San Diego Fires - 10/24 evening

All is well. We are home. It's a little smokey, but hopefully the worst if behind us.

San Diego Fires - 10/24 morning

Hi Everyone:

Everything is ok. Oddly enough, the sky in Laguna is getting reddish and the air quality around my house is getting better. So we're packing up and heading back to Escondido. Route 5 at Camp Pendleton was closed over night. It's now open Southbound only. We'll be leaving as soon as I can get this group mobile. Given my experience over the last few days, I estimate that to be another 3 hours.

San Diego Fires - 10/23 evening

Very tired. Played tour guide in LA today to keep us busy. We're back in Laguna hotel. Tomorrow we'll re-assess and go from there. Might be dicey since I see on the new a big Camp Pendleton fire is 10 miles from Route 5, San Clemente and most importantly the San Onofre nuclear power plant :)

Quick stats for San Diego only:
300,000 acres burned
6 people dead
500,000 people evacuated
More than 1,350 structures destroyed

San Diego Fires - 10/23 morning

I am doing fine. Sheila has a little cough. We are in a 1 room hotel room in very nice Lagina Beach (http://www.lagunabrisas.com/). We are with Sheila's mom, aunt, cousin, cousin's friend, Sean and Frankie. Everyone speaks Tagolog except Frankie and me. But we are all safe. And judging by the devastation, we're going to hang out in the OC as long as we can. Here's a map of SD county and the fires:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=114250687465160386813.00043d08ac31fe3357571&om=1&ll=32.922249,-116.824493&spn=0.835736,1.834717&t=h&z=10 <http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=114250687465160386813.00043d08ac31fe3357571&om=1&ll=32.922249,-116.824493&spn=0.835736,1.834717&t=h&z=10>

San Diego Fires 10/22 evening

Hi All:

Our house seems to be out of the way of the fires, but since the smoke was heavy outside we decided to get out of town. I packed up Sean (baby), Frankie (dog) and Sheila's (wife's) house guests and set out. We swung by Palomar hospital in the Escondido valley to get Sheila. There we found red smoke filled skies, 50+ mph winds and an erie calm. Inside the hospital we could smell smoke - patients and staff were wearing masks.

We drove the 5 adults, 1 infant and 1 crazy 80 pound lab to Carlsbad - a nearby beach city to get some fresh air. That lasted about 2 hours before we could smell smoke again. So I packed everyone up again and headed to Orange County. Route 5 out of San Diego County was bumper to bumper. 1.5 hours later, we arrived in Dana Point only to find no room at any of the hotels around. So we drove up pacific coast hwy another 20 miles and found 1 room open at a Best Western in Laguna Beach. And they take pets - so I didnt have to sleep in the car with Frankie. We just settled in the room about 10 minutes ago. Very long & stressful day. But hundreds of thousands of San Diegans have it much much worse.

Sheila's father, brother, uncle and other family members are still stuck in between some fires in Rancho Penasquitos area of North San Diego. They are all together and we hope they're going to be OK.

You can stay up to date on the goings on with the fire at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/
http://sosdfireblog.blogspot.com/

I'll send another update tomorrow. Sorry I can't return all the calls - too many people and too much going on. I will use email and Jenny (my sister) as the main point of contact.

Pray for the others - this is a big disaster growing bigger by the minute.

San Diego Fires 10/22 morning

Hi All:

Craziness this past week or so. Sheila is doing much better - she is supposed to be released from the hospital today. They have run all their tests and kept her now for 5 days. The final result is a virus must have caused all the pain & organ inflamation she had. It sounds minor, but we really felt it was serious and actually touch & go at some points. But she is in good spritis and ready to come home to see little Sean.

You may have heard about ythe fires in SD. There are 9 right now. Skys are very dark and all hell is breaking loose in the county. Again. Right now we can see the Witch, San Pasqual and San Marcos fires from our back deck. Everything is South of us so far, so we feel safe. Closest fire is 10 miles away. So you know, we live in Escondido in the North West quadrant where 15 and 78 intersect. We have everything packed and are ready to bug out on a moments notice. I'll give you guys updates when I know more/have time.

Please pass this along to the people you want to know. I am in a rush and surely not adding everyone I could be.

ITEC 610 - Week Four

• The last two weeks have been a difficult balance between work and school. Lucky for me, I read ahead the first two weeks of class so I didn't fall too far behind this week.
• I did learn allot about the notion of a paperless office. Until I did the assignment, I didn't realize how difficult it is to go entirely paperless. For example: Vendors, supplier and customers are most likely not paperless, so you're always going to have some level of paper production. I also didn't realize quality of screens/output are another reason many people don't view data onscreen instead of printing paper copies. I thought I was the only one who got blurry vision after hours online!
• I'm going to re-focus efforts to catch up on reading this weekend and start forming the structure for my paper.