USNA09mom--all ok?

peskemom
Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:57:00 +0000

Hello one and all - thank you for your concerns and care…
Will post here and on the USNA site…
we here survived another night without a mandatory evacuation notice. We actually live in the County limits near the corners of San Marcos and Bonsall. Fires have come within 5 miles of us several times. When you had 60 mile and hour winds that is 10 minutes or less of warning - so we all here in our little valley have had to be very vigiliant. In my 40+ years in SoCal this is by far the most widespread incident I’ve ever experienced in terms of scope of people affected. Our cars are packed but so far we’ve not had to leave.

Yesterday morning at this time I checked outside and only saw brown smoke. This morning there are stars shining outside - a good sign for us but the air quality has been the worst I’ve ever experienced… For 2 days and nights we are breathing grit. Eyes, throats, head and nose are very achey - no surprise there.

We have many friends still evacuated from their homes - but none of our friends have lost their homes, thanks be to God.

Hubby was supposed to leave this morning for Annapolis to spend some time with our girl - but he was reticent to leave me just yet with our situation still so fluid and the Camp Pendleton fire now raging with new directions back headed our way - so he postponed that trip 24 hours. Dear Southwest Airlines changed our tickets no problem, no upgrade charge. God bless them. Hopefully by tomorrow afternoon things will stabilize enough for him to leave.

We got a call from our friend -a young man who lives in LA and is an Army National Guard. He has been mobilized ( served in Iraq a good part of 2006) and lo and behold he is coming to protect the city of Escondido from looters! He is about 10 miles from us. Asked if he could come and do laundry/sleep/internet at our home on his breaks ( yet to be determined as he told us they did NOT schedule ‘sleep’ in their duty rotations) so of course we encouraged him to come when he could. Everyone is looking for ways to reach out to others. We have both elderly neighbors and neighbors with young children around us and we have been making sure they have everything set with their needs should we all have to leave.

Please continue to pray for the firefighters and all the essential personnell like this young man and the many others who have put their lives on the line to protect us.

I never give a political rant on this forum but what the heck. I hope the cities of our Country take notice as to how we San Diegans handle a crisis! Not ONE government person has said ‘this is George Bush’s fault!’ and every single leader of every emergency/government service has simply stepped up to the plate and done the job they were trained to do. God bless them - every one!