Todd Family Blog

Welcome! Read below for our latest news and pictures.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

The San Diego Fires

Thank you to all of you who have called, texted and emailed to see if we are okay. We really appreciate it! We just returned this morning from a long weekend in Indy/Zionsville for Jason Brown's wedding. Flying into San Diego County was truly unbelievable. It seemed wrong that we were able to fly right over these incredible fires. The plane was completely silent as everyone stared out the windows in disbelief. Seeing the lines of flames creeping over the mountains and towards large subdivisions was horrific and sobering.

Thankfully, we are quite near downtown and so far very safe where we are. There is a large fire north of us which seems to pose no threat to where we are, but is causing mass destruction. This fire, unfortunately, is devouring beautiful Palomar Mountain where we vacationed recently (see a recent post in our archives). There is also a huge fire southeast of us about 10-15 miles away. This is the one that makes us a bit nervous. As many of you know we sit on a beautiful canyon of very dry, desert vegetation. It would certainly only take an ember for our entire canyon to be in serious trouble.

That being said, we are certainly not in any immediate danger. We are going to take a few precautions - gather some important things together just in case - but there isn't any reason to worry. But please keep everyone in the city in your prayers. Some of Brad's coworkers have been evacuated or are awaiting possible evacuations. Almost all schools are closed, and the northern mandatory evacuations are only three miles from Brad's work. It is all very real and scary at the moment.

The pictures below illustrate our biggest problem. There is a brown haze hanging over the entire county giving us all headaches and asthma. While we are 10 - 15 miles away from the fire, downtown (see below) is more like 20 miles away. You can see the vast difference between a normal day and our current situation in these pictures.

Thanks again for all your thoughts and prayers!

A picture of downtown taken a couple weeks ago when Mom and Dad were visiting:


A picture of downtown taken today from the airport:

No comments: