SoCal Fires - Pray for everyone, please!
 

Polarpi is from Ramona, which is under mandatory evacuation. Please pray for her and all the residents in the area.

October 26 is the 4 year aniversary of the Cedar fire that wiped out tons of home in the same areas. :(

The air is horrible too. I was having difficult breathing today, inside my home, eventhough I'm at least 15 miles away from the fires.

Eek :(

I hope they, and their homes, will all be ok.

My next-door neighbor is a student at Pepperdine and she just posted a bulletin on MySpace letting all know that she's okay, but she, too, is having a hard time breathing. According to Alyssa, all classes are cancelled tomorrow.

I saw the footage on the news and I couldn't believe the scary winds!

Stay safe, SoCal GCers.

My prayers go out to all of you!!!

Stay safe!!

Agreed. I live about 35-40 miles from the nearest fire and the air is terrible.

Praying for all in the affected areas, as well as the firefighters who will undoubtedly have their hands full all week (the weather is not supposed to let up).

ISHT!

They're evacuating the evacuation site! :( This is making me very very nervous.

Wildfire is scary -- as we know well here in Colorado.

Best wishes for the safety of all of the residents and their property.

Malibu is a living, breathing disaster area and everyone who lives there knows it. Why ANYONE would build their home in one of the canyons - especially Malibu or Topanga canyons - is beyond me. Yes, it's beautiful, but everyone there knows that wildfires move through those canyons every 3 years or so. The brush that covers the hillsides has a high oil content that fuels the flames.

When I was a freshman at Pepperdine we had a wildfire (they're almost always in October) that scared the crap out of everyone...that time the fire actually moved ON campus but managed to avoid any buildings besides some horse stables (yes, the horses had already been evacuated - to the baseball stadium). The University always seems to escape harm, and it was apparently built with fire safety in mind, but I wonder how long it will be until the fire can't be stopped at its borders. In '96 it was as if God himself saved the campus, as we found out when we came back and saw that the flames had charred a circle around the University but left the campus green.

Sad to see/hear that the church I attended while at Pepp burned to the ground this time.

ETA: At the entrance to campus...
http://img.viacomlocalnetworks.com/i...e_294133441/xl

I tried to send other photos but all the sites seem to have them locked. But MSNBC has a slideshow with lots of photos the Pepperdine students took from on campus: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21421272/nPage/1

Update: I'm currently at my parents' house. Reverse 911 worked great, I got the call to evacuate about 6:30 am. There was a fire on the ridge that butts up against my complex.

Be safe, SoCalGirl. We too are packed up and ready to go if we need to go!

I watched the glow in the east all night. Oddly the day sky is not nearly as ominous as during the Cedar Fire...it was completely dark during the day. But the wind gusts are incredible....

be careful and be safe!

Most of you wouldn't know this; but, I am a certified Disaster Service Worker for the City and County of San Diego. I volunteer for a program through the City of San Diego and the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department called San Diego Community Emergency Response Team. We are regular civilians trained to support professional responders during major disasters with things such as: search & rescue, medical triage, fire suppression (like wastepaper basket fires, not hillsides!), disaster operations, logistics and so on. Some people are on "special teams" such as the support team for Urban Search and Rescue and also Helicopter Operations (as I am).


At appx. 10pm last night, I received word from the CERT Liaison Team that my team was being put on standby for immediate activation. As the Team Leader for central area of San Diego, I spent a few hours calling down my team to solicit volunteers at 12am.


At approximately 2:30am I deployed to a local high school (Mira Mesa, for those familiar) to assist with getting our evacuees into the shelter. Let me tell you, the wind was whipping something fierce through the hours of 3am-4am. I greeted car after car of crying evacuees to get them parked and inside. :( Lots and lots of frail elderly people arrived by cars and buses - I think they evacuated a retirement community.


I've gone off-shift and am now home and attempting to coordinate the members of my team who are available for daytime support.


These fires are horrific and many are being evacuated. At the present time, neither I nor my family are in immediate danger.


Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers along with our professional responder firefighters, sheriff's deputies, CDF, etc.


.....Kelly :)

I was just at Pepperdine & all around Malibu in January. My husband did his MBA there. So sad. He's got lots of friends still in the area who were just here in NYC last weekend for our wedding. :(

I think what you're doing is awesome, and I thank you for it!!!

I don't live near any of the fire sites, but I work in one of the cities that has about 15,000 acres burned the last time we checked online. I am here now. The air is super thick, and I've only been out of the building twice (once when I arrived, and for about 10 seconds to throw out some trash). Each time, it took me about one hour to feel like I could breathe normally again (I'm asthmatic).

Please keep praying for So. Cal.! (And I wish the best of luck to the posters who are preparing to evacuate if necessary.)

Yikes! Stay safe, everyone...

My husband was caught up in the fires. :( He was scheduled to visit a company in San Diego today. Around 6am, the hotel staff let the guests know that the area was being evacuated. The company DH was scheduled to visit, closed for the day. So he headed for the airport and rebooked himself on an earlier flight.

While he was waiting for his flight out of San Diego, he caught a news program that showed the area he had just been in - on fire.

Stay safe, everyone.

The pictures on TV News can't convey the actual enormity of the fire -- and they are still frightening.

All of you take care of yourselves and those you care about.

ETA: Our network generally carries the SDSU athletic news conference on Tuesday afternoon, but it appears that it will be re-scheduled or cancelled and the football team may move its practice out of the San Diego area.

warm thoughts and best wishes to everyone in the socal area.

a coworker of mine has a sister who is under mandatory evacuation, and her in-laws already lost their home :(

I managed to briefly stop in to SDSU today to e-mail my students to let them know I was cancelling class tomorrow. About an hour after I left, the university made the decision to close down through Tuesday. The university is not in immediate danger, but they don't want students and staff to clog the highway for no reason and, of course, to make sure that people take care of their families first.

SDSU has opened a shelter for displaced students and staff in Peterson Gym and I imagine that athletics will be cancelled for the time being.

.....Kelly :)

My prayers are with you all. My best chapter friend has already been evacuated, and my godson's family has been told to pack. :(

Navane, another friend of mine is a nurse, and is on an evacuation team. God bless all of you who are out there helping others. God bless you real good!

It literally looks like hell on earth.

It's still a disaster out here. While daybreak in a couple of hours will bring the winds; it will also give us a chance to work out what happened overnight. I'm hearing that we may get 6 or so fixed-wing aircraft to help drop water. If that's true, that will be a big help. They are reporting that one fire is 5% contained and the other is still 0% contained.

I've been at Qualcomm Stadium overnight and am now home for a rest period. (I just happen to live a 1/2 mile down the street from the stadium). We've got lots of people sheltering at the stadium and the community is really coming together to get donations, lending a hand and supporting each other.

They are reporting that there are currently more people displaced in San Diego County than there were in all of Hurricane Katrina - we have several hundreds of thousands evacuated at the moment.

If you pray, please pray HARD. We've already lost 600 structures and these many fires (including the two largest ones) are headed right towards areas which are more densely populated. The Witch Fire in the northern part of the county is now causing evacuations all the way west to the ocean, literally.

.....Kelly

I'm in Orange County and we were told to work from home today because our office is so close to the fire that not only is the air quality poor but it is dangerous as well.

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comm...IDLink=3154663

Posting this because Farkers are great about posting updates and have been posting what's on the SD area scanners so that you can stay informed. There'll be a new thread each time one gets far enough off the front page.

I am looking out my sliding glass window looking at the mountain range
(Arrowhead, Crestline, 1-15 area ) and the entire mtn range is engulfed. It is scary. We are getting a lot of smoke our way. My sons teacher lives up in running springs/arrowhead area. She barely got to her house to grab things.

I work in OC too, a few miles from the Santiago fire. However, we haven't closed or been asked to telecommute. I think we should, considering the sheer population size of my place of employment. We'd at least get a lot of cars off the road, which might help somehow.

I heard about the new air equipment that will be coming in. I am hoping that today will bring news of more containment.

Yeah yesterday they came around and told everyone that we could leave early and work from home the rest of the day to beat traffic especially since the toll roads were closed a lot of people use that to get home. The other reason they told us to telecommute was the request by emergency services to keep the area clear for emergency vehicles.

I emailed with my cousin today. She said it took her over 2 hours to get home from work. Her brother was stuck in traffic for 4 hours. They live in Manifee and Riverside, respectively. How close are those cities to where everything is happening?

I've never heard of Manifee, but Riverside is not too far away from what is going on in the San Bernardino area.

It's Menifee. My mom earlier told me it was Medfee. Lol as much as we talk to my fam out there, we had no clue what the damn city was named. My dad is on the phone with my uncle now, so hopefully they'll be safe. (my cousin said Menifee is about a half hour from Riverside)

Hey everyone!

Thanks for all the prayers and good thoughts this way. Personally, I'm good - I actually moved from Ramona last year, but still live in the San Diego area, and while I have not had to evacuate, there are areas of where I live that have. The evacuation center from Sunday night in my town was shut down because of the smoke and moved to Mira Mesa High, and I know that there are homes around the ex-evac center that were threatened and/or hit.

PM Mama - Menifee is north of San Diego and southwest of Riverside. They are likely seeing a lot of smoke from the various fires, but I have not heard anything about fires threatening that area. For me to drive to Menifee (as I used to do when I was driving up 15 for school), it would probably take me about 1 hr 15 minutes from where I live now, and that's just south of the Rancho Bernardo area that I believe has received a lot of coverage on the national news coverage.

SoCalGirl - hope you are okay where you are, and thanks for thinking of me - I know of some friends in Ramona who lost their homes. Kelly, thanks for all that you're doing! :)

Can lead a horse to water...
 

I am from San Diego.

My parent's house is okay, for now. They will not leave. They are by Cowles Mountain which is in the city. My brother lives in a "tinderbox" in Santee.

Most of the fire seems to be more north in RB and now is South in Mt. Miguel--my stomping grounds--burnt to a crisp.

We shall see. There is talk they will shutdown commercial flights to night. Flights can land, but they cannot take off.

My folks told me of 2-3 families who homes have been burnt down. I know these folks, personally.

Please pray.

Thanks for all the prayers and good thoughts! We really need them!

We are closest to the Harris fire - We are ready to evacuate if we get the call, or if I think it's time to go! Last night I got about an hour's sleep as we all watched the fire on Mt Miguel from by back window. It is a large mountain with transmitter towers- I would estimate that some of the flames were 50 to 100' feet high. looked liked bombs going off when the transmitters blew! Thankfully the fires have burned all around us, and we have not been in any real danger, although many neighbors and friends have been affected. I'm sad to report that the one fatality reported is the father of one of my son's classmates, and his classmate was burned over 50% of his body. It is a devastating loss to our community. Apparently they were trying to defend their property- it is just awful. Thankfully the winds have really died down and I a am hopeful that the worst is over. Keep us all in your thoughts and prayers!

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en...42957&z=9&om=1

A friend of mine sent me the above link to Google Maps, indicating the locations of the fires, evacuation shelters closed, road closures, mandatory evacuations, etc. in San Diego County.

This is absolutely insane.

:( Thinking of all those people....

Ok my uncle said he's about an hour and half away from any fires, but according to that google map it looks like the evacuation borders are pretty damn close to him.

Does anyone have a link to those satellite pictures? Those are pretty crazy.

Just heard from my friend in San Clemente. She's waiting to evacuate. I texted back asking if her husband is with her but she never answered so I'm assuming they got the "go". They are both in the Navy and I'm not sure if her husband is on deployment or not. They also have a baby girl who is under a year old so I"m hoping she has some help.

ETA: She texted back. Her husband doesn't come home till Friday. They are by the Fallbrook fires and there are already 2 fires on the naval base.

I think my uncle downplayed their safety to my dad. Just talked to my (step)cousin and she said her stepdad (my uncle) talked to the other uncle and the fires are 2 cities over.

This isn't the big one, but I found one of them:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/1...rge_titled.jpg

Several of my pledge Brothers live up and down the coast.
I have yet to hear from any of them.
Good thoughts and wishes to all.
Found this link:
http://search.live.com/images/results.aspx?q=cal+fires&go=Search+Images&mkt=en-us&scope=&FORM=LIVSOP#focal=5965eb238d1acedecac977 e7ff97df5f&furl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emergency-management.net%2Fpic_wildf_la_2003%2FWildfiresocal october20036.jpg