Southern California Burning

Fires!

You may have heard about the recent fires here in Southern California. They affected just about everyone living here in one way or another. I just thought I'd share my ordeal regarding the fires. 

My unfortunate luck started on Friday 14, 2008. The Santa Ana wind condition that whips up around this time every year was causing me plenty of grief by irritating my sinuses and causing my allergies to flare. To add to my irritation I had a very long 

day planned. I attended clinical from 7 AM until 3:30 PM and without a break I went to work immediately following. Working until 11:30 PM and not getting to sleep until about 1 AM made for an extremely tiring and lengthy day.

Saturday morning, nice and early, I awoke at 6 AM so I could make it to the Orange County Cold Storage facility by 7 AM to fulfill my monthly obligation of hard labor and get my dog food for the month. While I lifted and moved pounds and pounds of frozen raw animal parts the weather continued to wreak havoc on my sinuses. It became apparent at some point in that morning that a fire had started *somewhere* because the sky turned brown and ash began to fall from the sky. I thought,  "greeeeaat, this should be wonderful for my allergies". Luckily, I wore a bandana on my noggin and I changed that from a hat to a mask. 

The people at Cold Storage started to call me the Taliban or a bandit. I didn't care what I looked like, I was miserable and I was choking on the foul air. By the time I left the Cold Storage facility it was 1:15 in the afternoon and I noticed a text message on my phone from my neighbor. "I don't know how you are going to get home," she said, "the 91 freeway is closed"! Well, that's OK, I thought, I'll just take the 57 freeway and go the long way home. Ah, yeah... bad idea. But, I didn't know it until I was already on that road. I could see the smoke in the air from the fire that was causing the 91 freeway closure. It looked pretty creepy out my side window. I had hope that the plume of smoke rising in front of me was far enough off the road that it would not prevent cars from driving through on the 57 freeway. 

My hope died when I saw about 6-8 police cars pass the slow moving traffic on the shoulder to my right. I tuned my radio to a station that covers traffic every 7 minutes to hear that the road I was on was just closed due to a fire in the Brea Canyon that had just "jumped the freeway". 

*Wonderful* 

However, I was lucky enough to be able to merge off the freeway at my last chance off ramp: Imperial Highway. I saw cars coming up the on-ramp exiting the freeway in the wrong direction. People seemed a bit desperate, I wish I had gotten a picture of that. I got back on the 57 freeway and headed back towards the city of Orange. 

I snapped this picture, it was very surreal and felt sort of apocalyptic. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do. First, I called my father. He was not at home. Second, I called my friend Phil. Lucky for me my friend was home and invited me to stay for awhile. After relaxing a little, eating a snack and watching the news it became apparent that I was not going to be able to make it home without a very long commute. I was considering taking the 605 to the 10 or 210 freeway but according the news every other schmo out there needing to reach the Inland Empire was doing the exact same thing. My blessed friend invited me to stay the night on his couch. 

I made it home the next morning (Sunday) but I awoke to realize that I was not just suffering from allergies anymore, I was sick! It is now the following Friday, 11/21, and I'm feeling better but still have some lingering signs. Gosh, how I hate being sick. As horrific as the fires were and how much devastation they caused it was a blessing that not one person perished. I have yet to hear an account of any possible wildlife loss. 

This is just part of living in Southern California.