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Lost Angeles

  
 
Lilly Nowhere Late
06:05 / 28.10.03
Any news to offer on the state of my LA? It is burning down you know
and I can barely stand it. Other than Fred, can any LA locals give us insight or information?
Not to exclude Fred of course, just that I already asked him.

And following, have any of you ever lived thru natural disasters up close and personal?
 
 
LDones
06:39 / 28.10.03
The fire isn't exactly at Los Angeles just yet, if I'm not mistaken. It's approaching the county, but it isn't there yet. There are actually 4 seperate fires going right now, encompassing something like 90,000 acres in and around the Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties. Between 70,000 and 85,000 people are without power, and at last check it had grabbed 1100 homes and at least 15 people and containment is still pretty sketchy - the numbers are very forgiving given how big and uncontrolled the flames are.

Quick Quote:

"This will be the most expensive fire in California history, both in loss of property and the cost of fighting it," said Dallas Jones, director of the state Office of Emergency Services.

"It would be disingenuous to say we have control of these fires. Right now we are throwing everything we can at them," Jones said. "It's such erratic conditions. These are still tremendously dangerous with very little control or containment."

THough the fire stretches (in a really roundabout way) from the Mexican border to suburbs northeast of Los Angeles, in Orange County, where I'm at, he sum total of the effect has been a sky that looks like Mars in the afternoon and a steady 24-hour rain of ash for the past several days. Suburbanite housewives are hosing down their walks several times a day and most sensible folks seem to have given up washing their cars. The smell has lessened, which is a good sign if only because it means the Santa Ana winds have calmed down, but otherwise people seem extraordinarily casual about it here.

The few folks I know in LA that I've spoken with are taking it pretty easy as well, though that may change by morning.

The effected areas have been declared in a federal State of Emergency, but I think the magnitude of what's occurring hasn't quite sunk in yet. Cue FEMA to take over California and signal the inevitable alien invasion force. Schwarzenegger's had himself quite a stressful surprise, I'm sure.

That having been said, it isn't yet at a total choas situation - people who haven't been evacuated seem to largely be taking it easy, but if things keep up like they have been it'll get very serious very fast in a widespread way. My Significant Other's grandparents have been evacuated from Lake Arrowhead. They'll know by morning whether or not the fire has hit their home.
 
 
bjacques
09:39 / 28.10.03
Not living there but having seen plenty of coverage of past fires, I'd like to know how this one rates. I remember a few years ago a big fire that was started in Altadena, in southern LA County, but a hobo trying to keep warm at night.

It's probably true that every fire is the most expensive one until the next one, thanks to spiralling real estate prices and costs of services like firefighting. Luckily for Arnie, he doesn't take office until the fires are over, right?
 
 
bjacques
09:52 / 28.10.03
In 1983, hurricane Alicia, barely a Category 3 (maximum sustained winds 95 mph) trashed my neighborhood when its eye passed within three miles of my house in suburban Houston (near NASA), Texas. We lost power for 3-1/2 days but the phone worked. I had 10 pounds of venison a friend had given my dad and I ate about 6 pounds of it before it spoiled. Two nights before the storm hit, David Bowie came through on his Serious Moonlight Tour (the only time I saw local hero Stevie Ray Vaughan play live). The following night, some other band cancelled and I went to a local party and met some students who would be freshmen at my university next month. The hurricane made landfall the next night, coming right up the Gulf Freeway from Galveston and I lost power 20 minutes into David Letterman. Damage was actually light, though there was some profiteering by local convenience shop managers.

A few years earlier (1979), Tropical Storm Claudette drenched Alvin, about 15 miles away, with 42 inches of rain in 24 hours, a record unbeaten to this day in the U.S. The water came up to my porch, but flooded other houses in my neighborhood to the rafters.

A few years later, Hurricane Jerry hit nearby, but was a 60-mph tropical storm by that time. I waded down a lakeside street and watched alligator gars swim arond my legs and fended off floating rafts of fire ants.

In coastal Texas, fire isn't much of a problem.
 
 
Jef396
17:05 / 28.10.03
My experience:

A map of my area.

Sunday morning my mom woke me up and told me to look outside. Everything outside was a strange shade of yellow. Normally I take a few minutes to get out of bed, but seeing this I was up in a few seconds. My mom turned on the TV so I could see what was going on. Skip forward a few hours where I just go between watching TV shows and the news. The newest information is that the fire has started moving over Mission Trials National Park. That's one to two miles from my house, and for this fire, that seems like nothing. After that bit of information, my mom decides it's time to start packing up our important stuff. After about an hour we have our two cars almost full of things we want to take. Then all we could do was wait. We had decided not to leave, until they told us to. That night it was announced on TV the fire was moving away from our area, but it was no guarantee.

The next morning, the fire had receded farther from our house, and I brought my computer back inside. That was the end of our direct worry about the fire. It's still not safe to be outside because of the horrible air quality. The dryness in the air gave me a dry throat and nose, which hurt very much. I have a humidifyer in my room, but it doesn't seem to be helping. I don't know the full extent to the damage, but after talking to people in other parts of the country, it seems that "Firestorm 2003" isn't getting much coverage in other areas. The last I heard about LA is that it's only on the outskirts, it seems that most of the damage was done in San Diego (so far).
 
 
grant
18:57 / 28.10.03
And following, have any of you ever lived thru natural disasters up close and personal?

Yeah, hurricanes happen every so often.
You hope for the best, you get wet, you go out afterwards and see that your shutters held or if you need to replace parts of your roof or whatever. Spend a couple days clearing tree limbs out of your yard.
 
 
HCE
19:45 / 28.10.03
Her, actually. Sorry, when I replied I somehow missed that you were asking specifically about the fires. I'll write again when I know more.
 
 
Lilly Nowhere Late
05:07 / 29.10.03
Cheers all.
Re the Altadena fires: I lived thru them. What a weird thing.
And hurricanes and earthquakes and tornados and all. No mudslides,
and no flood or famine.
Have heard now from Pasadena/Altadena localized friends who seem
fairly resigned to the whole thing and not that bothered. Seems to be
mostly in a different direction this time, eh? Of course I do have most
of a life in storage in Northridge so thank goodness for insurance!
 
 
Squirmelia
13:53 / 29.10.03
The fires seem to have now reached Hampshire, UK. About mid-day, most of my co-workers gathered by the windows to see flames and smoke that were at least a few times the size of our office. At first I thought it was the office on fire, but then realized if it was, fire alarms might have gone off and the ice-cream van would probably have appeared outside. Since then I have found out that it was actually exploding cigarette lighters, but at the time I felt nauseous, as if the clouds of smoke were going to turn into mushroom clouds.

This fire was obviously on a less serious scale than the ones everyone else is talking about, but it's made me think about unwanted fire, so I hope the fires in other places fade soon too, if they haven't already.
 
  
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