Once again we listened to the news via AM radio.  As we drove down the 15 we passed in and out of fire zones.  At the end of the Cajon Pass we spotted at least 6 or 7 big rig trucks in various conditions toppled on their sides in response to the Santa Ana winds.  The same Wal-Mart truck we saw downed when we drove to Vegas was still there.  The drive passed Fallbrook was the most telling of the disaster.  The air was thick with smoke so it was hard to breathe and visibility was greatly limited to a few car lengths ahead.  We saw burned out houses and still burning flames eating brush on the side of the road.  We drove on hoping that this is not what it is like at home.  I took pictures a long the way and I had to take pictures of a few land marks as there is no geotagging yet in current consumer cameras. As we approached Escondido, the air cleared and we were relieved to see that there were no signs of fire near home.  Later we would find out that the fire in San Marcos was a very small brush fire next to Cal State San Marcos that was quickly put out.  When we got home, Snowball cheerfully greeted us with “fweets” of joy and bounced all around his cage.  He wanted his welcome home treat.

The local news was surreal.  They were referring to pages in the Thomas Guide to help people identify locations of active fires and areas under evacuation.  The local government was informing people to leave their houses via reverse 911 calls and because telephone service was cut off, the local government was relying on TV to relay the message to evacuate to a remote community in San Diego.  Where were the SMS messages, Google maps, and mash-ups of web services to keep people in the know?  My company seemed on the forefront with a wiki.  What good is technology for people camping out in Qualcomm Stadium when cellphone “circuits” are jammed and batteries are dying?   How are the millennials surviving without text messaging?  For 2 – 3 days, SD was put back 10 – 15-years.  We were calling over land lines, watching TV, listening to AM radio, and using the Thomas Guide.  It seems to me to be a scary and out-of-control situation made worse by a communication breakdown when we need to communicate the most.

The web is very much still in it’s infancy and all it takes is a disaster to show just how “loose” the web is.  We’ve been thinking a lot about paper in a Web 2.0 world and, well, I think we’ve got a while to go before paper goes out of style.

One of the take-aways from my days as an earthquake engineering student is in a disaster, the first thing that happens is the power goes out.  Another thing that happens is people are asked to limit telephone and cell phone calls so emergency and support people can keep in touch.  Hence, in an emergency all of our wonderful electronic gadgets and web enable do-dads become useless little boxes of plastic, silicon, and metal at a time when we need to be connected the most.

The journey from Las Vegas back to our home in San Marcos is a tale of failed electronics and a reversion to analog methods of communication, including paper.  Our tale begins Sunday night after Steve and I had just settled in for the night and were getting ready to go to sleep.  We turned on the TV to find out what was going on within and outside of “La-La Land.”  The news of the moment was the fires in Malibu and the potential of displaced movie stars.  This happens every year, so we didn’t pay too much attention to it.  We went to sleep, peacefully, only to awaken the next morning to the news that San Diego was on fire. 

The worst thing about being out of state when there’s a disaster at home is getting accurate and timely news.  Too often the news is generalized and exaggerated for a national audience so it’s difficult to know what’s real and what isn’t.  I got on the Internet to check the websites of news stations local to SD and the Union-Tribune website.  It was early Monday morning and the SD’s local news websites were not working well.  The upload and download speeds were very slow.  I was frustrated because CNN was making it seem like the state was under the influence of a wall of fire that extended from Malibu to the US/Mexico border.  Steve’s cellphone started ringing.  It was his manager calling to discuss what needed to be done IT-wise to shutdown their worksite.  While I was fighting with the Internet, I finally got some news from SD, an e-mail informing me that the HP SD Site is closed.  Technology was working okay so far and when I finally got through to the Internet, the coverage websites were simply enacted.  There was a picture of flames and the same information from CNN.  As the morning progressed, the coverage was turned into a running blog and as the locations of the fires were learned, the locations were overlaid on Google Maps — a “mash-up.”  This was very helpful but as the same time misleading — as there was a flame symbol sitting on top of my hometown, San Marcos.  Meanwhile, Steve was on his cell phone initiating emergency plans and, over the Internet, moving data and doing whatever to save data and sever the electronic link from the SD site of his company from the rest of the company.   I called my parents who were in Atlanta at the time.  They informed me that my Dad was flying back to San Diego.

Here’s a very interesting article from the Boston Globe about how Starbucks, Apple, and Akamai are partnering to bring iTunes downloads locally to each Starbucks location.  The intent is to increase download speed and provide unique music experiences for Starbucks customers.  I think this wonderful and can sprout so many other services available to people if similar services are offered widely at other brick-and-mortar stores.  The first thing that comes to mind is that each Starbucks location can customize their music selection based on what customers actually download within the store.  In this way instead of having a generic “Starbucks sounds”, each store could  have a “my local Starbucks Sound.”  I would love to have something like this in the grocery store so I could download a movie to watch for the evening while I grocery shop for the next few nights’ dinner.  Or, what if through my portable device I could listen to songs I like while I shop in the grocery store and the store still gets to broadcast specials and advertisements to me.  This would also enable inventory lists for shoppers so they could easily locate items in the store or order them if they are not available through a portable device.  There are so many possibilities!

We decided to go home, after some deliberation, to rescue our guinea pig, Snowball.  I know that seems kinda silly, but Snowball is our beloved little ornery pet and we like his company a lot.  Strangely enough, we felt that everything else was okay since we had our laptops, cellphones, and 3-days worth of clothes each.  Our pictures are on Flickr, so if our house goes up, it’s okay as long as we get our pet out.  We left Las Vegas 2-days earlier than we had planned (I was supposed to leave that night from LV to Vancouver).  We must have looked very troubled because the hotel clerked responded to us with a lot of sympathy and asked if everything was ok.  We got on the road and cut off from the Internet we tried to find an AM news station out of So. Cal to listen to the latest news. 

Traffic was fairly smooth until we hit Victorville where traffic came to a halt because the 15 was closed through the Cajon Pass due to the fire (the news reported that the fire had caused some power lines to overheat).  We were stuck in traffic with no information for 3 – 4 hours, believing that we were going to be detoured another way through the San Bernardino forest.  The news kept describing a mythical route of back roads that would get us into LA.  Meanwhile, off to the left a fire was visibly raging in the mountains.  We later learned this was the “Lake Arrowhead Fire” and we were actually watching people’s houses burning down.  My husband was surprisingly calm and wished he had his long lost GPS gadget.  We finally got to the road closure and instead of being detoured, we were routed north-bound on the 15 back to Victorville.  For the love of Google Maps!  In a moment of inspiration I called my little brother who lives in Georgia.  He’s a college student so we knew he would be up despite it being 1 in the morning on his coast.  We called him and asked him to find us an alternate route home using Google Maps.  He and Steve fought the computer locally and remotely and finally came up with some bizarre routes through the forest, but not having current information about road closures we had no idea whether any of these routes were viable.  Then there was another problem … what good is Google Maps when you can’t see it.  I then remembered that we have Thomas Guides in the car for SD and LA.    Oh, sadness, neither of these cover Victorville, but alas, my husband remembered we have another LA map in the glove compartment and it covers Victorville!  Yay!

A paper map can be bewildering when you’ve become used to Google Maps and the like.  We actually had to find our origin and destination and then find roads that connect the two.  It took a while, but we came up with two routes – one Northwest and one Southwest.  But we still didn’t have any road closure information.  For that we decided to take a break in a fast food restaurant.  My husband has one of those “smart phones” that is supposedly Internet friendly.  The problem is that government websites are not web friendly.  Government websites are basically paper forms put directly online without any thought to web optimization.  Navigation of the Caltrans website was difficult and form driven and every announcement was a 300KB+ PDF — not at all mobile device friendly.  They are clearly stuck in a world of paper.  We finally found a list of road closures, but the information was old and we ended up getting information from the radio.  Of course our routes of escape were on fire and there was no exit from Victorville.

This is where something like “What to do” would come in handy.  What’s there to do in Victorville/ Barstow?  Where are the hotels, which ones have vacancies?  Let’s reserve a room now instead of driving around in a 30-mile radius looking for a place rest our tired bodies.  We ended up driving around randomly looking for hotels and at one point we drove into the empty parking lot of the “Sterling Inn”, celebrating because it seemed as though we had found an empty nice hotel that was away from the freeway.  Strangely the “hotel” was locked down and we couldn’t get in, so I 411ed the place and asked the person who answered the phone if there were vacancies.  The person on the other side asked if I was confused.  I asked if this isn’t a hotel, then what is this place and she replied, “It’s a senior home.”  And we were off again.  We ended up 2-hours and 30 miles later in Barstow at a run down Value Inn that was located for us by a well connected (by ground phone line) and kind clerk at the local Holiday Inn Express.  No comment on the hotel … In the morning we got access to the wireless Internet from the hotel owner and we checked the Caltrans webpage to see if the 15 was open.  It was and we were off again. 

The SD site is still closed and the evacuation of Rancho Bernardo is still under effect.  According to the news, the city  is assessing the situation in RB to see if they can start re-populating the area.  There are still “hot spots” in RB that have to be put out.  The SD area is currently under a power alert as powerlines to the north and south are still threatened by fire.  SD is currently recieving power from Mexico.

In San Marcos businesses are open but woefully understaffed.  One of my neighbors is cutting down all of his trees and removing landscape bushes like there’s no tomorrow.  Only a stump remains of a once beautiful, big, and proud Weeping Willow.  Otherwise, the atmosphere is eerily quiet.  I live close to the freeway 15 and the usual road noise in the background isn’t present today.  The air is bad too.

I’m going to check the Wiki now.

2PM

Some residents are being allowed back into the southern parts of RB.

Avi, if you are out there, I’m glad you’re okay!  I was quite worried :).