Just wanted to let any of our forum members know that were still here for you as you challenge the most incredible evacuation in California history.

We are here for you and wait to hear your stories when you have time to share.

Be safe tonight and know that many more people than you will ever know are watching over you and praying for your safety.

some reports are winds are calming down, lets pray for the wildlife and people in harms way

Just wanted to *bump* this back up one more time for any members that may be looking for some information or services. Know this that you are in our thoughts and prayers and there are more people than you will ever know pulling for you and your safety. Blessings and protection.

Originally posted by antar
I have had a migraine headache for 2 days and finally got it together to come on the forum to find out what our members are saying about the Major Crisis on the California coast. NOthing on the front page about it! I am shocked and amazed that we are not hot on this story which is the single most devestating event of my life time! My question is this, are we headed to martial law? I think it is very very possible. I have been in tears and am now glued to my phone for family members in the line of the fires and wait patiently for the final blow from the Government to take the initave and declare Martial Law. In closing my heart goes out broken to all of the people affected by this catastrophy of monumental proportions.

The only reason this is a "Major Crisis" is the hyper-inflated housing cost lost in these fires..What were the last reports, 1000 homes up in blaze? Out of how many in CA? That is hardly concern for Martial Law to be declared. If anything, a cerfew might be declared in the local area, simular to N.O. during Katrina (Which had 100x more homes destroyed).

antar,

We are starting to get some smoke from the California fires now, because the winds changed. Below is a photo taken this evening of the sun going down in the west. The smoke from the California fires caused the sun to appear pink.

The photo below is the moon rising from the east this evening just shortly, after the sun went down.


I thought you might find this interesting.

Thank-you TheBorg

Couldn't avoid the highlines in the pink sun photo tho.

I live in San Diego - fortunately not in an area that was threatened.

I have to say what went unsaid here - perhaps only because most posters are not from the area, and didn't truly follow what was going on, and don't have a memory of the 2003 fires.

- The fires in 2003 and the recent ones were of similar size.

- apx. 10 times as many people were evacuated this year as in 2003

- apx. 1/10 the number of people died in these fires as in 2003

(Do you see a correlation here?)

This was a triumph in planning, execution, and technology at the local level. Reverse-911 systems at both the county and city level which did not exist in 2003 were largely responsible for the largest evacuation in U.S. history. And it was carried out in an orderly, efficient manner.

Was the evacuation overkill? Would you have 20 people give-up their lives to avoid some inconvenience on the part of others?

The fact is, the fires were out of control, and you could not predict precisely where they would go and when. People were evaculated 24+ hours in advance of potential danger, and that helped avoid loss of life.

FEMA wasn't needed. Certainly, their financial assistance will now be appreciated by those affected by the fires. But the basic needs were met by local efforts. They had to turn away donations at many of the evacuation sites, because they were overflowing with locally-donated goods.

Certainly, some mistakes were made:

- CalFire's inexcusable refusal to allow military planes to be used unless accompanied by a Calfire spotter in the plane. Calfire has only 38 individuals trained as spotters to accompany military planes. All are batallion chiefs who would have had to have been taken off the ground.

- Sniping by San Diego County Supervisor (and ex San Diego City councilman) Ron Roberts at the City of San Diego for installing a "redundant" reverse-911 system, when "they could have used the county system for free". Whether a legitimate complaint or not, it was not the time to complain.

- The botched FEMA press conference, where the "press" who asked questions were all FEMA employees.

- Failure of a number of key websites which were ill-prepared for the load of an emergency. These included the San Diego Union-Tribune, California Office of Emergency Preparedness, parts of the City of San Diego website. This was inexcusable, as the technology is readily available (Akami, even free services such as Coral Cache) to deal with extraordinary loads. These sites didn't plan ahead. The Union-Tribine eventually added 7 new servers, and started using a Google (BlogSpot) blog to offload some of the load. Quick thinking, but should have been advance thinking.

- A bit too much dependence on the reverse-911 system. I think at the beginning, most people didn't even know it existed. But it got plenty of publicity - perhaps too much. People waited to evacuate, saying "I haven't gotten the call yet." Some people didn't simply because they had unlisted numbers, or only a cell phone, and didn't know to register their number on the city's website. Fortunately, there wasn't extensive loss of life, as people who waited were able to get out quickly, because most had already evacuated and roads were clear.

- Many at Qualcomm Stadium were apparently not evacuees, but perhaps homeless people or just there for the party atmosphere. (Definitely nothing like Katrina!) When they started asking for ID, the 10,000 crowd suddenly shrunk to 1500.

All in all, though, the plusses outweighed the minuses. Really extraordinarily handled.

The comparisons with Katrina are unfair, though. You can't compare the utter devastation of that flood, with loss of all infrastructure, with these fires.

There isn't going to be any place that is safe in America anymore from fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, New World Order, Zionists, etc. I would stay and fight.