Fire update

Okay, it’s not going to be a good graphic, but it’s the best I can do. See the “Soule St” in the middle? Right under the green part? That’s where we are. South of Scripps Parkway has been evacuated; east of Community Road has been evacuated; north of Espola Road has been evacuated. The green by our house? That’s Poway Community Park, where people are being directed as an evacuation center. It’s right across the creek from our house. As of 2:30 pm, it’s still open and active. If they start clearing out, we’ll know they expect our area to be threatened by the fire (I think it’s the Witch fire that’s coming over here), but so far we feel okay. With 3 dogs and 2 cats, the longer we can stay at home, the easier it will be. We’re all packed and ready to go, but we certainly don’t feel threatened or in danger. If I were really worried, would I take the time to post here?

Back in 2003, when we went through the Cedar fires, I was much more worried. I was living in Sabre Springs in the condo and the sky was dark and orange and full of visible smoke. Everyone was packing their cars and driving somewhere else and I packed up the 2 dogs and 3 cats (back then the ratio was reversed) and headed to a friend’s apartment, where I think things actually got worse when the fire jumped I-15. Today, we have hazy skies and it’s really windy and dry, but there’s no visible smoke that we can see from our backyard. This tells me we’re not under an active fire smoke cloud and the fire probably isn’t headed in our direction, just going around us. Trust me, if we see smoke, we’re out of here. We’re definitely not staying until we see flames.

We have power, cable, and internet. We have plenty of food and water. We have 2 cars in which to pack our stuff and the animals. We’re prepared and paying attention. We’ll be okay.

edited to add: We’ve been keeping tabs at the City website, as they are pretty good with updates and the server doesn’t crash. When it’s working, the Union Tribune fire blog is good, too (but it’s always down they’ve moved it to Blogspot).