Fire Update

Many of the fires are out or are 100% contained. A few still burn, especially the Santiago Canyon (by my apartment) and between here and San Diego. However, containment is being achieved. Last night the news said that the Irvine fire was about 65% contained and they were making good progress on it.

The sky is mostly clear, but there is still a tinge of haze from the few still-burning fires. However, just because the sky is clearer doesn't mean the crap in the air is gone; since the skies have cleared, we have actually had two "very unhealthy" days for air quality.

Most of the evacuations are lifted and people are surveying the damage. In the Big Bear area, many homes are burnt to the ground with nothing but foundations where the house used to be and a mound of slag where the car used to be. San Diegans are finding similar results in many of the outlying area.

And let the accusations begin; the Orange County leadership is already starting the blame game on FEMA, OES, the Governator, and others. The experts were/are saying that the Santiago Canyon fire was likely one of the easiest to knock out had we received early air support. Had they knocked it out early, all the resources that are still fighting it could have been easily redeployed to the other fires and there would have been one less to worry about. However, because we got no air support during the Malibu fire, and then no air support for two days following the Malibu fire's primary containment, it allowed the Santiago Canyon fire to grow into one of the larger, more devastating fires in So Cal. They argue that leadership was apparently basing decisions primarily on potential home loss and difficult landscape, rather than ease of containment and chance to spread/get worse.

I heard word on the news that California is considering buying more fire engines and possibly buying its own "super scooper" airships finally. While I greatly appreciate all the hard work those two from Quebec (with their Canadian pilots) did during these fires (and the 2003 fires), it is time that CA bite the bullet and maintain some of its own. We have fires every summer/fall and we need more of these readily available for use as quickly and early as possible. And I don't think the people will mind paying some extra taxes to get them, this time around. I'm still not understanding why CA didn't buy them after the 2003 fires.

One other thing I noted: one of the officials was saying that nowhere near the 800,000 people stated to have been evacuated actually were. He said that only a few thousand went to the various relief areas and that the roads out of San Diego would have been gridlocked had that many people taken to them. Now, when you add up all the various places together, there were around 100,000 in the relief areas (the most I heard in QualComm stadium was around 30,000, and then I am adding the 10,000+ that went to the other large relief areas. On top of this, every time the news shows pictures of the 5 and 405 freeways, it was like the worst rush-hour gridlock-- which indicates thousands and thousands were on the roads. So, while the estimate of 800k total around SoCal may be high, hundreds of thousands were, in fact, evacuated.