The Fire #2

Okay, so I'm repacking.......

Did that work? Seems a little different linking within the DG site. And I have zero affinity with anything electronic!

Yaay! New worlds conquered!
I've decided that rather than having certain things out where I can see them daily, I'm going to keep them packed in a suitcase and ready to go. Two of my close friends had the fire right up to their houses. I simply no longer feel comfortable with living here. I'm glad to have the chance to re-think what I'd take. I had forgotten the quilt pieces that my grandmother was working on when she died. She died before I was born and it's the only thing I have of hers. Or at least I think so. I have a couple of mystery items, earrings, etc. that may have been hers or my mothers.
I'll miss having these items around me every day, but don't want to lose them.

See? I knew you could do it. :-)

This web site was great when we were away from home. Look at these photos just posted. http://and-still-i-persist.com/

List of homes damaged/destroyed - search. http://www.nctimes.com/fire2007/damage.php

I checked the Fallbrook- Rainbow list and compared against our reverse directory...I see that someone I know apparently still has her house while the ones on either side were lost. I hear neighbors out cutting their trees down...hope they're not sorry later...if I don't have trees I may as well live in Hemet. No offense to anyone living in Hemet, but I absolutely hate heat and sun and desert.

This message was edited Oct 30, 2007 12:03 PM

Sounds like you're ready for Cambria gypsy. The last serious fire I've heard of here was in 1889; not that it's not possible but that's a really good record in my book.

Oh, I've been ready for Cambria for a long time! Do soooo wish that I were there today.

I know this is fresh for you all, but I just wanted to show you one pix that broke my heart.

That image has been floating around the internet since 2000, it was taken in the Bitteroot National Forest in western Montana.

This message was edited Nov 2, 2007 11:56 AM

HOW FUNNY IS THAT. I HAVE A PASS IT ON THAT SUPPOSEDLY IS FROM THESE FIRES AND I JUST DIED OVER THAT ONE> SOME OF THE PIX ARE REALLY BEAUTIFULLY EERIE.

Well I knew I had seen it before so all I did was Google the words "fire deer photo" and it was the second link from Urban Legends reference page on snopes.com that got the info and description of the photo:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/deerfire.asp
I Google anything like that when it comes in my email, I never forward anything until I have checked it out. Usually I can find something within a minute.

Psst, no YELLING! LOL!

Yes, snopes.com is your best friend on the Internet. :-)

It's amazing what projects this can initiate. The DH is raking up and mulching all of the branches / litter under the eucalyptus trees. Fantastic, I can always use more mulch in my paths. We have 40 or so foot tall eucayptus along the side of the property that a new house got built on several years ago and we keep the ones adjacent to their pool cut back to shrub size, but today we looked at 6-7 more that we'll also cut down to shrub size. They've never complained, but I'm sure after this they would rather not have them that close to their house. I choose to not cut trees around our house and the rest of the property, but those we can cut down. I'm going to use up everything in the 2 freezers that are full, should be done anyway. We have 2 sheds plus a big storage full of stuff. I know one of those sheds I can empty out and get rid of the stuff. I've given away a lot of stuff and still feel the need to pare down, in preparation for moving if nothing else. DH will put together a roof ridgeline pipe of sprinklers that we can just attach a hose to in case of fires again. It was mentioned by someone on the news to keep a 'bin' of at least 3 days emergency water and food in the vehicle if you have room, so that I can do also. I keep looking at things that I would not be able to take and the thought of losing them and think about storing a lot at my Dad's house in a 'safe' area that doesn't burn. So, if you're going to store all of your stuff elsewhere so it won't burn...why stay here?

They're talking the possibility of fires again because the Santa Anas are supposed to come again tonight although not as strong. Keeping the animal carriers next to the car and ready to go in case.
Other change is that now I watch the San Diego station that has a lot more time given to news and focuses locally. Right now it's more important to me than the national news.

Oh no--we'll all be praying nothing starts up again!

Me, too 'cause I'm not going to take as much with if it does. I sincerely do not think that we'll have another. And there are so many people here watching to jump on it if it should happen.
I talked to my Dad tonight. He lives in Modesto and was telling me what the earthquake was like at his place. Said it was really something. He has a fan on a stand and said it was wobbling back and forth, 2 overhead lights were on and he said he could see them move (as in whole house moving) and small figurines in a glass cabinet all rattling around. Isn't it time to run the California Cows commercial about earthquakes? lol.....I'm surprised I haven't seen them on all over the place the last day or two.

Maybe they thought people wouldn't appreciate the humor of the cows as much now that the fear of the Big One is probably more top of mind than usual!

Sounds like your Dad felt the earthquake worse than I did, which is weird because I'm a lot closer to San Jose than he is. Guess those earthquake waves have strange ways of travelling through the ground! I was on the 2nd floor of my house and I could feel the house swaying a little bit, but the only thing inside the house that seemed to move were my vertical blinds, I could see them swaying back and forth too. None of my dishes or other fragile stuff did any rattling at all (of course I have all my breakable vases and things stuck down with earthquake putty, that probably helped!)

My friend in Sacramento said he was watching the news and the 3 Dopplers were showing 3 separate earthquakes so the news team was freaking out that there were multiple 5.+ quakes simultaneously......turned out that the 3 radars are so far away that they pinpointed the center in totally different places!

It has been cloudy and foggy here for 2 days so I hope that this moisture does a rock'em sock'em on the Santa Ana's.

The last 2 days have been sooo nice. Good for working outside. Just when I think I'll get some planting done, they say it's going to be in the mid 80's again...sigh.

I know what you mean--I was all set to do some planting earlier in October, but then we had a week where we got close to 90 so I gave up that thought! It's been a little cooler lately, but I'm still scared to do anything yet. Especially now that daylight savings is going away, now by the time I get home from work it'll be dark out which makes it a lot harder to figure out what needs to be watered! I think I'm going to take an extra couple days off around Thanksgiving and plant then, that's what I did last year and it worked pretty well. (I don't have any family in the area, so I don't have to cook dinner or anything like that, I can devote the whole long weekend to gardening!)

oooh, good vacation...then I also worry about planting the things that are more cold-senstive. It seems as though everything has gotten in the way of planting this year.

Hmmm, maybe it's Mother Nature's way of making us save water? :-)

Maybe it's her way of telling me to quit buying plants. I should listen. I'm trying to.

There are couple of things I hadn't even thought about until this a.m.....when parts of Fallbrook burned several years ago many homes were lost then also. Amongst these was the home of people I knew who had been in Arizona and heard the news on the way home. How awful, knowing you can't get there in time and that you have 2 cats in the house. I've been seeing this mostly from my own perspective...we're retired and home most of the time. I hadn't thought about those who were at work at the time that our area was evacuated. My immediate neighbors are retired,work from home, etc. so I hadn't even thought about who was at work. Since the fire several years ago, everytime we're out of town, and out of touch, for the day I hate it when we're getting close to home and I realize some area is burning. Camp Pendelton burns quite often. So you're on your way home,smelling / seeing smoke and thinking that you're hoping it isn't your area on fire. The 2 days before we were evacuated we were gone all day. Had we been gone the next day, we wouldn't have known...wouldn't have had time to get things together to take with,may not have been able to get into town to get my 6 cats. I think it's a good idea for those with pets to post in a prominent spot, by front door,or wherever what pets and how many you have in the house.I hadn't thought about the being gone for the day aspect until this a.m. Usually on Saturday and Sunday morning we're up and gone for the day out of town. I thought about that this a.m. and how we wouldn't want to go anywhere with the talk of fires flaring up again and then realized I probably won't feel comfortable again about leaving the house for the day during dry,fire season which down here is most of the time.

That whole thing about being gone during the day and having pets at home is one of the main reasons I decided to move closer to work--I used to live in Martinez, and even with no traffic it would take a good 35 min to get there from work, during rush hour it was often over an hour and if there was a major disaster of some sort I can only imagine how long it would have taken! It freaked me out one time there was a fire up there, as I was driving home from work I could see the smoke, and with the way the roads turned it was hard to tell where exactly the smoke was coming from, but it looked like it could have been coming from right near my house. I was all panicked thinking about my dog, luckily it turned out the fire was a mile away instead of right by my house, but it certainly got me thinking!

I do have the stickers on my windows saying that I have a dog and please rescue him, and I'm pretty confident that in a house fire or something else where my house was the only one involved they would try to rescue him, but in a disaster situation where there's more than just my house that they have to deal with, I'm not sure if they would be able to take the time to try and get him out or not. I have to think they would make evacuating the people in the neighborhood a priority.

Having been "stuck-at-home", for quite some time now (hip surgery) has given me a new perspective.
A) I know what is happening here, in the front and back yard, all the time.
B) I know where everything is (even the spice rack in the kitchen is alphabetically arraigned).
C) I have not had to buy fuel for my car in a L-O-N-G time.
D) Though it is good to be able to drive again, I have no desire to go anywhere. This is where I need to be.

We worry about our birds, too. One cage is small enough to be carried out, one would roll with some effort out the door, but the big one is a double that has to be broken down. When parrots are frightened, they bite, so I don't know how someone could rescue them. Quite a dilemma and I don't know the answer. :-( I think at the least we can post instructions that MIGHT help.

I'm thinking I might have to leave the carriers in a visible spot also and one is very large. Such a problem. Have to figure out where we want to move to.

"Mother earth news" did an excellent article on planning your perfect homestead about two months ago (I'll try and find you a link).

The problem I find in this area (besides the cost of land) is that people who retire here from the cities up north have a hard time adjusting to the lack of night life.

Ops the mail just ran - I should go and see how many new bills just arrived.

Lol....we finally let go of all of our years of Mother Earth News. It was a hard thing to do, but we did keep issue #1. We have too much stuff.

I am just reading along here, getting some helpful ideas as you guys and gals discuss what you are gonna try, next time something happens.
Keep up the discussions. : )

kaperc... Your parrots would be a problem if someone is afraid they will bite. I've always heard that you could cover a birds cage to calm them down. Would that work with your parrots?

I know, if I were in charge of getting your birds out, I would just have to get bit. I couldn't bare to think of the alternative.

I worry when I'm gone that our house might catch on fire one day, and I have 3 cats and a 18 yr old turtle in here. My neighbors are not the neighborly type, so I doubt they would try to save them. Always something to worry about.
~Lucy

WCG...Come on over to Arizona...I love it here...especially here in Cochise County....cooler than Tucson....but no night life here either....Well, I shouldn't say that...since I am in bed by 9 PM how would I KNOW>? Jo

It didn't even dawn on me until today how lucky we were that we were home that day and our son was off and home that day. I can't imagine not being here or not being able to get back into town to get my animals out. I mean, we had 4-5 hours in which to get whatever together. These poor people who were at work couldn't do anything. I'm feeling whiney that we didn't feel comfortable taking off for the day today so I think we'll go over and get a pizza and sit at the duck pond and watch the duckies. I don't think I'll leave the house for a whole day again unless it's raining..sigh. On the other hand, we'll save a lot of money.

We can count our blessings, being restricted to home as there are many, in Calif (from fire) and Mexico (from flood) and yet others throughout the world who have no home to be restricted to.

Aye.

wcgypsy, I am up in the hills - and I have a whole kennel to evacuate. It is horrible having to go to work when I can smell smoke in the air, even though I only work a few minutes away.

rose, do you actually get fire in Anza? Are you on the Idyllwild side of Anza, trees? Have enough vehicles, crates to get them out? I worry about horses when their owners have more horses than they can trailer out. My neighbor was quick to get a horse and pony when she moved down here, but no trailer to haul them out. Do you guys have hunting season out there? I was in Idyllwild maybe 4 weeks ago and was surprised
when coming back down almost into Anza and saw a guy in cammies with a rifle w/scope jogging off the side of the road...looked highly suspicious to me. Then the next Saturday we went back up and I saw 'Turkey Shoot' sign in Anza and apparently hunters' cars parked up past Lake Hemet. Really surprised me. Good time to not go hiking!
I think I could deal with the possibility of more evacuations in the future if it weren't for having the animals and making sure I get them out. I was lucky in finding a kennel that night to take in my 6 cats and make sure they were safe while we tried to deal with the other things.
Sherry

Our neighbor has one old horse and a donkey. She doesn't have a trailer. Thank goodness for San Luis Rey Downs - they let her borrow one to get the animals there.

Do you think it was easier on your cats to be in a kennel?. If they're anything like our birds, they pick up all the nervous vibes in the air and it upsets them.

Rose, I'm glad you weren't close to this one.