Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

CA Wildfires and Poke Folks

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My friend in Rancho Bernardo returned home and it was still there. Pretty incredible actually.

I'm not sure if everything in RB is still there, but that's good news. The people in SD had it tough.

Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful comments (except CB ;-) quit using the other guys s/n!!!111!!bbq). There are a lot of Pokemon players down here in SoCal (where CHAD is not, GET A MAP) and everyone I've talked to so far is OK, but I haven't talked to everyone by far. I'm sure they all appreciate your thoughts/prayers/offers of help, too. Prereleases start tomorrow, so I think we'll here more stories. Hopefully no one lost a house. Thankfully, out of 500,000 houses evacuated there was very little loss of life.

My fire helicopter pictures are here (don't report me for advertising):
http://cary.cx/maliblog/Carymaliblog/Fire_Helos.html

I encourage the other players/pokepeople to check in/share their stories here. Thanks again everyone!
 
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Thanks for sharing those photos. I've never seen anything like that! Glad to hear you are OK. Continued thoughts and prayers going out to CA! Please check in after PR's!
 
Like everyone else, my thoughts and prayers are with our friends in So.Cal. And I would also like to put up cards to people who suffer Pokelosses in this tragety. We wish you the best!!:thumb:
 
all i can say is, it was freaking surreal. i'm still o_O at it all.

what an end to what was already an insane week: my parents-in-law and sister-in-law came down for a family party for our aunt's 90th bday. so we'd spent the week before cleaning, moving stuff into the garage to clear space, etc. the party was on saturday, then sunday mom and dad moved to aunt and uncle's so they could visit for the remainder of their stay. the winds were up by then, and then the fires started sunday afternoon. the patio cover (one of those temporary shade things) was picked up and moved a good three feet by a wind gust, so we took the cover off and just left the frame standing. smoke and ash had started falling by then too...which was a very unpleasant bit of deja-vu from the cedar fire in 2003. then we got the automated call from the kids' school district stating that school would be closed on monday, and i was just 'oh no, here we go again..'

when we got up monday morning we learned that the fire had jumped the I-15 up by lake hodges...which meant that should the winds shift the wrong way, fire could be approaching us from the relatively open areas to the *north*, instead of from the east, through poway and over black mountain. this was suddenly serious business. james had gone into work around 5 am but returned as their campus was closed due to the fire. he'd also made the unpleasant discovery that the high winds sunday night had blown a tile off the roof, which smashed into the windshield of our 5-month-old toyota sienna. luckily it was still drivable, as the impact was on the passenger side of the windshield...

then the evacuation announcement came: everyone
east of the 5, north of the 56, west of the 15, south of lake hodges. we are just a couple of blocks north of the 56, so were just barely inside the area. that's when james got the kids up and told them to start putting the things they'd want to take with them into bags/boxes so we could pack the vans just in case we had to leave.

that was just...strange, deciding what to take. the obvious things were the pictures of the kids, the negatives, the cds/dvds/books that are irreplacable because they are out-of-print or one-of-a-kind, like my test burns of dac's unreleased work. prescriptions, the cameras, chargers/batteries for everything, my external HD (though i did end up having james finally take both my current tower and my win98 tower). the scroll out of the obutsudan (home shrine), the ojuzus, the pics of our grandparents and pets which surround the obutsudan...though again, after the first 'what do i take' impulses, i ended up packing the obutsudan itself and the accessories.

display photos, taken out of their frames. our wedding albums. my travel toiletries bag; a couple changes of clothes. a quilt my grandmother had made, and another my mom made. my pillow. the small display rock i'd managed to talk my father-in-law into letting me have. the little binder with the most special of my pokemon cards: the stamped 'staff' cards for the major events i've judged; the cards autographed by the artists/creators. my mp3 player and headphones. my league briefcase/records; the carrycase containing my trading figure game pieces. some knitting-in-progress; an artist-made teddy bear, and one of the bears i'd made.

there were things i couldn't take: the cabinet with all my japanese dolls, and the dolls i'd been given when born. those were too fragile to move; i was afraid packing them as a 'just in case' would damage the glass cases. we assigned our younger son to go around the house taking pictures of things with a digital camera, to keep him busy...the cds/dvds/books still on the shelves, the dolls and knickknacks we'd be leaving behind. he kept finding more things he wanted to take...and not all of them were 'his': the temple's 75th anniversary book, framed certificates from the walls. his and older brother's trophies and certificates for dharma school attendance and hatsumairi; things i'd overlooked.

but ultimately: a good 98% of the 'stuff' in the house are just 'things'...when forced to prioritize it all into what will fit into two vans, most of it was just not all that important. we got the two vans and james' nissan packed, then it was time to go pick up mom and dad and take them and sis-in-law to the airport for their flight back up to no. cal. i drove our old van and s-i-l drove james' car; we hit the first wave of people leaving the area as we drove. getting to the freeway was time-consuming, as traffic was at a crawl...but thankfully once on the 15, it was full speed ahead. after leaving the nissan at auntie's house and taking everyone to the airport i called home; james said to come back there as he didn't think it was time to 'leave' yet.

so i did, and spent the rest of the afternoon online, keeping the news on, and packing a few more things as i thought of them. it was just surreal, listening to the news reports, checking the websites, talking to folks via AIM or whatever. we had the kids shower but get back into street clothes; i finally took one myself and then heard we'd gotten the automated 'reverse 911' call saying to get out when i went back downstairs, around 9 pm. the evacuation area had just been changed to black mountain road, west *to the coast* o_O

THAT was the :eek::eek::eek: moment for me...not quite panic, but i certainly could feel the adrenaline going.
quickly signed off AIM with paul and my niece, and shut down so we could disconnect the tower and get it into the van. checked around for a few last things, then i drove the plymouth with my younger son to the sdsu/san carlos area where auntie and uncle live. i remember next to nothing about that drive, other than the sound of the radio and how next-to-empty the 15 was. james, older son and dog followed in the toyota; they were going to stay on surface streets as much as possible because of the damage to the windshield.

our cousin and his two kids and two dogs were already there; they were much closer to harm's way as their home was in the eastern area of poway. after james got there, our other cousins from the south county area arrived, as they were under evacuation notice as well. we
got the kids settled in to bed, stayed up watching the different channels' newscasts, then finally turned in. tuesday was pretty much spent in front of the tv, though the kids were in the other rooms watching dvds/playing videogames.

we did get the kids (5 total, 4 boys and a girl from 12 to 16) doing some origami, then i broke out a couple of theme decks and kevin re-taught his cousins the game. after that i opened a box of d/p boosters and the boys did a 4-player (round robin) sealed. two of the cousins hadn't played since the WotC days, so they were pretty interested in the new cards. we had no 'net access, so the only way to keep in touch was the lj message i'd asked paul to post for me, and phonecalls to/from folks in- and out-of-state like dac, mike, kim, and chris...

tuesday afternoon james and his cousin went up to poway/penasquitos to see if they could get in and check on the houses. the house we were most worried about was the one in poway...but other than not having power, it was fine. so was ours. we spent one more night, then finally got the word that our area was no longer under evacuation and we could return on wednesday afternoon. we took the nissan back and unloaded the plymouth van, then returned to get the kids, dog, and other van, repack what we'd brought out during our stay, then came home for good. started putting everything back as soon as the first van was unloaded: pictures back into frames, obutsudan back in place, etc. some stuff is still out, but essentially back to 'normal': there's a chargers home game and a prerelease sunday, the kids return to school on monday...

it was just controlled panic: falling apart would have been more than useless and done nothing more than scare the kids more than they were already. it was just a total 'letting go': i'd no idea if i'd ever see the house again when i drove away monday night, and there was absolutely NOTHING i could do about it. talk about powerless. it turned out that there _were_ things we'd forgotten, like the albums containing OUR baby/childhood pictures; james grabbed those when he returned to check on the house tuesday. i'd thought about making a list of 'must take' when we'd had the fires in 2003; i'm going to definitely have to do that now and leave it linked on my desktop. next time we may not have 10-12 hours to think about it.

just an insane week all around, between the houseguests, party and evacuation. our 22nd wedding anniversary got lost in there somewhere, as the family flew in that day (friday the 19th). look around and be grateful for what you DO have: one just never knows when disaster will strike...or even just be too close for comfort.

thanks for all the good wishes...

'mom

 
Wow 'Mom......sooooo glad you all made it thru the "madness". I am like you....where would you start and then, when do you stop. Just an amazing read. I'm numb just reading about it. Hopefully, tomorrow, after a PR and the NFL game in town....the area will start to feel more "normal".

Keith
 
Yah, Doreen, I feel for you. Our parents were burned out of Altadena in 94, and my mother-in-law only got jewelry, albums and a few changes of clothes out before they had to run (they had remodeled cabin into a 2BR at the bottom of a canyon). Its scary as heck. Thanks for writing it up for us! Best wishes, K.
 
so glad to hear you are all OK! The idea of taking photos was awesome! I heard on Good Morning America last week, and it might be on their site still about "what you need to take" and it was kind of a list, one of the things that was recommended was a pictorial history of what is inside your home, either burned onto a disk or in photo form that you take with you. you must keep it up to date, but it is a true recording of "everything" you own, should disaster strike and you need insurance claims to be made. If you still have all those photos your son took, you should keep them in a file, that you'll maybe update and keep in the "need to bring list" if you should ever (hopefully not!!!) have to go through this again.
 
Oh thank goodness you were all ok and were able to return to your home! My heart felt for you as I read your account of it all... thank you so much for sharing it with us. I'd venture to say that it may well help one of us in the future, because as you said, you never know when such a thing may happen, and to think ahead of all the things you may need to take or to do ahead of time, well, I'm sure it would be much easier to make such a list in the calm of today than during the possible frenzied uncertainty of being right in the middle of such an event. It really made me think... if I only had a very short warning, what would I gather to take with me in the limited space of only our car? Eespecially if it already had my husband, our 2 sons and our 4 cats in it... not much room left... what are the very most important things to take? Your story gave us lots to think about.

So far it sounds like our Poke-People were safe... my heart still goes out to those thousand or so who lost their homes and all those precious memories they had to leave behind in an instant.
 
There is no place in the world that is safe from Mother Nature. (Or humans that like to tourment her...)

In any case, my thoughts and prayers are with you all in California. I have seen many footage clips on newscasts showing how terrible the fires are. Obviously, I haven't been in that situation before, being that I live in Indiana. BUT, I did imagine what it would be like to see that first hand, and have it threaten my life, and I was almost scared to death. I really hope all of you in Cali stay safe. I know that some relief groups from Indiana were going to Cali to help, and I sure hope many others will follow.

The worst thing about all of this is that they say that some, or all of the initial fires at the center of it all were arsen. That is absolutely despicable and in-humane. If it was indeed pre-meditated terror (not 'terrorism' so to speak, but you know what I mean), they will pay.
 
The fire in Malibu Canyon was due to snapped electrical lines. The wind was howling all night and just before 5am, it apparently pulled some lines off the utility poles.

I still remember the Katrina disaster. This kind of thing could happen to any of us. My take is: "Welcome to North America, please select from the following to determine your preferred location: Hurricane, Earthquake, Tornado, Ice Storm/Blizzard, Wildfire, Flood, Mudslide, Gang Activity or Biting Flies."
 
I was lucky where I live. The fire got within 1 mile of our house. Luckaly the wind moved it alay.:thumb:
 
Do they have the fires under control now?
Last week there was enough about it in the newspapers overhere, this week I suppose it's no news.
 
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