Just got an email from my friend in Rancho Santa Fe. He and his family are all evacuated safely. The fire is a few miles away from his place as of 9 AM PST, but he did say it was heading in his direction. He had time to evacuate the dogs, cats, and goats (why he has goats in a gated community I’m not sure), along with other family heirlooms.
I work about 15/20 miles west of the San Bernardino fires, and driving into work today, it looked like the end times were upon us. To the south, we can see the Ontario fire (Walker Fire). My mom lives up near Arrowhead (small town named Crestline), and the half of the town on her side of the lake was evacuated last night. She is spectacularly stubborn (and has gone through this a bunch of times), so they opted to pack up the car and the dogs and sleep on the side of the lake that was only voluntarily evacuated.
It makes me think of the people who were stranded in New Orleans who said that they didn’t bother to evacuate because they had been through this so many times and nothing bad ever came of it. ::sigh:: There’s nothing I can do to convince her to leave, so basically, I’m just waiting for her to call and say that they’re evacuating the whole town and she’s leaving. We’ll see if that happens. In the meantime, I’m just watching the orange-colored sunlight outside my window. It’s rather eerie.
Well… snot! We thought we might be able to go home today to see if our house is still there, and were trying to figure out what roads were still closed, when we found out our area is now back under mandatory evacuation again! Maybe not going home today after all…
Send booze! And hookers!! 
My mom (in the La Jolla hotel) saw a similar announcement yesterday and said they’d be posting it on the internet after 1pm today. She suspects the Channel 8 site will carry it. It’s been helpful so far, but I just learned that several homes were destroyed east of the 15, where we grew up. That puts our house exactly 1 mile away. :gulp: There are some houses but mostly golf courses in between there and our house, but I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not…
Here you go!
Booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, booze and hookers, etc,
Seriously though, do you have any idea what Fedex charges to send a hooker!
Several teachers on our campus have lost their houses and pets to the Running Springs fire. It has jumped Highway 18 and is headed for the center of town, which means my lawyer will probably lose his house, too. We are under alert for smoke here, and all athletic practices have been cancelled.
Hang in there, folks. We’re all pulling for you.
Who the fuck leaves their pets in their houses in the line of fires??!! My GOD that makes me mad. :mad:
It ticks me off that the national coverage is so totally weighted towards covering Malibu, with virtually nothing about the area south of San Diego, where the “Harris fire” is threatening Bonita, Chula Vista, and the surrounding area.
Can anyone fill me in on Bonita, and specifically the suburb on the northern border of the western end of Sweetwater Park and SE of the golf course and reservoir? Thanks.
I remember growing up with reporter Larry Himmell, and here is is covering his own home being burned to the ground. 
If any of you have a livejournal, the san_diego community is full of great updates, links and maps. There’s also a fireblog from Signonsandiego that you can access here:
This may help a little bit.
I actually feel the same way about the media spending an inordinate time focusing on Malibu. For some perspective, there have been 6 homes and 2 businesses that have burned in that fire. The fire up by my mom’s house? Over 100 homes are gone. However, I’m sure the 6 homes in Malibu were more expensive than the ones in Grass Valley and they might have been owned by someone famous, so obviously that’s much more important than the working-class folks living in the unfashionable part of the city.
Oh for Christ’s sake. My girlfriend’s mom’s good friend lost her house and small ranch last night. They also lost a small herd of their prize goats. They weren’t at home when one of the fires broke out very close to their home and couldn’t get back to do anything about it. Believe me, they’re devistated.
If you think that the majority of those people who lost their pets left them behind by choice then you are in serious need of a clue. Some of these fires came out of nowhere and if you were miles away at work when the neighborhood was suddenly evacuated, what exactly are you supposed to do?
My poor Mom is having a panic attack and has no doubt in her mind that her entire neighborhood is going to be consumed. Her area of Solana is still only under a voluntary evacuation but it’s “strongly advised” now. There are areas that are way, way worse off than hers so I think that it’s premature for her to panic.
My step-dad was one of those who wanted to stay behind but Mom nearly throttled him for suggesting it. She told him, “you’re 73 god damn years old and you’re not about to be climbing on ladders hosing down the roof.”
Bless my little sister for housing the two of them.
Apologies if this has already been linked but I am getting reasonably good information from www.sdcountyemergency.com.
FYI, the area that this happened in (Running Springs) is relatively remote. There are two ways up the mountain, and both of them were blocked yesterday. Many, MANY people were prevented from getting home before the evacuation. My mom’s area was NOT evacuated yesterday, but they were not letting people up the road to get to their house. (She thinks that she was only able to get up to her house because her husband is a contractor for the power company and flashed his ID.) I’m certain these poor people are absolutely crushed that not only were they unable to get their valuables, they lost a loved pet in the fire too.
Thanks, jakeline… I’ve been checking maps, but hadn’t figured out how to get the fire update info on the map at the same time.
For Katrina, my sister was up here visiting her grandmother who’s nearly 90 and senile. She came up before there was any real chance of Katrina hitting New Orleans, and then she was stuck up here. The interstate was only going north.
Thankfully her friends were able to get her dogs out when they left, but they had to leave her cats in the house because one of their dogs is a cat-killer. She got down there about two weeks after the storm. The cats seemed curious as to where she’d been, but they were fine.
-Lil
You should’ve told me–I would’ve been happy to hang onto them for you. Getting them back might be difficult, though. 
There has been one more fatality. The first death was in the Harris fire on the border, pretty far east of San Diego proper. 22 civilians and 21 firefighters have been injured.
“Often”? Not really. I’ve lived here for 10 years and I can probably count on one hand the number of times I remember the temperature dipping below 50.
It’s true. But the last time I remember hail before that was when I moved here in 1997. At that point, there were a couple of times when the little ice stones were big enough to hurt someone, and I do remember a couple of casualties from back then.
True. The ocean, like any massive body of water, has a stabilizing effect on the climate nearby. The major climate differences come when you get pretty far out of the city, although the heat can get ungodly even 20 miles east of town in El Cajon. It’s the humidity, though; it’s not as bad as (say) Southeast Texas, but it makes 100-degree heat unbearable for me, and I’ve lived in Arizona in 130 degree summers.
Heh, that’s Rancho Santa Fe for ya…
It’s important to note that the mandatory evacuation zones give plenty of “cushion” between the evacuees and the fire. And the police really do get on peoples’ asses about getting out of mandatory evacuation zones. “Voluntary evacuation” is just that–there’s no need to leave at that point if you don’t feel like leaving. Me, I would stay in my home until I got the mandatory evacuation notice; better to have as much time in the comfort of your home as possible, to “recharge” you for the difficulty of sleeping on a football field.
:eek: I only made it through about 20 seconds of that clip. I can’t imagine how he can do it. Those CBS reporters in particular have been pretty amazing; they have a lot of people in the field who stand within several hundred feet of the fire and give updates from the firefighters.
Is highway 5 open from San Deigo to San Francisco? Or are some parts closed?
Agreed. Unfortunately, she’s ignoring the mandatory evacuation on her side of town because the other side is only getting a voluntary evacuation. I believe that in 2003, they actually knocked on doors, but this time, they only drove down the streets with a loudspeaker. There’s scant news about the fire up there that I can find, so I’m not sure whether the fire is moving towards or away from them.
Well it does not go to San Francisco but it is open in all of San Diego County at this time. 15 is closed from 78 to the Riverside county line. As reported by the SD union tribune.
It remains hot and still here in Clairemont with only a hint of wood smoke in the air. My brother in law reports that it is a little smoky in Rancho Peñasquitos but not bad at all. He is a little west of 15 and a little south of 56 along the edge of the Peñasquitos Canyon. My contacts from downtown San Diego report things being pretty normal there.
The best thing anyone can do if they want to help is not to hinder fire fighting efforts. While trying to communicate with friends/family in the affected areas is important, the actual attempt at trying to communicate with them is causing problems. That’s because quite a bit of emergency fire communications are now done via cell phones. Cell phones are considerably cheaper, faster and easier to communicate with than attempting to set up and operate emergency radio communications across different jurisdictions (The events of 9/11 brought this out. However, there are still problems.)
That said, don’t call cell phone numbers inside the fire affected areas. If you are in a fire affected area, do your best to use a landline phone to call out. The best way to keep in touch with family/friends in fire affected areas is by setting up a time slot for calling, and limit yourselves to that single phone call. Better still set up a phone tree so that folks outside of the affected areas can notify others instead of everyone trying to call the same number inside the fire areas.
While the media is doing its best to relay official fire information, be aware that official fire information generally comes out once in the morning and once in the afternoon, unless there is a significant change. The rest of the time the media is merely speculating. Don’t get caught up in the media hype.