It's October - which means its FIRE TIME

Gads. On the front page of the Union Tribune for Sat, Oct 20, 2007 - photo of helitanker moved to Ramona Air base in case of Wildfires in the region and bold headlines that say "Santa Ana weather stokes fire worries".

Darn right it does! October is always when we get hit by the nasty blazes. This year was really, really, dry and Santa Ana winds in later Oct + dry conditions = a huge mess!

And guess what! Sunday ... 2 fires break out - one down near the border and the other.. Near Ramona! But it's so windy that the planes and helitankers can't get into the air!! It's practically 4 years to the day that the huge Cedar and Paradise fires burned a huge swath of brush and homes. So what do we have this year? The Witch and Harris fires and super high winds that are flaming out of control, spreading blazes with ZERO percent containment! And the Santa Ana's are expected to remain till Tue. Very bad news. It's past midnight, and I can hear the wind outside, it's very strong and gusty, just blowing the smoke into my area all day. Going outside is nasty - with ash and smoke its like walking into a fog bank. I should have taken a picture. I'll take one tomorrow morning in the light.

Am I in the fire line? Not likely. 10 or even 8 years ago - YES, this area was all rural brush and canyons. Then, the development started. The canyons have been filled in, the brush cleared and houses built. We are actually surrounded by development, a new wide road, landscaping and cleared ground.

Wind, Wind, Wind

You know. Of all the things that can make me nervous and unsettled. Wind is a big one. Blowing wind. I grew up in a trailer and when it was windy, I always thought it was going to blow away. Never mind it was chained down, I always imagined that the wind was very strong.

Tonight (this morning?), the wind is blowing like crazy - which I bet is going to make the morning news about the fire extremely bad news - and making it hard to sleep. Which is why I'm sitting here reading and trying to ignore the noises of the house, the shaking of the windows and rustling of the trees outside.

And, its been quite sometime since the Santa Ana's kept up gusts of wind this strong all night.

Evacuated

I was up till 5am, nervous with wind blowing and unsettled. I should have stayed up all night and packed.

My sister called at 7am to tell me that our area was under 'mandatory evacuation' and to turn on the tv. I listened to the wind all night, and should have realized that it was going to be bad ... but by around 2am, the news stations had no new info at all after that point.

::frantic::

So I threw on clothes than ran around to try and save something. I threw stuff in the car, not knowing quite what or why I was grabbing. Asked my sister for help and her SUV. She actually made it there quickly. I took all the paintings off the wall, caught the cats and my sister took grandma to her place.

I stayed there till about 2:15. By that point my car was totally filled and couldn't take anything more even through I was trying to stick stuff in everywhere. The cats had been in the car since 10am, it was hot, smoky and even though I wanted to stay to keep the roof wet (yes, we have a shake shingle roof - very bad news) I was worried about the cats.

Two friends had offered places to head, so I left. Two guys are still on the property - staying to keep the roof wet till they get the door-to-door-get-out-now (which hasn't happened when I left).

As I was heading out, I heard via my sister that they were telling my mom to get out at Solana Beach. Police telling her she had 1 hr.

OMG