Fire Update - 10/23

Hi, Family,

While the weather remains hot and dry, the winds have diminished enough today for the big air tankers to get in the air and fight the fires in the hills around San Diego. As many of you have pointed out, www.nbcsandiego.com is the best source for information over the Internet with their streaming coverage. We stayed at ATC's offices in the Carmel Mountain area last night. Only one Shell gas station was open...Everything else was closed. Today, most of the major grocery and retail chains have re-opened. There is no sense of panic buying or a rush to purchase food...Most people seem to be handling it OK...Our old neighborhood (The Grove) in Poway along Espola Road was spared. There were many homes burned north of Grove and all of the hillsides surrounding it have burned. There have been reports of looting including a home on our old street. As we were leaving the area, we saw the National Guard being deployed on many of the side streets leading into northeast Poway. Fortunately, Mel and I still have our old Poway address on our driver's licenses so we should be able to get around the area. Our next door neighbors in The Grove are in Hawaii until late Thursday so we will probably stay at their home until we can get back up to Ramona. Nate's parents have been wonderful...Dan Wall offered to use his police channels to let us know when they would be letting us go home. Belinda Wall invited us to dinner this evening and we happily accepted...We can only live on fig Newtons and gatorade for so long.

We have a good friend who stayed in Ramona who was able to get to our home again today and give us a better assessment of our property. It appears that the home is intact and the sprinklers did not turn on inside (probably because the power went out). He said Mel's chickens are running around the yard because their coop blew apart, but they appear to be fine. And he found Jordan's big African desert tortoise wandering around the yard...This is a miracle, because his plastic "igloo" was right next to our recently constructed two-story barn that burned to the ground. Also, our propane tank is only 15 feet from the barn...Even though it was burned black, it didn't explode. Most of the homes below us burned to the ground including the home of good friends who are members. The irony is they were building a huge two-bay garage that was framed and almost complete...It made it through the fire just fine. He has a couple of big generators that made it through the fire so we're thinking about pooling resources as soon as we can get back up to Ramona. Currently, there are fires around the only major road leading to and from Ramona so they're not letting anyone up the hill.

We again wish to express our appreciation for your thoughts and prayers. Please know that we're fine...We'll report more as we can.

Love,

Bob and Melody