October 14, 2008 • 7:24 pm
This morning I woke up to blue sky on my side of the window – a good sign at least, half the sky is blue. The other half of the sky is dark gray. The news is reporting that the fire doubled in size overnight because no sky drops were made. As I type this, I can hear helicopters flying everywhere, and sirens rushing up and down the streets. While Rinaldi is open from tampa – desoto, it’s closed on the front part of the country club, as far as I know…which now that I think about it, I don’t really know anything.
Cha cha is throwing up neon stuff and on edge, but I’m just so happy to be home. The news media has said that we should all be ready to leave at a moment’s notice, and neither OJ nor I have anything packed. If it’s time to leave and we loose everything, will it really matter if you have a trunk full of stuff? I doubt it. I got a text message yesterday from someone (thank you whoever you are) that Porter Ranch Pharmacy (818) 360-1915 is filling free prescriptions. If you are displaced, Shepard of the Hill has open doors – although you will have to pass all the Yes on Proposition 8 signage on your way in.
My car is parked down by Whole Foods because they aren’t letting any autos past Tampa because it is the main road being used for emergency vehicles. Yesterday, I was waiting on the corner with a woman who had forgotten her cell phone at home that day, and her two young children were still at home with no one to drive them down the hill. The fire was 2 blocks from the house, and the police would not let her go up to get them. She was crying, I was crying. There was a line of people giving the police officers their addresses and the names of family members who were immoble and could not evacuate themselves. Although they were not allowed up the hill to fetch them, the police had a series of designated cars/motorcycles/ambulances who were going to the said locations. People in their cars were yelling at the officers, cussing at them and arguing, trying to get past the roadblocks. People were walking down the hill with rolling luggage and hard drives.
in the photo above, you can see the helicopter with a hose hanging down. Yesterday in the midst of the heavy fire the copter would dip into people’s swimming pools and suck up water in less than a minute and fly off to the nearest batch of fire and drop it onto the flames.
The 118 freeway just opened up after being closed for almost a day, I really wanted to run home to my parents house yesterday, but couldn’t mobilize. Today, I’d rather stay at home and keep watering down my patio. We are ready to evacuate if need be.
Filed under: Memories & Musings, porter ranch , porter ranch, porter ranch fire
the official shelter for porter ranch residents is the “shepard of the hills” church which is just across the street and south-west a hop skip and jump so me and OJ decided to leave Yong’s house to come home. When we left, we only had a laptop and our cell phones, cha cha and our car keys. Romik told me that they are letting residents walk up to their homes, but not drive their cars. So here we are. Home. As we walked up to the house, I could see those who did not evacuate looking out of their windows at the surrounding flames, and no lie, I’m kind of too nervous to even accept attempting to sleep tonight.
thanks to everyone who opened their homes to us. I’m about to go water down my infamous patio in the hopes that the flying embers don’t make themselves at home anywhere near here.
Filed under: Memories & Musings, porter ranch , fire season, porter ranch
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