Fire #3 - Oceanside/Camp Pendleton

4pm: The 3rd local fire of the week is burning near-by. Closer than the Camp Pendleton fire last Wednesday, and this time some houses are threatened in Oceanside. Two giant "super-scooper"* planes just flew overhead (before I went and got my camera). They were flying so low I thought they were going to hit the rooftop of a house just up the hill (above the "Great Wall of Vista" lot some of you are familiar with).

It's a bit more risky this week than last, as "Santa Ana winds" are blowing in from the desert. The temp is only about 80 degrees but humidity is only 6 to 11%! The winds are nowhere near as strong as a year ago, so we should be OK.

We are watching this on the news... will update later.


*I "Googled" Super Scooper and here's what I found (besides kitty litter tools!):

Super Scooper

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A Canadair CL-215.

Super Scooper is a nickname given to certain amphibious firefighting aircraft built by Canadair, now Bombardier. The family of three aircraft known as "Super Scoopers" are the Canadair CL-215, the CL-217 and the Bombardier 415 turboprop.

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8pm: here is a slideshow of my photos of mostly smoke this evening. (You can spot a small flame in one.)

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Meanwhile, a much bigger fire is still burning near LA. Two deaths so far.
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Fire In Vista Today!!

Tuesday: For a moment Rick thought I was cooking: the smell of something burning was coming in.
It turned out to be a fire not far away - at the corner of Foothill and Vista Way, just a mile down the hill from us, next to our grocery store complex.

We watched from our front yards while calling several neighbors to alert them. There was smoke coming up and into our house, and we could even see some small flames. It was put out in about a half hour. The temperature was in the high 90's and it is, to say the least, VERY dry out here. October is when the worst fires usually happen.

The San Diego Union-Tribune online said 4 acres burned. No big deal...this time.

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Wednesday 6pm: On my way to Mac class tonight at Vista High School, I was surprised to see a large portion of the sky filled with black smoke. I called home for Rick to take a look from up on the hill where we live.

Apparently it is a good size fire in Camp Pendleton. More to follow............. (I'll search online while class is going on.)

11pm: The fire is raging out of control tonight. It's red and glowing and we can see it out our dining room window. Over 1,000 acres have already burned. Here's what's in the paper so far: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news It's a much bigger fire, but further away than last night. The wind is blowing north and east -- away from us. The article says it can be smelled all the way to Temecula!

I tried to take photos just now: you can see it through our dining room window! I couldn't get a good picture. It looks much like the photo in the article link. Kinda' scary. We'll sleep lightly tonight.

Pictures Rick took while I was in school; from our front yard:

From the San Diego Union-Tribune article:
That's pretty much how it looks from here this evening! We were away on vacation during last October's wild fires, so this is a first for us. (I must add: the fire was about 12 miles away, so our neighbors were not worried.)

Update: Now officials are saying 2,000 acres burned last night.

Our temperatures broke record highs today too: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news

Thursday morning update: The fire is mostly contained now. I didn't sleep too well! We do have a big plastic bin filled and ready to grab in an emergency departure. Overnight I thought of more things to get ready! Here's the morning news: http://www.10news.com/news/17666356

9am: Fire is completely out. Good thing we didn't have high winds.

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Almost back to normal

San Diego is getting back to normal this week. Here in Vista, other than some ash making everything a bit dirty, we'd hardly know anything happened while we were gone.

Certainly there is NOT a quarter inch of ash on the ground as our neighbor described... well, OK, maybe in some corners where the wind blew it. And, we'll probably get more ash off and on over the next month or so.

Here's what we found when we got home. There is a very thin, just dirty looking, bit of black on everything. You can see some gathered around the step by our pool.

Rick spent some time hosing down the patio, and cleaning the pool filter which was packed with soot. We had to wash my car, and clean some of the driveway where Goldie lays down. Plants and the house have soot on them, but, our normal ocean breezes should clear that off. A good rain WOULD be nice!

Here you can see black at the bottom of our pool where the "creepy crawler" vacuum had not yet cleaned. I'm sure it was totally black bottomed a week ago.

The hurricane category 2 level winds did blow things around, and THAT's what made it so awful during the fires. But for us, we lost one umbrella that we left open, one fell over, and one, also left open, is just fine! That's it!

Dang, this umbrella cost us $6.00!!! :-)

I suppose if you click on the photo to enlarge it, then look real close, you can see our chairs were covered. There is also some soot in the stamped impressions in the concrete.

Paul and Mary: come on out!!


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Visiting Frank's "The Tile Studio" in Monterey

We were able to stop in Rick's cousin, Frank Di Mercurio's tile shop in Monterey. We surprised him! His brother John lives down in San Diego/El Cajon. Their Mom and sister came in from Detroit for a visit last month. Their Dad, Bud, worked with Rick's Dad, Desiderio, in the tile business in Michigan.

What COOOOOOL stuff Frank has! Take a look.... can't wait to go back when we can stay longer! I could spend some money here! :-)

Now, if you dare, ask Rick about the Truck ride back to Vista!

After our week of adventures, we are ready to get home and see our house. We saw several burned-out areas along the I-15 just 10 or so miles before our neighborhood. Apparently, one fire jumped 14 lanes of asphalt and concrete in the wild winds. We saw homes with splashes of red/pink fire retardant on them. Our home is OK; just dirty and soot is everywhere. It smells more like a campfire here than the places we stayed during the week.

Here's the day by day events of the fire:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071028/news_lz1n28inferno.html

Here's a Google Fire Map.
Our home is located almost exactly where it labels our city "Vista", inland from Carlsbad, along the 78.
I think Google is updating the info daily.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&ie=UTF8&om=1&msa=0&msid=114250687465160386813.00043d08ac31fe3357571&num=1000&ll=33.151349,-117.111511&spn=0.823223,0.997009&z=10

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Further North: Big Sur, Carmel, Monterey

Night-time card games in the RV. (Ever play "Skip-Bo"?)



Tall Redwood trees at the campground




Golf anyone? Pebble Beach




After 80 HOT degrees the day before in Carmel,
the weather changed quickly!

Meanwhile, down in San Diego, schools and businesses are closed, and the fires kept raging. Should we have returned????? We have no TV, internet, or even cell phone service here in the Big Sur campground we are at. Once we drove into Carmel, all of our phones started buzzing with messages from worried friends who could not reach us by our home phone, and it took many tries to get a cell phone connection (plus the Officials were asking people to keep phone lines clear). Of course me not being on the internet really added some fear!
I stopped in the Carmel Library, used their internet for the posting below.

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RV Travels up the Pacific Coast to Santa Barbara

Wayne and Gunde Stewart, our neighbors, traveled with us and were the best tour guides! They have lived out here 35+ years. We toured "The Getty" museum, the Santa Barbara Courthouse, the Mission, stopped to see the Monarch butterflies that come in this time of year, and the giant elephant seals who also make a stop for a few months in the Fall.


"The Getty" in LA -- Gunde and I think we should build a reflecting pool like THIS between our houses at the top of the hill! (Rick says: "Put it on THE LIST")



The Santa Barbara Courthouse is worth the visit!
r


We stopped for lunch at Moro Bay

REALLY BIG Elephant Seals! (Not like those little guys down in La Jolla!)


Our campground sunset over the ocean -- we could hear the waves crashing all through the night (OK, AND the train.)

Butterflies (can't see much here). Sometimes THOUSANDS cover the trees in Pismo Beach.


Everyone knows where HAPPY COWS live!


Meanwhile, back in San Diego, the fires rage on. We thought long and hard about turning around and heading back, but everyone suggested we stay put where we were safe. Roads are closed or dangerous everywhere anyway, and we could get stuck trying to return. We had each other, Goldie, and our 2nd home with us, so in a worse case scenario, we would still be OK.

So, we continued on.

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California Fires - we are OK, for now

Hi, we have been out of the San Diego area since Sunday, when the first fire started in Malibu. THEN all the fires started in San Diego County.

So, if you are trying to reach us, you have not been able to because we are in the RV up by Big Sur, without cell phone and internet!

Today we drove up to Carmel, and I am in the library to publish this info. The big fire is quite a ways from our home, although several small ones started and were put out within 5 to 15 miles. It's very scary for everyone there.

So far our home is fine.... just covered with 1/4 inch of ash our neighbor tells us. We'll see Sunday when we get back. (Oct 27).

Check out this red sky we had to drive through north of Malibu! We felt like we were on Mars! Even though the sky looked like this, we could see no fire anywhere. After 20 minutes of this drive along the 101, we were happy to get into the clear skies.

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