Fire

My word for the day is conflagration, as in the Southern California wildfires burning now.  I went to sleep hearing about the Montecito fire, and woke up hearing about the Sylmar fire.  Everything looked normal when I took the dogs out in the morning, but when I took them out at noon, I saw a lot of smoke from a fire in Yorba Linda (the next town over from where I live) and Anaheim Hills.  

As I walked the dogs, ash was falling around us, and the smell of smoke was pervasive.  Stupidly, I drove right into it after I took the dogs back to the apartment.  I had planned to go to a yarn store today, and without thinking I continued with my plan, forgetting the yarn store was right on the border of Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills.  As I drove east on Orangethorpe, the pall of smoke became greater and greater, until I was driving in a kind of twilight.  I thought about turning back, but I wanted to get the yarn for a gift I'm making for someone so I continued.

There was no fire in the immediate vicinity of the yarn shop, I didn't think there would be, but the fire was in the nearby hills.  There was more traffic in the area than normal, though, perhaps from people forced to evacuate.  I got out of there quickly so as to get back home and out of the way.  While in the shop I heard and saw fire engines going by, on their way into the hills and the fire.

My troubles seem to pale when compared to all the displaced people whose homes have been destroyed.  500 in one mobile home park alone, and the news is saying the fire fighters in Yorba Linda have no water pressure and are watching the homes burn, because there's nothing else they can do.

This has come closer to me than this particular fire.  Lynda and Gordon have twice had to evacuate  their home in Scripps Ranch in San Diego.  They almost came here to stay with me in my tiny apartment, when they couldn't go back to their home.  They and the dogs ended up staying in a motel for a couple of nights, but it was very scary. 

My brother is dog-sitting for them right now, and I keep calling him, asking if there are any fires in his area.  He doesn't have a car so he'd have to rely on the neighbors to get him out if he needed to evacuate.  Or wait for me to drive up in 2 hours, and that wouldn't work.

I took a picture of the way the sun has looked most of the afternoon at my apartment.  An orange ball in a haze of smoke.  Sometime the orange ball was even dimmer than the picture, you could barely see it.  This is the end of Part I,  Part II will come later.