October 23, 2007
Personal Fire Update
I know we don’t often make personal posts here, but people have been asking about the fires and how I’m doing. This is a quick note to say I’m still at home, the fires aren’t (yet) near where I live in San Diego, and they’ve asked us to stay off the roads and our cellphones (to keep capacity free for emergency personnel). I’ve been getting my fire updates from KPBS via Twitter and the local paper via Blogspot.
KPBS is also maintaining a Google Map:
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Update: I may be offline in a bit, given this recent announcement on KPBS’s Twitter stream:
Time to email my writing files to a server outside Southern California…
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Mozy is a good place to put stuff if you don’t have access to another server.
Stay safe Noah!
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Glad to hear you’re ok. I hope that both your data and, more importantly, you stay safe.
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Raph Koster had to evacuate, and he’s blogging his experience.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:50 pm
oh gosh noah, i hope you can send out missives when allowed to let us know you and j. are ok.
October 24th, 2007 at 11:22 am
We’re still doing okay here — and the most recent news reports have a generally positive cast to them.
I have two cousins who live in San Diego, one on each side of the family, and they both live in fire-threatened areas. Yesterday I heard from my mother that the cousin on her side (who is also named Noah) along with his wife and dog, had spent the night in their car, sitting in the parking lot of
Jack MurphyQualcomm Stadium. So I got the family phone network cranked up, talking with my parents, who talked with my cousins’ parents, who both got me in touch with my cousins and generally spread information about how everyone is doing. It turns out that the cousin on my father’s side (David), who is a government employee, had been working on the fire efforts not far from his house — so I got early news from him that the situation there was improving. And things went well enough that the vision I had in my head (cousin Noah and his wife, cousin David and his wife, and Jen’s two friends from high school, all gathered at our place) didn’t happen at all.Obviously, many people haven’t been as lucky. All the reports agree that over a thousand homes have burned, new fires have broken out in Camp Pendleton (one worries about the nuclear plant at San Onofre), the Witch fire (200,000 acres and growing) is spreading north and east, the winds are still blowing, and — while a thankfully small number of people seem to have died as a result of the flames — we have yet to learn the full extent of injuries and loss of life.
Now, if only the National Guard weren’t off in the Middle East somewhere…
October 25th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Today’s update. It looks like the fires no longer threaten central residential areas, but major fires remain uncontained. People are being asked to stay home — and keep their windows closed, given the unhealthy levels of particulate matter. Perhaps my foolish tendency to go out and take walks the last few days explains the headaches I’ve been having.
Last night local stations, which had been running nothing but ad-free news for days, showed their usual prime-time lineup. Apparently life is back to normal.