katakat.com bytes from a participant observer

GoogleMap link to fires. The fires started here in San Diego on Sunday afternoon. When I left the folks' place after Sunday lunch (around 5 p.m.) I could see a layer of brown smoke in the air to the north of their place. Monday morning, the smell of smoke was a lot stronger. By 11:00, many schools had closed and ours was the only campus in our district still open. So we all waited and watched our email to finally get the signal to go home. Which happened at 1:00; we were shut down by 3:00. My being at work was absolutely useless anyway, as most of my time was spent running around rescheduling meetings and answering questions about the fires. By the time I got home, I was pooped and had to flop on the couch to watch the news. By then the fires were THE topic on ALL channels. (I have only basic cable anyway, so that's not saying much.) As it got dark, I packed up a few things (including important papers), grabbed the laptop, and headed to the folks' place again, just in case they would have to evacuate that evening or something. Where I live is very close to downtown, so I didn't have to evacuate. Which is good, because if downtown were threatened, we'd all be SOL, and I would have hopped on my bike and headed for the beach. Can a mountain bike float? The evening was uneventful for us, though many thousands of people were being told to evacuate. We were just glued to the TV for hours. No commercials, either; every station had pictures, maps, and up-to-the minute evacuation information. The situation is much more serious than it was 4 years ago during the Cedar fire. THIS time, however, 250,000 people had been told to evacuate-- and wow, were they ever! Some didn't even wait for the notices, which is much better than last time, when people only had 5 minutes of notice: literally, get the hell out NOW. And don't bother turning off the lights when you go. All this was too much for this information junkie; I had to go to sleep at 11:00 p.m. But not for long. I was awakened at 3:00 a.m. by the sound of voices in the house; my brother Nick, his wife, his in-laws (who were in town on a visit) had arrived, bringing their cats and dogs. And their camper too. Seems that one of their neighbors was banging on their door to wake them up at 12:30 so as to show them the fire on a neighboring mountaintop, visible from their driveway. So they packed up and headed over to our part of town, to the west. Meanwhile, brother Dom was stuck at the hospital until late, as more patients were being admitted despite the fact the hospital was full. I would guess they were coming from evacuated institutions from the east part of the county. This morning we watched more TV. And then I took the in-laws to the airport to go back to Chicago a day early. They were lucky to reschedule their trip. Airport was not impacted much. I think most tourists are gone for the season by now, anyway. So I'm home now, doing some schoolwork whilst checking the TV for updates. Watching and waiting. This fire season has been disastrous, but at least things are a lot more organized (reverse 911 calls for evacuations; more evacuation centers, especially for large animals; better communications systems for all emergency personnel; more helicopters dropping water...) and we are hopeful this will not last much longer, despite the low humidity and high winds.