I was glued to the TV on Monday. You think you are prepared, but then when you have time there is always one more thing. I spent Monday videotaping the house (which I had done a few years ago) and taking pictures throughout the house. I burned both of those to DVD’s and I also did another backup of my files to a backup machine. I staged all of our non replaceable things in the my bedroom, the family room and the garage. By dinner time, it looked like we were staying and then during dinner my friend Heidi (who lives a few street down) called and said that we were being evacuated. I turned on the tv and started packing up the staged items. There was some confusion on the news as to whether our area “Torrey Hill” was being evacuated. The news anchors admitted that they were unsure but as one of them said… “Hey listen, if I lived in Torrey Hills I’d leave”. Good enough for me! While I was loading the car we did get the reverse 911 Mandatory Evacuation notice (about 8:30). We were out by 8:50pm and the whole street was almost gone by then. I think that without the reverse 911 and the confusion on the news, some of us would have stayed… but we didn’t stick around to wait for the police to come through with bull horns like people did in 2004. The reverse 911 is brilliant. A “Get out now” phone call is very effective. I registered my cell phone on it yesterday just in case I am not at home the next time. This fire is worse (size of the fires and number of homes destroyed) than the 2004 fires, yet there have been only 4 or 5 direct fire related deaths. All other deaths being attributed to the fires are of older people that died during or after being evacuated.
We drove north to our friends Mark and Annie’s. We were really comfortable, VERY well taken care of, actually slept really well and honestly the kids didn’t want to leave. We were recalled yesterday at 8:30am, but we took our time. I still have stuff packed, but the threat is over now that the winds are gone. Here is a picture that shows in red/orange where the fire has burned. I put aqua blue arrows to show the potential route that the fire could have taken. Our house is on the street above the aqua blue dot. The problem with maps is that you don’t get to appreciate the topography. There is a canyon behind our house that is a fire corridor… if that fire had gotten into the canyon system behind Santa Luz it would have ripped down the canyon to us…. It is very hard for the firefighter to fight in the canyons with a Santa Ana ripping through it. That’s the problem with Santa Ana’s – especially for us when they are sucking the air southwest to the ocean.

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