San Diego Wildfires

You are probably all aware of the major fires we have been having in Southern California the past several days. As hard as it is to believe, the fires are actually worse than the devastating fires we had in October 2003.

We first noticed the large clouds of smoke Sunday afternoon. That night the Santa Ana winds blew very hard all through the night. It was some of the fiercest winds we have ever seen. Turning on the news Monday morning we discovered that our area was ordered to evacuate and that there were houses burning in Rancho Bernardo, less than 5 miles from our home. At it's closest, the fire came within about 3.5 miles.

We evacuated to our stake center, which was outside the evacuation area. We stayed there overnight, monitoring the situation on the local news channels. Yesterday afternoon we returned to our home, although we are still in an evacuation area. We are actually barely inside the area and, at this point, the fires are mostly at the extreme south and north ends of San Diego County.

At this point, over 500,000 people have had to evacuate their homes in the San Diego area. Unfortunately, well over 1,000 homes have been destroyed. For the most part everything including the evacuations and firefighting have gone very well. Certainly the fact that we just went through this 4 years ago helps a lot.

Although this is day 4 of the fires, they don't expect them to be fully contained for another week. At this point we are very confident that our home will not be affected (other than all kinds of ash and debris from the high winds).