Fire Evacuation

Hey all.

Just a quick note to let anyone out there know our status vis-a-vis the fires that are burning up the southern half of our state.

First, we're fine. We are up in Visalia with Danny's folks. We saw on the news that the fires were coming west pretty quickly with the winds, and we heard a fire chief on TV say that the fire would almost surely hit the coast before it was all over. The fires were (and still are) completely out of control, and the situation wasn't looking up for the next 2-3 days. Our apartment in northern La Jolla was uncomfortably close to where the fire seemed to be heading based on the wind patterns, so we decided to get out of southern cal while we still could. No sense in waiting until the last minute so that all the freeways are shut down or clogged with traffic. It was surreal driving through the thick smoke and even ash in multiple patches along the I-5 heading north.

We just found out that Danny's school (UCSD) is closed for the rest of the week (as are most all school districts in SD county), so we plan on just waiting it out up here in central CA.

Some friends of ours from church (Daniel and Christina Norwood) came up with us. They have a home in SW Escondido and were given a manditory evacuation notice on Monday morning. As of right now there are still fires burning within a mile of their home. Many others in our church also have homes that are at risk (including people who lost their homes to the Cedar Fire of 2003!). Our new church building, into which we were supposed to move in two weeks, is also right in Rancho Bernardo. Yikes. Good thing it's only stuff.

If you are the praying type, please pray. For the firefighters especially.