Fire! Fire!

It's been a crazy day!

Yesterday, we visited my parents and Diana's parents. During our visit, we noted the VERY strong Santa Anna winds, and eventually smelled smoke. Not to uncommon to smell smoke from brush fires miles away - we didn't think much of it at the time.

Cut to last night. Diana and I were up at 2am for a usual baby feeding, when we smelled smoke ourselves. It turns out a separate fire had sprung up overnight somewhat nearby. Diana got freaked out and began to pack. I admit to feeling it was a little premature, but helped out. It turned out to be a good move. At 6am, we got an automated call warning us that we may be evacuated, and we might think about packing up stuff. We sprang out of bed and packed up all our important bits. After an hour or so, we had everything packed, and decided that sitting around wasn't going to do any good, so we might as well leave while we had the chance and that traffic wasn't too bad.

We headed to Del Mar (into some serious smoke from the multiple fires to the east), and hunkered down at my parents house for the day. The fire was dead east of my parents house, but a long ways away. My parents live just west of Interstate 5, and there was a "mandatory evacuation" for everyone east of Interstate 5... basically my parents were just out of the range, and on the downwind side at that.

The "mandatory evacuation" area is the biggest I've ever seen. It's almost too big to be taken seriously. I think all our neighbors have remained at their houses, as well as friends. They've also subsequently issued further evacuation orders WITHIN the mandatory evacuation area, which makes it a little bit of a "crying wolf". Anyway, Diana hates to sit and wait and do nothing, and we figured if everyone sat and waited, then the traffic could be pretty bad, so we hit the road early.

We hung out at my parents house all day, watching the news and stressing a good bit. At some point we talked about getting a hotel room somewhere safe, and my resourceful father got the last three at a hotel downtown. Around 4pm, we decided to hit the road. My parents weren't comfortable going to sleep in their house, and we didn't want to return to our own smoky house, so here we are. I found an open wireless internet access connection, we've got the news on, and are doing pretty well.

The good news is that the fire nearest our house has had evacuation orders lifted for the nearest neighborhoods (not ours). So I think that fire is pretty much under control. Not sure about the latest status of other fires (the ones that could threaten my parents house). Hopefully that all works out. My parents house is embedded pretty well in suburbs (rather that bordering a canyon), so a lot of houses would have to burn before theirs did.

It's been a nutty day, and I'll be glad when this all dies down and we can return to a smoke-free house.