This week has probably been one of the most eventful weeks I’ve experienced in some number of years - if not the most eventful ever. Heres just a taste:

• Humvees in Rancho Bernardo
• 1000+ Homes destroyed in 3 days
• Military aircraft patrolling San Diego skies
• I wore a gasmask to work
• I walked to get a burrito in the gasmask, and NOBODY SAID A THING!

The last time San Diego was swept with fire, I wasn’t evacuated - I live less than a mile from where I lived then. I remember soot and ash raining down for days, and the vents in my jeep smelling like ash for weeks afterwards. I remember driving around and taking video from high up places as the flames came over the hills to the north and the east of Rancho Bernardo and being somewhat nervous, but at the same time confident that I could get away from it if need be.

The police at that time had setup roadblocks basically heading into the mountains where the fire was but in retrospect, it makes sense that the roadblocks were setup where they were because the fire was something like a mile from me.

I was awakened by my phone. It was ringing over and over again. I opened one eye and looked at the clock: 5:45am. Who in their right mind calls me over and over again at 5:45am?! Its Billy.

Hello?
Dude, pack up your guns, ammo, your MREs, water and your cat and get the hell out of RB
Uhhh.. the fire?
Yeah, its at the top bit of rb.
Whaaaaaat? No way. At 1am it was between Julian and Ramona
Just go look outside

So I did. I saw this:

UHHHHHHHHH.

I ran back inside, groggily, banged on Lisas door. I told her to pack up her stuff and her cat. It took me nearly an hour to actually exit the house, because of a barrage of incoming phone calls, and piecing together what I needed should the house burn down. Once I got out it wasn’t exactly a breeze getting away from the fire.

We sat at Starbucks, with our lattes and laptops watching insanity unravel. Everyone seemed to have their heads screwed on straight walking around us as we sat; coffee in hand, little paper mask. Then again we never went to any of the official evacuation areas. I would normally expect people who blindly obey the authorities to be very jumpy, and quick to flip out and do unreasonable things. I run with a crew that knows what to do when the shit hits the fan. And to boot, we’ve done this before. I had thought enough ahead to bring a box of MREs, two cases of water, all my camping gear (tent, sleeping bag, air pad, camping stove, camping food, camping lantern, camp food and 6 cans of fuel), my weapons and ammo, gear for my kitty and my kitty herself, a bag with 3 changes of clothes, a camp shovel, some emergency flares, my laptop and its gear and some other assorted equipent (surefires, batteries, rope). As I sat content knowing me and mine were safe, I began to talk on aim and irc with others to make certain they were safe, and that now that I was out of harms way I could use my free time to assist others. One friend of mine asked me right off the bat “Did you get ALL of your ammo out of the house?” … crap. The LAST THING I NEED is to find out that firefighters putting out a blaze in my building had to deal with a hail of bullets because I only chose to bring half of my ammo with me. I quickly packed up my gear and went home. On my way I took a few phone calls, and someone else also reminded me that I needed to do a full round of backups - which takes several hours.

Okay now I was a bit nervous. I wasnt *ENTIRELY* safe anymore.

As I drove I was suprised that I was allowed back into 4s - there was nobody standing guard. The area had gotten lighter (it was now about 9am).

It was a ghost town. Nobody there but me.. well.. and the police and fire crews.. and my cat. But other than that it was a lot like that scene in the beginning of 28 days later where the guy wakes up and the town is abandoned. My first priority was making the house ’safe’ so I lugged the rest of what needed exiting to the trunk. After that I began the process of backups - which had changed because one of my servers got reformatted. I spent about an hour reconfiguring and rewriting the backup shellscripts, and redoing the key exchange to avoid password prompts. I relocated my drobo to my server closet to speed up backups, tested the scripts with some smaller files for continuity then hit the go button. I went back out on the town to take some more pictures - I figured I had 2-3 hours until the backups completed, then I’d be safe as far as hardware goes and I wouldn’t hurt any firefighters should they need to approach my house, should it be on fire.

The majority of what happened next was posted here in a somewhat-realtime basis. Wednesday when I was finally allowed in and out of 4s I thought it might be a good idea to visit the places that I was Monday night to see what the outcome was and how these places looked during the day. I managed to get some before and after pictures of the 4s/Rancho Santa Fe area on Artesian road

Here is the series of an 8000 square foot, four storie “party house”, according to one of the civilian firefighters. This home could have been saved had its owners put the burning bush out back with a garden hose.

Here are some before/afters of the surrounding area:

Talking to some folks, we compared the last fires to the current one. The last fire burned nearly 3 times as many homes, and evacuated less than fourth of this time around.

Those figures alone led us to take a couple ’stabs in the dark’

• This was an excuse for fema to ’shine’ after fucking up katrina
• This was an excuse for the housing market to finish tanking, or to wipe out some homes so people would be forced to rent all the overpriced ‘condos’ that keep popping up arond town
• The fires were caused by arson, but we haven’t heard much if anything at all about it
• Out of all the force used to ’stop looters’, there were only 2 looters caught, and they were teenagers stealing booze from a store

Personally I noticed that the ‘richer’ communities got most of the attention, while the rest of town wasn’t covered much. You could even see the new affiliates were posting ‘the road to recovery’ etc posts on their sites while the southern parts of the city were still burning.

DONATIONS:

The *ONLY PEOPLE* who should be accepting donations are these people:
San Diego Red Cross
Ramona Relief
Humane Society
San Diego Fire Rescue

Anybody else should seriously be ashamed of themselves - have people donate to the people who lost their homes.

Overall it was certainly an adventure. I feel good about still having a home, and I’m glad none of the homes of my family and friends burned down - but the house I grew up in burned down. It was very strange standing in my old driveway and looking over the remains of my old home and realizing how small it looked when there weren’t any walls. I could see where the stove was in relation to the washer dryer in the garage.. I’m still strangely disconnected.

One thing is for certain - I’m now pretty much a subject matter expert on ‘go bags’. I’ll likely be giving a presentation on them at either BarCamp LA or BarCamp San Diego