It's scary, coming up the 57 from class in Orange and seeing flames right by Brea High School, 2 miles from us.

NOTE: Info put into this blog on Saturday the 15th are in regular type; info put into the blog on Sunday the 16th are in a different font and italicized. The map above shows the Brea fire area in red, the evacuation area in blue (where my girlfriend Daniece lives! Brea Canyon below left was blocked off) and where we live with the arrow. I just KNEW it was going to jump the freeway! MUCH too close for my comfort. I hear that Brea Canyon High School and El Torito Grill were damaged in this fire. The map below is the Corona/Yorba Linda fire map with the Brea fire shown as well. You can tell where friends of ours live just by figuring out what freeway they live close to and then finding that freeway. This whole fire area has now been called the Triangle Fire and apparently was going up to Chino Hills and Chino. Sunday morning the 16th the 57 north was closed from Lambert to the 60. Brea Canyon and State College were also closed, so when I went to teach class, I had to go around to Imperial and get on the 57 south that way.

I heard about the Corona/Yorba Linda fire at school so I called Bub who was in Norco at NoPork getting a front tire and told him to stay as far away from the 91 as possible, and to either take the 15 to the 60 or take back roads such as Hamner to Limonite to Archibald to Merrill, etc. He took the back way, coming through Carbon Canyon and was one of the last vehicles to get through before they shut it down. When he was coming out of Carbon Canyon onto Lambert he drove thru thick black smoke but could still see flames. It's kind of frightening because you don't know where it'll go depending on the wind and we all remember how FAST the Rancho Cucamonga fire moved back in 2003. I didn't know anything about the Brea fire so when I was biking (motorcycling) my way home north on the 57 fwy from practical skills class for my EMT class I saw additional smoke. I was wondering why there was so much smoke from a Corona fire, then saw the smoke to the north of me, up the 57. Coming up to the 91 I thought, oh, no, they're having ANOTHER fire in Rancho Cucamonga? but after the 91, traffic slowed 'way down and I flames behind the Brea Olinda High School. Not since 1979 or the early 80's has Brea had a major fire so there was a lot of brush and overgrowth. Smoke was coming over the freeway by the time I got off the freeway at Lambert, so I zoomed home because back in the late 70's the fire DID jump the freeway and threaten homes in the hills at Brea Blvd and Central Avenue, and threatened additional homes on the other side of Brea Canyon where we live. Where the fire was today, Lambert and State College is about 2 miles from our house. Our house is in the hills on the edge of Brea and La Habra, above Central and Puente.

The reason I was really zooming home is because Jackie had my car, went out last night and stayed out and we didn't know when she'd be home. Turns out she was in the hills above our house and slightly east with a friend watching the fire. NICE job. I guess she doesn't realize that with one car that's NOT HOME, it's a little hard to carry clothes and stuff (PLUS TWO DOGS) with a couple of motorcycles. (Pictures above, to the right and below that she took)

Got home, tore into the house and started getting a few clothes together; all the medications; downloading scanned in pertinent insurance, personal and tax files onto my thumbdrive (I always keep them in one folder on the desktop, so all I have to do is 'send to' and that's it.) I've also sent that stuff to my work, because that way a) I have backup on my desktop at work, and b) I have it in my 'sent' file on my ISP. I've always scanned in any sort of 'official' stuff like our driver's licenses; insurance cards; the first two pages of all our passports; medical, dental, vision cards; proof cards such as aerobics, CPR, lists of phone numbers, credit card info in protected files, any investments and money stuff along with their urls, phone numbers, that sort of thing. Emergency preparedness officials state that people should have a 'red file' so marked in their computers for easy access to scanned in paperwork. I also have all of our pictures taken digitally in one folder on the desktop marked 'Photos' and also have backup on my external hard drive. If I had to and didn't have time, I could always grab the external HD and dump it into my purse or in the laptop bag but right now I'm using it at work for a project.

One thing I hadn't done before so did as soon as possible is make sure everybody knew where to meet if we were separated. The easist place that's central to us is the Starbucks by Bub and Jax's work, because if we had to stay somewhere, there's a place to stay that accept pets nearby. I DID check on that stuff.
Got the laptop with the aircard; all the 'mechanical' stuff like the chargers to the cell phones and the cameras; most of the things I really need for the bike; have a mental picture in my head of the dogfood and dog items we need i.e. food, water bowl, leashes, that sort of thing. Below left is a picture I took around 5:30 PM of the sun from our driveway on Nov. 15th. On the right below is a pic I took on Sunday the 16th from our driveway around 10 AM . The picture below left is going past apt. buildings on Brea Blvd, coming up to Brea Junior high which was on the left of the street. Due to the streets blocked off, I had to turn south onto Brea Blvd vs. going straight onto State College. I took the pic from my car 7:42 AM from my cell phone on the way to my Anaheim aerobics class. Still really smoky. Below is the 57 still shut down at Imperial going north to the 60 fwy.

I WILL note that everything in the house smells like smoke, like we had a big BBQ in the living room and wheeled it around the house for flavor. All the furniture smells like smoke, all my clothes smell like smoke, my car interior smells like smoke...