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Message |
    
Claudia Turner VanLydegraf
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
685
Registered: 06-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, October 27, 2003 - 08:55 pm: |   |
Well, it seems with the newest fire, called the Valley Fire, is pretty close to where my brother and his 3 kids all hang their hats. He works in Carlsbad at the Callaway Golf Club plant and his kids work in the same vicinity, he lives in Vista, CA. They all live pretty near there. Sure do hope that their homes are not swallowed up, and that if they are in danger of losing them and his church, that they can save the valuable stuff. He is a Pentacostal Minister and has a church there in Vista, called Caring Community Church.
My son, Jeff lives up north near Marina Del Rey or thereabouts. Hope that he is out of the line also.
Please keep them in your thoughts. I would appreciate it.
Claudia |
pacwriter
Unity Member
Post Number:
1023
Registered: 04-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, October 27, 2003 - 09:05 pm: | |
Lots of folk needing prayer.
Will remember them Claudia.
http://www.pacwriter.netfirms.com/ |
Claudia Turner VanLydegraf
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
686
Registered: 06-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, October 27, 2003 - 09:10 pm: | |
Thanks PAC,
Also, we haven't heard from Fred for a bit of a while. He is really close to the SanBernadino fires, I think. Hope he is OK also.
Claudia |
Laurel Johnson
Unity Member
Post Number:
2378
Registered: 01-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, October 28, 2003 - 05:44 am: | |
Sorry to hear you have loved ones in the vicinity of that frightening fire. I had also been concerned about Fred. I hope everyone is OK. |
Fred Dungan
Hsympothai Member
Post Number:
387
Registered: 10-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, October 28, 2003 - 09:53 pm: | |
I am in the inner city, two blocks from a fire station. The fires are raging in the countryside where developers have been building tracts of new homes without proper regard to availability of services. There is an orange glow on the horizon. Thousands have lost their homes and many more are threatened. Temperatures have been close to 100 degrees for the past week. The conifers were decimated by bark beetles and most of the dead trees were left standing. I wish the white stuff falling from the sky was snow. Please, God, send us some rain.
http://www.fdungan.com/sent.htm
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Claudia Turner VanLydegraf
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
688
Registered: 06-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 29, 2003 - 12:12 am: | |
Glad to hear you are OK, Fred. I have some snow coming here on Thursday and Friday, you are welcome to it. I would ship it there if I were able to.
Sorry about all the destruction and those that have lost their homes and everything. Every once in a while, we get fires up here, but nothing that does that much damage and blows so much, mostly because of the SantaAnas pushing them. Back many years ago, we had a fire that went around about half of the outside perimeter of this valley where I live and singed the outer ring of homes, that were about 2 blocks away. That was the closet I have been to a raging wildfire, and that was close enough.
My brother is in Vista, just outside of Carlsbad, with the flames about 10 miles from him last night. At least I got through to him and found out that he and his whole family (my neices & nephews and all their kids) are OK. My son is by the ocean, up near Marina Del Rey, so he is in no danger. But even he says that the ash makes breathing really miserable.
You take care and give us a report on it all when you can, if you want. The news programs are so sketchy......
Claudia |
Fred Dungan
Hsympothai Member
Post Number:
389
Registered: 10-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 29, 2003 - 10:43 pm: | |
Radio and television reception is notoriously poor in the area where I live. I imagine that most of you have heard more news about the fires than I have. At least one of them is being blamed on arson. The police are looking for 2 men in a gray van who set off an incendiary device by the side of the road. There are emergency alerts being issued along with evacuation notices, some of which are mandatory and others that are voluntary. People in the areas affected by fires are providing food and showers for the firefighters, many of whom have been on the frontlines for several days now. Many thanks to the citizens of Arizona and Nevada who have been lending firefighters and equipment to Southern California. The weather is changing for the better. There have been reports from some of the fires that the firefighters are gaining the upper hand. I make my home in the Arlington district of Riverside, California. The closest the fires have come to me is Box Springs which is on the opposite end of the city.
http://www.fdungan.com |
Laurel Johnson
Unity Member
Post Number:
2387
Registered: 01-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 30, 2003 - 04:58 am: | |
Glad to hear you are OK Fred. I had been wondering. |
Fred Dungan
Hsympothai Member
Post Number:
390
Registered: 10-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 31, 2003 - 07:30 pm: | |
Here's a poignant story that was in The Register (an Orange County, California newspaper) about Lake Arrowhead (where they get the bottled water with the same name):
Cedar Glen, CA., Oct. 31 - Clayton Connolly stood amid the ruins of his home on Thursday when the chime of his cell phone broke the silence that shrouds ghostly hillsides where a community has vanished.
"Hey, Dad, I'm standing in my home right now," the 28-year-old musician said. "Everything is toast, man.
"It's just a drag, Dad," Connolly continued. "It's like I'm in Desert Storm and a nuclear bomb dropped - there's just nothing left."
Despite evacuation orders, Connolly made his way up the mountain through the pea-soup fog and bone-chilling drizzle that arrived overnight - the opposite of the hot, dry weather that fanned flames into firestorms across Southern California this week.
Though the change in the weather came too late to save Connolly's home, firefighters said the cool moisture that cloaked the mountains Thursday may save scores of others in nearby neighborhoods.
"Some people say that when the fire gets like this only God can put it out, or only nature can put it out," said San Bernardino County Fire Marshal Peter Brierty at a Lake Arrowhead fire station on Thursday.
"The weather is what we really needed," he said. "It's a huge, huge break."
The narrow streets that terraced the steep slopes on either side of Hook Creek Road were home to many - perhaps more than 300 families - of the residents of Cedar Glen, a community on the eastern end of Lake Arrowhead.
As the flames roared through its ravines Wednesday night, there was little firefighters could safely do to defend it, Brierty said.
"It's a rabbit warren of roads, and the houses are just really close together," he said.
By daybreak on Thursday, the destruction of the neighborhood was nearly complete - estimates ranged from 225 to 350 homes lost there.
Chimneys stood over smoldering ruins like tombstones. The charred limbs of shattered trees left scattered speed bumps across the streets where they had fallen.
Yet here and there, small signs of survival were evident.
A post that held two birdhouses was untouched. A gentle dog in a frayed purple collar approached strangers with a hopeful look in his eyes.
Connolly made it into the neighborhood in his Jeep Wrangler, dodging fallen trees by going off-road through the yards of burnt homes.
On his dashboard he'd placed a Post-It note with a verse from the Book of Job: "In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind."
It had been there a week or two, "but it kind of makes sense now, doesn't it?" said Connolly, who with his wife, Jessica, and his golden retriever, Kobe, left Saturday night as the flames approached the mountaintop.
"I have a box of paperwork and my wedding pictures," he said. "It sucks. We just got married and we got all these awesome presents. And they're all gone."
Even with the loss, Connolly - who might have been the first Cedar Glen resident to make it back up the mountain after the fire - said his faith helps him accept the losses as an opportunity to get a fresh start.
"Life has a way of weighing you down with stuff over time," he said, driving up a steep embankment to avoid still-burning limbs in the road.
"And sometimes it needs a disaster to put you back in perspective of what's important," Connolly continued.
"That sounds all Hallmarky. But it's true."
As Connolly mulled the fresh start the fire thrust upon him, so the firefighters contemplated their break in the weather.
"The weather has assisted us greatly, and we've been able to hold the lines we had," said Battalion Chief Dan Odom of the San Bernardino County Fire Department.
The fog that rolled up the southern face of the mountains, dropping visibility to 20 feet at places along Rim Of The World Highway, carried with it plenty of moisture.
The winds cooperated too, mostly blowing the fire lines away from Lake Arrowhead and its surrounding communities, deeper into the deepest parts of the San Bernardino National Forest.
That curbed the intensity of "spotting" - the wind-blown spread of embers ahead of the fire - as well as the intensity and speed of the fire, Odom said.
At the end of Lassen Drive in Lake Arrowhead - in a neighborhood that seemed at great risk before the weather changed - Los Angeles County firefighters arrived late Wednesday and jumped to work protecting it from the advancing fire.
They worked through the night, through the numbing cold of the darkness, clearing brush and low-hanging limbs from trees near homes to make them easier to defend.
"It was so cold it cuts you to the bone," said Los Angeles Fire Capt. Perry Vermillion. "It was miserably cold. Even when you were working, you were cold."
By morning, though, fire conditions had improved to the point that their main thoughts about the nearby fire involved standing close enough to it to ward off the cold that came with the fog and light rain in the night.
"That was a good flame," said Los Angeles County firefighter Craig Bradford, who lives in Huntington Beach. "It wasn't dangerous and it warmed you up."
Throughout the day, as strike teams from Los Angeles and Orange County stood guard over that neighborhood, the winds and the moisture kept the flames from advancing on it.
Yet just as quickly as the weather helped the fight Thursday, so could it shift the other way, Fire Marshal Peter Brierty cautioned.
"The discussion this morning at all the briefings was, 'It might look good right now, but wait 15 minutes and it might be different,' " he said.
http://www.fdungan.com
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Claudia Turner VanLydegraf
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
690
Registered: 06-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 31, 2003 - 08:00 pm: | |
Fred,
I have been watching all the news intently, and as you might guess, have felt absolutely helpless about all the devastation and ruin. But like that person and so many others, when faced with such disasters, find the silver lining in it. My brother and all his kids are A-OK and didn't lose anything. Many others who lost their whole world have found the fortitude and courage to move on and start rebuilding and replacing all they have lost. That takes interminable internal courage. I applaud them all, even though I know that they will go through many times and battles when it all seems so fruitless.
Northern Nevada sent down many firefighters and lots of equipment to help fight all those fires. Our men and women put their lives in the trenches for everyone in the fire ravaged communities. Tell a firefighter that you appreciate them, it will make their day. I am a quasi-member of a volunteer fire dept in my community, and I know first hand how valuable those guys are.
Have a safe weekend. It is Nevada Day here today, the day Nevada got admitted to the union in 1864. There will be a parade and much to-do tomorrow, if the weather permits. Today we have snow. I woke up to just about 8 inches of it in my yard this morning. The ski resorts are getting an early start already, with some of them getting about 6-15 inches already today and more expected through Tuesday. That was a good story and a major morale boost to many. Thank you.
Claudia |
Fred Dungan
Hsympothai Member
Post Number:
393
Registered: 10-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 31, 2003 - 08:11 pm: | |
Southern California owes a debt of gratitude to Claudia and the good people of Nevada who helped us in our time of need. |
Kevin P. Grover
Wisdom Member
Post Number:
943
Registered: 03-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 31, 2003 - 08:38 pm: | |
Hey Claudia...
Could you pack some of that up and ship it here???
Fred...happy things are looking up and will continue to hope that everything settles down and gets under control soon.
www.winterwolfpublishing.com |
Claudia Turner VanLydegraf
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
691
Registered: 06-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 31, 2003 - 09:01 pm: | |
Not to me, Fred. I just thought that I would let you know that there were others, especially here in Nevada, thinking of everyone in So. Calif all this last week. Many of us in Nevada came from Calif and still feel strong ties to the state even though we are not there anymore. I know I do, and Calif will always be a very large part of my person, and was mainly responsible for shaping my life.
The amount of men and equipment that was sent down there to fight the fires is a reciprocal agreement between all the western states and the men and women here jump to the call to help whenever it is needed in Calif and other western states. Reno and Washoe County sent 79 firefighters and 18 pieces of equipment, and would have sent more, if our supplies and manpower would have allowed it and still been able to maintain the needed safety of our area. Las Vegas and other Nevada counties sent a great many men also. I think that the total was about 250 and 70 pieces of equip sent. Calif always send manpower and equipment to necessary fires in our region when needed. It is that binding agreement that helps all of us in times of need. When we had our biggest recent fire two years ago, there were men and women on the front lines from all over Calif, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Each and every one of them were appreciated. Many is the time that our elementary school in this community is used for housing firefighters during fires. We all try to pitch in and help the guys with laundry and the local 7-11 chips in and gives them sodas and hot dogs and stuff for the time they are here, as many come without much extra cash in their pockets. Part of the help comes from our Volunteer firefighters and also from the BLM.
It is just a nice thing to let them know that they are appreciated, especially after the long hours and terrible, hard work they do. Everyone of them cries a bit inside, when there is as much devastation as all of So. Calif suffered this last week. That is just the nature of firefighters.
I didn't personally have anything to do with the guys going down to fight the fires, just thought that it was a nice thing to pass on. I know that when you are thinking and talking numbers of 15,000 being sent in from all over the place that our paltry 250 or even 79, (as in Washoe County) doesn't seem like much, but if that is all that can be spared, then that is all that can be sent. Everyone tries to carry their weight and work like two or three people.
Claudia |
Claudia Turner VanLydegraf
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
692
Registered: 06-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 31, 2003 - 09:07 pm: | |
Kev,
I would gladly send it to you, but, don't really think it would make it in the state it is in right now. Maybe a towel inside the truck would keep the water..... anyhow, you can have it all, with my utmost gratitude for taking it.
It really was pretty this morning though. The first snowfall is always pretty. Kind of picture postcard pretty, with the pine trees all full of snow.
Claudia |
Fred Dungan
Hsympothai Member
Post Number:
397
Registered: 10-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 31, 2003 - 09:08 pm: | |
They are predicting rain overnight - at least 6 hours of steady rain according to the news on the radio. Elevations above 5,000 feet are supposed to get snow. It should not be long until all the fires are contained.
http://www.fdungan.com/bushwhacked.htm |
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