I always joke that in October the Santa Ana winds comes and the fires bugs come out and set S. Cal on fire.  October was looking good so far.  The weather was mild and the winds hadn’t come, but as soon as my husband and I leave town, the Santa Ana winds start up and areas around our home burst into flames.  The most frustrating thing about being out of state when there’s an emergency local to home is getting accurate and timely news.    I’m worried about my co-workers.  Are they okay?  Are their houses okay?  Where are the fires with respect to my house?  Is the electricity still on?  Is little Snowball okay?  He’s stuck in a cage and can’t run.  To compound the situation my parents are out of town and they are usually our back-up.  There’s fire in San Marcos, where I live and the fire line is about 2-miles away from my house.  Steve wants to punt on his business trip and head home, but the freeway to home is jammed or closed, so even if he did leave now, he couldn’t get home.  I’m leaving for Vancouver tonight from LV and not returning until Thursday, so I will have to wait and monitor the news, whatever news I can get.  Steve is on the phone now, remotely activating IT emergency procedures for the company he works for …

Well, here is a  picture of an overturned truck that didn’t heed the high wind warnings: yesterday.  The driver was able to get out the truck.  He looked shaken but not injured, which was a very good thing.

12:36PM

We’ve decided to head home to, hopefully rescue our guinea pig, Snowball, and then head over to my parents house.  We are at least 5-hours away from home and I’ve just learned that our house and my parent’s house are now in the evacuation zone.  My Dad is flying back to SD tonight.  He and my Mom are on route to Atlanta to get him on the plane.  According to the local news, the water drop planes have been grounded due to high winds and poor visibility and the firefighters are concentrating on getting people out of harm’s way instead of suppressing the fire.  The mayor of SD has told everyone to leave work and for those in the evac area to pack their cars and prepare to leave.  Steve is still on line at his workplace, furiously transferring data to servers outside of SD (or something like that …).  My stomach is in knots and I just want to go home to make sure everything and everybody is okay.  According to the list of confirmed destroyed houses, the fire is about 1/2-mile north of the SD site and heading west.  According to the weather forecast, the winds and heat are expected to continue for the next couple of days, which is horrible news … they expect the fires to burn all the way to the ocean.