10,000 people spend the night in Qualcomm Stadium
October 23, 2007 by Dusty
My family is in San Diego. My sister and her family, whom I was just visiting last week, has been evacuated from her home. Another sister is on standby to evacuate. My dad, who isn’t in the best of health, is hemmed in by freeway closures in the north part of San Diego county due to the fires. This is a personal fire for me obviously. I couldn’t probably get down there due to all the fires and carnage between my home in the San Joaquin valley and San Diego. Roughly half a million people are evacuated from their homes in San Diego county.
So, I watch the live streams on the internets..from San Diego and Los Angeles. Firestorms that can do as much damage as a massive tornado in the midwest my dear reader, but on a much larger scale. The difference is..a tornado just touches down and then nature takes it away..not so with firestorms. I call my family every hour or so. I silently freak out at what I witness live and in burning color.
Four years ago this week was the Cedar fire. It was a horrible week long firestorm that took lives and hundreds of homes. These fires in San Diego have claimed at least one life and roughly 600 homes and 150 businesses. Friends lost their homes in that fire. Some lived with my sister, who has been evacuated this time, for weeks.
Back to the big sleep-in at the “Q”. There hasn’t been a “Katrina” debacle yet. People are being fed, they do not want for
anything..except of course for this hell on earth to end. Michal Chertoff has of course been on the ground, surveying everything and sending in supplies to make sure San Diego doesn’t have a Katrina-like situation. The schools are also temporary homes for the displaced who have no where else to go, and most of those are full by now. People and pets are crowded into places with other victims of the firestorms..getting to know folks that are also afraid that their homes are gone when all this hell is over.
Its much too much reminiscent of the Cedar Fire for me..and I am sure for many of them, since the fires are taking some of the same paths they took 4 years ago. A few of my friends are suffering through PTSD at this point..the horrible nightmare of 4 years ago rushing back to them.
I feel so helpless, I can only sit and watch..and call them all..saying always that I love them..and they respond back the same. Its not the rich that are suffering like the Malibu fire in L.A., these are hardworking middle class families who have mortgages that are losing everything. Its the fear of losing everything that haunts them all as they sit somewhere unfamiliar with strangers in the same boat.
Unlike a tornado or hurricane..this will go on under the weather changes and the fires run out of fuel. They won’t run out of fuel until they burn to the ocean my dear reader..and that is what they are doing.
If you pray..pray for them..pray for all that are caught up in this hell on earth.
Tags: San Diego Fires, Qualcomm Stadium,
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People needing a place to stay are welcome to contact me through my blog. The number of evacuees are now over 300,000. It ain’t the Hilton my place, but if needed the door is open. I hope other bloggers will be able to extend this invitation. The shit is hitting the fan or worse the fires. When i talk about government ills, towards it own people, putting a hurtin on us - this is exactly what i mean. Now we need eachother. Complete strangers, brainwashed to fear one another and feel seperate in our circumstances…but we are not. In this country we are in the same boat. Displaced Katrina people still at lose ends…well stretch that thread…the offer is open to you as well.
- in solidarity PP
Its a nightmere on that level of morgages too Dusty, as the crazy boom , the recent upset, and who knows what the homes are worth or who owns their morgages..this is really another Katrina esq catastrophy - will the government do any better..(no) Now watch what happens though - this is whole different demographic.
And you have evil morons like Glenn Beck blaming the liberals for this…does it get anymore disgusting ? The hate mongers never ever stop. I did write him because CNN is impossible to reach. ..but i digress as usual…this is another tragedy for the people of america unfolding before our eyes. And its not going to be the last..Our government has a blantent callousness towards “regular. everyday, people” and the favoritism to big business, free markets, privatization , disaster profiteering …is on display AND the price we pay is the common good, or commonwealth. The chickens are coming home to roost.
Hi Dusty. Two of my work collegues had to evacuate, but they’re back in today. They’re near the Stevenson Ranch Fires, and both their homes had some structural damage from the heat, but the real damage is smoke and ash. The sister of a friend of mine is near the Santa Clarita fire, and my friend said she’s not heard from her sister at all.
The air quality is terrible - really terrible.
As for the people in Malibu who are losing their homes: they also have mortgages, and bills, and insurance. There are, especially in Topanga Canyon, a lot of hard working people who are NOT wealthy. And those in Malibu who are wealthy are just as vulnerable as anyone. The fire is an equal-opportunity disaster, it doesn’t care at all if the house destroyed belongs to someone rich, middle-class, or poor.
One of the reporters this morning was reporting while he watched his own house get burned to the ground. I forget his name. It was simply devastating.
I distinctly singled out the Malibu area for a specific reason Divajood. There are more fire personnel there and less homes in danger.They have only lost 6 homes in Malibu whereas San Diego has lost hundreds.
This does not include the canyon areas in LA, where as you say people are middle to upper middle class.
Larry Himmel in San Diego reported on his own house burning down..I watched him for years and it broke my heart.
Larry Himmel, thank you Dusty. I completely blanked on his name, as the event itself was too horrific to comprehend: “Here’s where the living room was; over there is the dining room” - it brings it to SUCH a personal level.
And no end in sight, yet.
Well Divajood, they let my sister back into her house in Scripps Ranch..so there is a dim light at the end of the tunnel.
PP..Glen Beck is a friggin tool and anyone that enjoys listening to that jackass spout bs and bravado deserve to rot in hell with him.
500 homes destroyed and counting..almost a million folks have been evacuated in all of SOCal according to Brian Williams in an interview I just watched him do with KNSD in San Diego.