san diego fires of 2007 situation

Here’s how it is. Starting sometime on Sunday morning, fires started lighting all around San Diego, mostly centering around Witch Creek and Harris, and then spreading rapidly from there. Augmented by the wonderful Santa Ana winds, those fires just took off, and by Sunday afternoon, most of San Diego was at least smelling the smoke, if not experiencing it directly. Monday morning, the situation had deteriorated that places all around the outskirts of San Diego were evacuating, and those evacuation areas kept spreading and spreading, along with the fires. I went into work that morning, but was planning on going on a vacation starting that afternoon, and actually leaving town sometime Tuesday. I left less than two hours after arriving, and Better Half and I grabbed all of the important documents, expensive items, and other such things, stuffed them in our Mazda 3 (did not even fill it), and took off. The place we were going to be staying was still expecting us Tuesday for check-in, but we called ahead and they were ok with us arriving on Monday. After that, we spent a week in Desert Hot Springs, and enjoyed the hell out of it.
The good news is that the vacation was already scheduled, so our accomodations were already arranged and all of the planning had already been done. We just had to scramble a little to leave the day early, and then we decided to extend it another night on the other end and stay through until Saturday (today). Today, we drove back down into San Diego, and got back to our apartment. I will probably get around to telling you about the vacation and providing pictures, but here are the important parts: Better Half and I are ok, and completely undamaged by the fires. The air quality is a little rough, but with our little purifier, it is ok in the apartment. Other than that, the apartment, complex, and surrounding areas were relatively untouched. There is ash all over the place, and a fine layer of black on everything, but nothing burned. Or, rather, nothing of mine burned. From my balcony, we can actually view one of the many mountains around San Diego that did burn, and it is now a deep black, as opposed to the normal, desert tan it used to be. And that mountain is only a scant five or so miles away.
But, as I said, the important thing is that Better Half and I are fine, we had a very relaxing vacation, and we were not hurt. The stuff is replaceable, and was all insured, so it really, in the end, did not matter.
Coincidentally, Shane, the only person so far to take me up on my open offer of free authorship here on “walls of the city”, also lives in San Diego, though his house was much more directly threatened by the flames. Thankfully, he and his wife, as well as his property, survived, and you can look forward to his eventual writings once he gets back from his vacation. I think I will leave it to him to introduce himself… good way to get him warmed up here.
Other than that… Yeah, “walls of the city” looks a little jacked up at the moment. Entirely my fault – I forgot to close a [div] tag in one of my posts, so it jacked up the webpage. I thought it was the template’s fault, and went through it, and could not find an error. So I threw my hands up, completely stripped the old 3.x templates, and replaced them with 4.x templates. Unfortunately, I have not yet had the chance to go through and… well… fix it. So, you get to deal with the purple. Life is rough.
At this point, I would only ask that your thoughts are with those who actually lost something in these massive blazes, and with those firefighters who have worked non-stop since Sunday to try and control them. Both parties are in considerably more need than Better Half and I, though we definitely appreciate your thoughts over the past few days. As I said, more to come later, and I certainly hope none of you have to go through this kind of thing yourself.