Another October Another Evacuation

I realize I haven't posted in quite a while, but I really haven't had too much going on, especially relating to our adoption.

On the home front however, we've had quite the time this last few days.

In October, we always have Santa Ana conditions in our area. The Santa Ana winds kick up from the east/south, instead of coming in roughly off the ocean like they usually do. It is always HOT, DRY and the winds are fierce - 30-70 + mph wind gusts. There's always power lines that go down, and sadly, there's usually fires as well. This year was no exception.

San Diego is a big county and encompasses a variety of topography, temperature variations. You have the ocean on the west side, and mountains/deserts to the east. San Diego is also unique in that we have many, many canyons and hills carved out by water, eons ago. Due to our desirable climate, and the great influx of people who've moved here, San Diego has seen fit to lop off most of these hills and mountains and grade for homes. Especially in our suburbs. Most are made from stucco, have lush vegetation surrounding them, and many are on or very near a canyon. The vast majority are built on top of one another, even some of the most expensive homes. All of this coupled with a semi-arid climate, years of drought and the high Santa Ana winds, we always have at least one bad fire every fire season.

On Sunday, we had a few fires start in different parts of the county, seemingly remote from most of the populated areas. One called the "Witch Creek" fire, started in Ramona, which is considered back-county. Not too heavily populated, still mostly rural. Lots of farms, lots of livestock. Then we had one called the Harris fire, which started south, close to the Mexican border. Both of these spread rapidly. On Sunday in the wee hours of the night, we had one start within about a mile of us called the "Coronado" fire. At about 4:30am, we got a reverse 911 call notifying our area for a mandatory evacuation. I thought, "Oh no, here we go again". (In 1996 we had a huge fire in the mountains right behind us, and many many homes were burned and people lost their lives).
Here's a link to see where the fire has burned and what areas are being evacuated. The map doesn't show the areas in Fallbrook that have burned. Fallbrook is towards the top of the map.

This time, I woke up DH, and started packing. DH walked up our to a horse-staging area where he could see the mountain in question. It was still smoldering and could see a few areas burning, but it didn't look too bad. With the unpredictable winds, however, you never know when it'll flair up, or where the fire will go. Once we realized our neighborhood wasn't on fire, we prioritized our packing. First thing I thought of was our adoption paperwork! NO WAY was I going to lose that! Other important paperwork went next. I woke up DS and tried not to scare him about the fire. Poor kid said, "why are we getting up so early it's still dark?". I ended up telling him there was a fire, but it wasn't too close (liar, I know), so we were going to make sure we stayed safe. He accepted this, and threw together his Spiderman backpack with some toys. We leashed up the "pudgers" (pugs), and took off to a relatives house.

The T.V. coverage was fairly spotty at first. We learned that there were a total of 7 fires in the county. The Witch Creek fire soon split into 2 fires. Part of this is probably due to the topography in the area the canyons filled with dry brush, the high gusty winds, and a lack of firefighting resources for big multiple fires throughout the county. What didn't burn a few years ago in the Cedar fire has burned now. The fire seems to advance with "fingers". So it's not necessarily advancing in one big line, but the wind gusts will pick up embers and fly them great distances to start fires in a seemingly random pattern. If you see detailed pictures of some neighborhoods, you'll see all the houses close together, and assume they'll all get torched, but with the winds, one house will burn within a close circle of say 1o houses, and then a whole block decimated. No rhyme or reason to it. The Witch fire quickly burned through Ramona down into areas of Rancho Bernardo and Poway. Mercifully it skipped Scripps Ranch (just south of Poway) this year. In past years, Scripps Ranch has been hit hard. The fire has jumped the 15 freeway and has burned in Rancho Santa Fe, Fairbanks Ranch, and now is heading north towards Harmony Grove. (Harmony Grove was also hit very hard in past fires, as well). The other split has gone north and jumped the 15 into Fallbrook and is heading towards Camp Pendleton. If the winds don't die down it'll burn all the way to the ocean. Same with the Harris fire down south. It's heading west with the wind. Hopefully it won't cross over into Mexico. So many homes destroyed. So far, only one life has been lost as a direct result of the fire, which is amazing since most of our county has been evacuated over the last few days. Over 500,000 people are displaced. Most don't know whether or not their homes are still standing. We did the answering machine test for our house. The 15 freeway has been closed since Sunday night. It's a main north/south route for the inland areas. Evacuees had to take the 78 (east/west) to the 5 for a north/south route. Needless to say, 5 was a parking lot on Monday. Most people in the county are staying home, with the A/C on and are being advised not to go outside or drive if possible. The smoke and high winds have made it impossible to get a lot of information on specific houses or neighborhoods that have been hit hard. The news crews were scrambling to get specific information about areas. They'd show footage of houses burning, but couldn't always say where the footage was shot or street. One long-time T.V. reporter, Larry Himmel, went into cover the area where his house happened to be and discovered his house burning. He covered the fire in the area while he watched his house burn to the ground. That stinks. Big time.

Mercifully, the Coronado fire was 100% contained quickly, and we came back to our house, fully intact. The only casualty was our patio table umbrella which tried to turn itself inside out. I'm so so thankful our house and our neighborhood was spared.

Today a few more fires started in the back country of San Diego, Palomar Mtn., & in Temecula (just north of San Diego county), so most of our county has been touched by fire. Pray those winds die down soon so the fires can be contained. Pray no more lives are lost, above all.

Here's a picture of the hills above our house. Fire is mostly out but you can see just a few areas of fire. Sorry for the blurriness, but that's all we could get before we left. Packin' up the car! And, after the fires there's just smoke and ash.