals here alone while I go anywhere (like the grocery store, or just to get some food and drink). Can't leave doors or windows open because of smoke and heat, but I'm scared of being gone and having something happen, with the animals trapped inside. Sigh... I'm really not usually this paranoid or scaredy about these kind of things, but I guess I'm just realizing that it could happen, and IS happening, to anyone and everyone. God, the number of people evacuated in San Diego county is unreal.