How far away are you seeing or smelling smoke?

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

Greetings from Laguna Surf

We are still here and it has been quite a week with all the fires around us. This morning, I had to clean all the ashes off the patio table again before I can set my computer outside on the balcony. We still have an ash gray sky but the sun is trying to get through. There is still a light smell of the fires too but not as bad as it has been. For a few days, we had to sit inside with all the doors and windows closed. It was very hot so we had to use the AC which is the very first time ever since we have been coming here since January 1984!

We have had some surprise visits from friends out of state and that was nice plus we got to know several other timeshare owners here. It is a very tiny resort so everyone is very friendly towards each other. We love coming here but will skip October next year because, two years on a row now, we have had these fires as we are in the middle of our fire season. We have hardly had any rain this year so I expect more fires yet.

Here are some photos that I took during this week. You can see the clouds of the fires so we never had the pretty views that we are so used to in Laguna Beach.

I got a call from John (4ARedOctober) today returning my phone call of the other day when he had posted that the fire was only a mile away from his home. At the moment, he is fine but the wind is shifting again and the fire is still burning so he is not out of the woods yet.

What a worry this must be for anyone close to the fires. Can you imagine having lost everything because of these terrible fires? The Santiago fire, that we can see the smoke from here, was set by an arsonist. We saw the flames twice this week when we were driving home and last night we could see the faint fire far away from the Lake Arrowhead and Running Springs area.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

Cousin just emailed me again

Hey Frank,
The fires are right over the hill from us in Jamul.....we are considered Rancho San Diego/El Cajon...if the fire turns we maybe evacuated...the air quality through out san Diego is really bad...it looks like a war zone in san Diego...some people that have evacuated are parked in the RV'S in all of our local shopping centers..looks like an rv park....

Cathy

[lawren2 Malibu Beach Barbie & A Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close lawren2]

4A I hope you guys will be OK and Frank your cousin as well.

Emmy DOD was complaining too about the soot but that's a small thing to deal with when people are losing their homes.

[Barbeque Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Barbeque]

First of all our prayers are all with the victims of this tragedy.

Second on drudgereport.com yesterday I saw a link where they said Al Quada had planned to start fires when the winds were favorable. I tried to find it and link it here and couldn't. And then we heard from a friend that some people were arrested for trying to burn their own houses because the value had fallen below what they owed.

I hope and pray the winds stay down and the destruction comes to a halt.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

We are still here and it has been quite a week with all the fires around us. This morning, I had to clean all the ashes off the patio table again before I can set my computer outside on the balcony. We still have an ash gray sky but the sun is trying to get through. There is still a light smell of the fires too but not as bad as it has been. For a few days, we had to sit inside with all the doors and windows closed. It was very hot so we had to use the AC which is the very first time ever since we have been coming here since January 1984!

We have had some surprise visits from friends out of state and that was nice plus we got to know several other timeshare owners here. It is a very tiny resort so everyone is very friendly towards each other. We love coming here but will skip October next year because, two years on a row now, we have had these fires as we are in the middle of our fire season. We have hardly had any rain this year so I expect more fires yet.

Here are some photos that I took during this week. You can see the clouds of the fires so we never had the pretty views that we are so used to in Laguna Beach.

I got a call from John (4ARedOctober) today returning my phone call of the other day when he had posted that the fire was only a mile away from his home. At the moment, he is fine but the wind is shifting again and the fire is still burning so he is not out of the woods yet.

What a worry this must be for anyone close to the fires. Can you imagine having lost everything because of these terrible fires? The Santiago fire, that we can see the smoke from here, was set by an arsonist. We saw the flames twice this week when we were driving home and last night we could see the faint fire far away from the Lake Arrowhead and Running Springs area.

It is amazing how the smoke looks like clouds in your pictures.

[ArtsieAng Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close ArtsieAng]

Emmy...It was good to hear from you, and I'm glad to hear that you're safe. I hope that John is also, and that his home will escape any damage.

To think that these fires were caused by an arsonist is horrifying. I can't even imagine how one would want to deliberately cause such destruction, loss of life, and pain to others.....I hope they catch who ever did this, and I wont even put into print, what I hope they do with them.

Everyone, stay safe!!!

[JWC Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close JWC]

So far they only know that the fire in Orange County was started by an arsonist. Of course this is one too many and hopefully the person will be caught and severely dealt with. There is a $250,000 reward on the person. They know that the person had a lot of knowledge about fires and possibly is a firefighter. Believe it or not, a high percentage of arsonists are fire fighters.

Though the Orange County fire, as all of them, are very bad, it is much smaller compared to the ones in San Diego County. The Witch fire in San Diego North County is the big one and it was caused by downed power lines caused by the very high winds. I suspect that many of the others were also caused by downed power lines. There were 24 fires burning at one time.

Wild fires in Southern California have been occurring since the beginning of time and it is just something we have to live with. The culprit is the Santa Ana's that occur around this time of the year when everything is so dry at the tail end of our dry season. For those that don't know, a Santa Ana is a weather condition where the wind changes from being on-shore to off-shore. The winds come down from the desert raising the temperatures by 20 degrees or more and lowers the humidity to less than 10%. The winds can reach gusts of 100 mph. A Santa Ana condition typically lasts for 4 days or so. We often get them in January as well but they are not as bad as usually we have had some rain so everything is not so dry. The fires are not necessarily any worse than several years ago. However, they cause a lot more devastation now due to the large increase in population. When I lived in Poway 35-40 years ago, we had a terrible fire but there were very few homes located where the fires were, Now there are homes all over these areas. This is true of Southern California in general.

Since the winds have reversed it is now very smoky where I live in the Temecula Valley plus some recent fires have started that are fairly close to us. There is no danger in the immediate area where I live.

[StressCadet Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close StressCadet]

We have the same situation as John. The winds have stopped, which is ideal for the firefighters but allows the smoke to hang in the Valleys. We evacuated our elementary school where I work yesterday(that was chaos) and all schools in the desert are closed today due to unhealthful air quality from the Slide (Lake Arrowhead) Fire. Most of the news attention focuses on the San Diego and Orange County fires. The devastation is just as severe up here with very little containment. I sure hope progress can be made on all the fires over the weekend. My thoughts and prayers remain with all of those who have suffered loss.

Ang, are you still coming here? What airport are you using?

P.S. Let me clarify. Desert equals High Desert....Palm Springs is Low Desert.

[Fisch Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Fisch]

out bedroom window on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

that far away.

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

That must really be frightening. How is it today? The weather has completely changed and they were even mentioning drizzle this morning. Why not before these fires!

Are StressCadet, JWC and 4ARedOctober OK and everyone else here too?

[JWC Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close JWC]

We are just fine thank you. The air has cleared up now and it is actually raining at our house though not very hard, but every little bit helps. Hopefully it will rain harder and last for awhile.

[4ARedOctober Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close 4ARedOctober]

We got 10 minutes of sprinkles this morning....nothing much.

[4ARedOctober Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close 4ARedOctober]

Santa Ana winds coming tonight and over the weekend. They are not supposed to be as strong as the last time but it may pose some problems. The Santiago fire is still going and the embers smolder for weeks wating for a good wind.

Be safe.

[JWC Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close JWC]

I just got back from spending 3 nights at Harrah's Rincon. I also went to the Diana Ross show there on Thursday night but that is another story.

One of the pool cabanas at Harrah's was burned by the fire so the pool area was closed. Harrah's is about a 30 mile drive from my house on the Temecula/Pala road and 76 through the Pauma Valley. I didn't see any evidence at all that there had been any fires in the area. However there was still a smell of smoke from the fires in the hotel hallways at Harrah's. They had big blowers in the hallways running 24 hours. The smell was gone by Thursday. Other than that, you would never know there had been fires right there.