Random observations about the San Diego wild fires (not necessarily all Leucadia related).
*Every time we get a good October swell and epic Santa Ana winds that groom the waves into absolute mind bending perfection, the whole event is ruined by air choking fires. People who did surf reported blindingly painful wind gust full of ash that was mixed into the offshore spray. Then, they spent that night hacking up a lung.
*Since everything that happens in the world is now dissected into Us vs Them and Redsox vs Yankees, the politicians and AM radio host wasted no time on saying that the fires are either A. Global Warming or B. left wing environmentalist (neither are too blame). It's a petty person that twist homes burning to the ground to suit their own little agendas.
"Gee, I hope they have clowns making balloon animals and free fish tacos."*Speaking of AM radio screamers, many of them took great delight in trying to sublimely play the race card by comparing the evacuations of the Hurricane Katrina disaster at the Superdome to the polite and festive atmosphere at Qualcomm. But can driving your Lexus SUV to Qualcomm after receiving a reverse 9-11 call really compare to wading 2 miles in neck deep water with bodies floating by only to find no food or fresh water at the end of your journey?
*San Diego city attorney Mike Aguirre entered the Twilight Zone when he wanted to evacuate the ENTIRE city of San Diego to Phoenix, Arizona. Not only would this be logistically impossible but it was totally unnecessary. Maybe this was a plot by his La Raza roots to move the population of Tijuana into San Diego once all the yuppies left?
SDUT story.*I was listening KOGO600 one afternoon when host
Roger Hedgecock had our congressman Brian Bilbray on the air and the first call from the public was a women who wanted them to send someone to fix the air conditioner in her motor home. Um, okay lady.
*An Encinitas man was seen vacuuming his grass after the fires to remove the ash. Turns out he has an artificial turf lawn.
source*If the winds hadn't died down and then switched direction I'm convinced the Rancho Santa Fe fire and/or the Del Dios fire would have burned all the to the beach and maybe even destroyed more than a few structures in Encinitas via airborne burning embers. I say this because my friend who lives on Requeza St actually had to stomp out a large burning ember that landed in his driveway, just missing his roof and a large pine tree. Yikes!
*Man, there are seriously
thousands of horses in north county.
*Despite the mandatory Olivenhain and voluntary Village Park evacuations a surprising amount of people around Encinitas seemed to think that the fires were just something that was happening on teevee and were more than happy that they got the day off work and school. Has Encinitas become
too much of a bubble from the rest of the world?
*Don't let your car gas tank get all the way down to empty because you never know when you will want to get out of Dodge in a hurry. The giant plume of smoke looming over the horizon on Monday morning sent hundreds of cars to the El Camino Real area gas stations at once causing gridlock and high tensions. Several gas stations finally enacted a 10 gallon limit in order to move the lines faster.
*The two smartest people I saw this week was A. The dudebro at Beacon's who was wearing a bandanna around his face to filter the smoke and ash which at the time was thick as a fog bank, only to pull it down to light a cigarette, and B. The lady who was jogging down Neptune Ave with her toddler in a jogger stroller despite health warnings of taking infants outside into the haze.
For hundreds of dramatic amatuer photos of the fires check out the Flickr photo pools:
click here and
here and
here.
