Wildfires and stuff..

Anyone else had a fire burn their house down?

We are in SoCal and were told to evacuate our townhouse at around 10:00 AM this morning. A wild fire started this morning and is burning its way through a subdivision right now. If it doesn’t get contained our home is right in the path.

We had about 5 minutes notice and kind scrambled out of there. Left behind almost everything. Man, I hope it doesn’t all burn down. I left an AI design book that’s irreplaceable and a few more things, but if it all burns its mostly just stuff. Still, puts tour life in perspective, everyone is safe but its going to be a PITA to replace everything.

So happy Monday!

Sorry to hear that, Guap. I am surprised you didn’t get more warning, but I suppose it’s all about where the fire started. It sounds like it started near your subdivision.

Here’s to hoping it doesn’t get to your house.

Jesus, man. Glad you’re out safe. Hope things get contained and it doesn’t go even worse.

Its zero percent contained right now, there are 10% of personnel deployed since the last one (200 vs. 2000) and the wind is crazy today.

If our place burns down I’ll post some pics. Which seems likely.

I’m guessing the Anaheim/Corona/Yorba one? I just got potential evacuation notification on my phone, and we’re in North Irvine. I guess it’s raging along the 91 and 261.

Closest we ever came to burning down was in college at Riverside. We were renting a house with a pool in the backyard, and everything else behind it was brush. Transformer blew somewhere, and next thing I knew, roommates and I were outside hosing down our roof and walls and everything else. Spent the rest of the day through night going from home to home with neighbors spraying everything down.

Oh, damn. @Guap, that’s terrible. Sorry to hear this is happening to you.

Yep, that’s the one. We are at the intersection of the. 261 toll road and 91. Watching it on TV creep towards our place. Pretty surreal.

Edit: Thanks Telefrog. Everyone safe, we even got our dog. Looks like this one may be a doozy. 8N the end its just, as George Carlin says, “stuff” right?

Yeah, but everyone has “stuff” that can’t be replaced. TVs, couches, beds, whatever. But there’s that one shirt you got in Disneyland on the family vacation. There’s that one janky quilt that you never use, but Aunt Sally sent it just before she died. Oh, and what about that hand-me-down Christmas ornament that everyone loves even though it looks like a 2nd grader’s art project? It sucks to lose those things.

Anyway, I am glad everyone is safe!

Shit, good luck Guap. We’re getting the ash from a nearby fire as well, making the sky crazy orange.

Hey, man. Glad the family is okay. Terribly sorry about the house and stuff. News said it was fucking fast.

Damn Guap, hope everything ends up ok! Lots of ash dropping here near our place too.

Yea, I hope your place doesn’t get burned. Bad year for fires after the wet year made for a lot of dried grass to burn.

Glad you’re ok. We woke up to ash falling, but fortuntely the closest NorCal fires are about 15 miles away.

A bunch of close friends and family were evacuated in NorCal, and the winery where Mrs. Kub and I were married burned down today, but so far all our friends are ok, and their houses are too.

Been using this link (thanks EPA!) to see the fires on the maps. It’s best if you turn off the smoke plumes unless you are also tracking the unhealthy air.

Not to misdirect the thread, but I find it a bit liberating to let go of stuff, to travel light, so to speak.

I have a lot of books that are difficult to replace (contemporary poetry books mostly) because they are out of print and some of those books mean a lot to me, but it seems like the less attached I am to things, the more free I feel.

Years ago I remember chancing upon a radio station talking about Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobbi McGee” and in a recording Kristofferson explained the line “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…” from a personal experience.

He said he was living in Nashville early on, after finishing his Rhodes scholarship in England, working as a janitor as he pursued his music career. He got invited to Memphis or some other place for a music opportunity. He was living in a condemned building that a friend let him stay in, and when he returned from wherever he went he found he had been robbed of just about everything. He said after a bit of getting over it, he felt liberated. He was no longer tied down because everything he had was gone. Hence the line from the great song he wrote.

That’s what I remember from that episode listening to my car radio. If I have misremembered, I apologize, but it’s not a bad story to misremember!

Edit: I want to apologize if this comes across as insensitive. It’s a sad thing to lose important possessions that can’t be replaced. I was responding more in the abstract to the concept of letting go of things. It’s easier to let go of stuff than it is to have it taken from you so you have no choice to pick and choose. So again, sorry.

So in watching the local news last night the carnage in Santa Rosa was amazing. Also watching the hill above the vineyards burning was shocking. They reported that 10 people have died in the Northern fires since they started.

Yeah, the one in NorCal is way worse, apparently. I heard the Kenwood vineyard burned down, that’s a major wine producer.

In our neck of the woods, we still can’t go back today. Looks like maybe our place was spared as its creeping southwest now towards Orange. It won’t burn past that though because it’s all city there, they HAVE to stop it before then. Because behind Orange is Anaheim and Disneyland. If Disneyland is threatened I suspect all of a sudden a giant firefighting robot will rise out of Cinderella’s castle and hose down the city or something.

We were a few miles away from the revised evac orders last night. Thankfully the fire didn’t jump the 241 else we’d be out.

Glad to hear you still have a house, Guap. I just keep thinking, there’s no way I could round up my four cats in five minutes, let alone time for other stuff.

One family in my Camaro club lost their home in the Sonoma fire, and my boss is in a voluntary evacuation zone so he didn’t come in today.

I saw footage last night of firefighters hosing down two story homes with all the water they could find trying to prevent the fire from spreading last night. Also a shot from Disneyland looking east where the sky was burnt orange.

I hope your place stays safe.

Hey neighbor!

Keep alert, this thing is still not nearly contained. They are basically concentrating manpower on saving houses and letting it burn to the highways. Hopefully east of 241 is safe as it looks like the wind is taking it SW.