Non Californians... Want to see what we are going through???

http://ktla.feedroom.com/iframeset.jsp?st=1067241035437&rdm=19448.585508899774

http://ktla.feedroom.com/iframeset.jsp?st=1067240973765&rdm=693287.2811023978

http://ktla.feedroom.com/iframeset.jsp?st=1067240880562&rdm=315646.3514664848

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This link has phone numbers, shelter addresses and more pictures

right side of page..scroll down a bit

http://ktla.trb.com/news/local/ktla-me-ramona27oct27-lat,0,7659734.story?coll=ktla-newslocal-1

My uncle and cousins are in Escondido. I'd heard there was an evacuation a while ago, but nothing else.

I'm mostly worried about my aunt and uncle, they're in their 80's. I'm thinking they should be okay. They've lived in the same house for over 50 years. Must be some sort of California record! But it's on 9th Street so I would think the whole town would have to burn before they were in trouble. I just can't imagine what it would to to them if they lost their home. Guess I'll call my dad in the morning. This is just horrifying.

SoCal, show them what our Southland neighbors are made of. There is very little statistical danger, but morale is taking a hit. I have friends I've been emailing, and they are worried (and worryers). Make sure that displaced people have donuts, sandwiches and coffee, and a blankie.

The news said that some of the firefighters had been at it for almost 20 hour straight without a break, so I went to the grocery store when it opened (6 am) and bought jugs of prepared koolaid and about 7 loaves of bread, lunch meat, peanut butter & jelly..

I spent the next hour or so making 2 grocery sacks full of sandwiches.. I drove out to where they were fighting the fire, and had a kind of pissed off looking fireman approach my car... Just as he was about to tell me to get the hell out of there, I opened the window and handed his koolaid jugs and popped the trunk & pointed for him to get the bags out of it....

He kind of grinned, and came around and said.. "You know what I was going to tell you?".. "I said I am leaving".. He waved as I left :)

Those were about 40 of the dirtiest and tiredest guys I ever saw..

From the mommy of a dirty, tired firefighter ... God bless your little heart. They love it, it means so much to them.

Please take care, thoughts and prayers r with you.

I moved to Pasadena about a month before the Altadena fire. I remember the morning I woke up gasping and wheezing, then realizing that wasn't fog outside the window, but smoke....

We watched the fire burn up on the front of the San Gabriels from the top of a 16 story building that night. The spread downward missed my boss's house in northern Altadena by two houses, burning about a dozen others on his street. A lot of people I knew spent the night or two nights hosing down their house roofs in the Sierra Madre foothills and places like that. And I see what snippets they show on the news here and it's like I'm back there again.

As for what's burning now...I feel for the people. And I used to drive all over the Los Padres, San Gabriels, and San Bernardinos, from Palomar and Ramona/Julien to Sisquoc Creek. I can't find a good enough map to tell me whether Blue Gap has been spared, but already a good amount of what I knew- I travelled up to Arrowhead and Wrightwood and beyond Hemet a lot- seems gone. All those forrests and chapparal and small grasslands, with so much unwise development onto hills and ridges and into valleys that are overgrown.... The smoke and ash is everywhere in the Valleys and the Basin by now, and it's the dustiest season anyway. And if you're not lucky, some firebug with an anti-development or other agenda will play the game again in a few weeks, as they did in Laguna Canyon back then....

I have to hope for the best for all of you in SoCal, hope that the winds abate and reverse for a time. Then a bit of rain to wash the worst of the ash away, but not enough to make the mud flow. How sad.

and we got very little then.. I just wish that there would be a moratorium on building in those damned canyons ..

You probably know where Chino Hills is.. The WHOLE ridgetop is covered with half million $ homes now.. Talk about stupid :P

I got lost driving around Chino Hills back then and when I left I wasn't sure why people would voluntarily live in those developments in the first place.

Thanks to some reading about LA and talking to people I have come to realize that everyone (except just maybe a small proportion of the current residents) thinks these are air conditioned trial versions of sociocultural Hell.

Given the 'burn cycle' of chapparal as 12-14 years around the Basin, maybe a bit longer further up the valley, I suppose we'll see many more of these kind of places burn in our lifetime. Joan Didion says in her essay about life in Malibu (she had a house on the beach right off the Trancas Market at Zuma, in the mid-70s) that all the brochures the city sent her said 'when the fire comes' rather than 'if the fire comes'. And she left a little after the Kanan Road fire that swept all the way down to the sea.

It was quite an introduction to LA that I got that year. First the Altadena fire hit pretty close, then the Northridge earthquake three months later, and then all the unhappiness from the riots and the aerospace decline came, and OJ happened just as I left that job and moved East again.

i wish we could send it to you all

I watched all those clips because I had seen your earlier post about the lack of news coverage nationally. Thinking (DUFUS!) that perhaps they were just slow, I told my husband that if we turned on CNN or MSNBC we would probably get some idea of how things were going for CA by now. He had just come home from a weekend trip to Massachussetts and I'd asked him if he knew anything about the fires in CA from radio broadcasts. He said no.

So we turned on MSNBC and got Tweety, yapping about Clinton. I swear to God. I was aghast. It is one thing to think it and know it but then to see it.... Then we went to CNN and got a story about Elizabeth Smart.


Cher

As a young teen we had fires like that in Maine and NH and I still recall them, my Grandmother's town lost 600 homes and that was just one town and a small town in Maine. You can still come to celler holes in the small towns and see on the land where the fire went.I lived on the coast and I can recall standing in the sun room watching it burn down towards Kennebunkport and thinking every thing was going to burn. My father was out in his truck with his worker and the state just took him ,the work man, and truck for 2 or 3 days, so we did not know where he was.As I recall it was 2 weeks of pure hell and many lived in tents that winter. Not easy in Maine. Believe me I do feel bad for you.

My oldest daughter may not have a high school to go to in the morning.
Recieved phone call from my ship, I don't have to go to work in the morning; but we a still scheduled to get underway tommorow for Port Hueneme.
Wind has died down and fog has rolled in as of 3am. Things are looking up. Thick smoke smell, but the ash has stopped falling. I have two families staying with us who live closer to the fire line; but thier homes should be ok (so far.).

I'll keep you posted...

:bounce: You live near SD, don't you.

Thanks SoCal for providing the links. I can't believe it. One said a 30 mile wall of flame. Stay safe Southern Californians.

HH--Sorry I missed you in SF when you visited.

At least, it looks like fog.

I'm stationed here in San Diego; I'm in the southern part of town.

Sorry I missed you too; next time I'll remember to print out phone numbers so when the email goes down, I can still call people.

I am bummed I was out of town (in TEXAS of all places) when you visited SF. Next time you are in town, just let me know and I'd be thrilled to put you up/show you around town.

Hope you and yours stay safe!

Hell

pm me :)

When you can get a chance to meet us
and I'll try to put together a get together :hi:

and see this DUer waving at you from the 17th floor :hi:

*cough* cough* through all the smoke and ash *cough* cough*

We don't expect fog up here until Wednesday, they say. The humidity will help the firefighters doing their job but I expect the air quality will get worse. We've had no Santa Anas here by the coast and the smoke just lingers.

:kick:

we were evacuated Saturday around ten thirty, fleeing a wall of flames that turned the whole evening sky a blazing orange. As we drove away looking back we could see the whole range of mountains on fire stretching all the way from the inland westward toward Los Angeles. . .a terrifying and awesome sight.

On Sunday morning we were permitted back. As we were waved through the barricades by police we wondered whether we had a home to return to. Miracle of miracles there was our home--intact but covered by a mountain of ashes. The pool was solid with ashes and the air thick with smoke. Ashes are still falling like snow flakes. We were without electricity most of the day. But as Sunday went on, I felt a tremendous sense of relief seeing neighbors coming home, family by family-- all safe and with somewhere to come home to. We are the lucky ones.

Several homes in our unincoporated city have gone including the house on the mountain side affectionately known as "the star house" for the giant star that lit up the mountain side every christmas and which could be seen for miles in the valley. It's a star that has shone every year for over four decades. After 9/11 the new owners of the house rebuilt the star so that it shone brighter and more beautifully. I am not a christian, but in these difficult times not having that star shine over our valley at the end of this year somehow makes me much sadder and perhaps a little less hopeful about the years ahead.

I'm so happy you are safe and your house is safe.

and thank you also to all the other Duers for your thoughts. meant a lot to me during the difficult hours.

But dammit, why do they keep building subdivisions in desert tinderboxes that are prone to burn?

Maybe Southern California should limit it's population the way Bermuda does. Sustainability. With global warming, this will only get worse.

you asked:

"But dammit, why do they keep building subdivisions in desert tinderboxes that are prone to burn?"

two words: developer greed.

we're losing the battle with powerful developers who have local cities in their pocket wanting more revenues. where we are, beautiful areas filled with desert and mountain flora and fauna are leveled and turned into tract after tract of monster mansions and starter palaces. many of the homes that went up in flames were huge multi-million houses that stood where we had orange groves, ravines filled with wild life and desert plants. people with lots of money also buy land high up in the mountains--several locations nearby you can see bull dozer scarring the face of the mountains as the moneyed types build their custom spreads.

where recent "family homes" have been built, houses are packed into tracts like sardines in a can.

developers don't care where they build: in southern california long time residents knew for decades that the 210 freeway would be built but developers went ahead and constructed expensive house right along the proposed freeway. now residents (who didn't know or cared to find out) are having to face the horrible noise, dust and whatever. ofcourse they won't be able to sell these houses.


i don't generally curse people out, but i always hope there is a special hell for developers.

But I can't believe the majority of Californians want unbridled development...Can't the subject be put on referendums or some type of voting?

I would think this matter has become so costly in life and property that the people would demand a change in this practice. But, oh yeah, you guys (well not you) voted in Arnold who probably owns a few development companies.

Sheesh...good luck!!

OK..maybe now you can talk to your neighbors about that CAR TAX since it is what funds LOCAL firefighters.

having lived through the Missionary Ridge and Valley fires in June 2002. I drove around with the stuff I'd packed in my car for two months, for fear of another fire starting near my home. I ran outside all last summer and still get nervous when I hear a helicopter or a low-flying plane. It was like the apocalypse, and I know the fires in southern California are a hundred times worse. I'm sending psychic fire-extinguishing vibes and good thoughts in your direction.

I just heard Chimpy say, "It's a dangerous fire." What a dork.

to be so hot and dry this late in October?

Global warming?

Actions, meet consequences.

They are responsible for lots of folks moving to California.:evilgrin:.. People come out here on vacation in October, when it's getting cold where they live... They see see gorgeous blue skies, and the temps in the 90's and say.. "Hey..there's no smog, they lied to us.. we're moving here"..and they do, and the santa anas die down and the smog is back :(

usually there's Santa Anas then too; people come out with whatever Rose Bowl Team from the frozen North is playing , and low and behold, they never leave. :)

As far as global warming, the lack of rainfall is the part that kicks in.

the parade.. They see people in shorts and start packing their stuff..

No wonder CA is full of east coasters and northeasterners:)

This is fire season in southern California. And every so often they have a particularly bad year. This seems to be it. It's been 10 years since the last particularly bad fire year (1993), so one could say they are overdue. This is a normal happening in that part of the country (and over most of the rest of the Western U.S. as well).

SoCal gets virtually no rain from May through November normally, so by late October, things are very dry and it doesn't take much to get the fires going.

My thoughts are with those in SoCal hoping you all get through this intact. I lived there myself for 6 years back in the nineties, though I was fortunate enough not to live at the interface between suburbia and the chapparal zone, so my personal well-being was never threatened by the brush fires.

:scared:

--Peter