The Fire Diet

I'm just saying, days of figuratively walking on nails, waiting to find out what's going to happen with a raging inferno painfully close can take it's toll on your digestive system. Along with hiking the nearby ridge to check on the fire progress yourself because the internet is stupid and has no updates and the radio is full of idiots calling in, thinking their story is special, and saying crap like "At first I looked out and thought, 'oh, there's a fog bank,' then I noticed that the bottom was tinged brown... what do you mean 700 acres are burning uncontrollably a few miles away?"

Okay, so that's only partially true. The fire was 5% contained last night and a whopping 6% by today. Yesterday I was assured that it wasn't going to reach us, but then a rumor spread that the flames had jumped the road and that the fire was now possibly headed for town and that there was talk of evacuation. Thank the gods, it turned out to be untrue. But seriously, what dickhead would go around spreading information like that?

The tankers and choppers flying over our house woke me up at 6 after a whole two hours or so of sleep. Maybe I'm an insomniac or something, but I stayed up working away on a silly music video, focusing my nervous energy. But it's scary when, in the middle of the night, you hear this!

It sounded like an air raid siren and I have to admit, the first thing I did was search the skies, wondering if the Chinese were bombing us or something. Then I wondered if it meant "everyone who can hear this, get the hell out!" Apparently it's used to call in all volunteer fire fighters. It went off again this afternoon and poor Alex also thought it was about to be Pearl Harbor #2.

I hiked up the South Ridge again today and was shocked that, even though we could smell the smoke for the first time, there was no sign of the column. The air all over is hazy and the smoke has fringed the horizon with brown, but the fire appears to be heading away from us.

Where the "volcano" was yesterday

The smoke heading for the coast

The haze makes the mountains kinda pretty!

The last update that I heard was that it hadn't managed to grow much today (which is good since they were estimating 1,700 acres burning before containment) and they're hoping they can battle it on the flats and keep it from spreading to the canyons. One CDF spokesperson said that the outlook was good for containment since we're finally getting the wind in our favor, blowing cool, moist air in off the Pacific. That and the fact that the 700 + fire fighters are working their butts off!

Thank you, firefighters!