(John Smedley - stationblog) - San Diego Wildfires - Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:56:58 +0000

Hello Everyone,
Ordinarily I stick to Online Gaming stuff.. but this week I’d like to share something a little more personal.
This week has been a tough one for San Diego. These fires have just devastated our City. I know this is going to sound cliché, but the outpouring of help that people here have given each other has been nothing short of amazing to watch. The evacuation was one of the most organized and efficient things I have ever seen. We got the reverse 911 call at 4:30am on Monday morning to get out of my house (I live in a suburb of San Diego that is right on the border of Rancho Bernardo and Poway). That call literally saved our lives.
We got my 4 kids up and into my wife’s car very quickly, but I was terrified when I saw the flames coming our way while we were loading the kids into the car.
One thing you never, ever want to see while you are with your kids is fire coming towards your house.
Within 10 minutes the fire was at the house. I stuck around and was able to put the fires that started on my property out with a hose. I’ve attached a couple of pictures of what that looked like. At one point I realized I might not have made the best decision.. but for whatever reason we got very lucky. Our trees and bushes burned and our house smells like an ashtray, but we’re ok. Of course the power is going to be out for the next 2 weeks, but hey.. that’s a small price to pay. In my neighborhood 11 homes burned down, including the home of some very close friends of mine. You don’t think it’s going to happen to you, but when it comes that close it puts a lot of things in perspective.

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The view from my backyard

We had a lot of people that were evacuated at SOE, and at this point it looks like we did have one person that lost their home. We shut our offices down for the week with the exception of a skeleton crew in CS and Operations. The problem is that even though a lot of people were able to return to their houses, the schools in San Diego were closed which caused a cascade of issues. There are still parts of San Diego that are still under mandatory evacuation.. and many parts that are without power.
I’d like to say thanks to all of you for understanding the situation and for the kind emails. We should be back to full strength by Monday.
Thanks,
Smed



Author: John Smedley
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