We are safe now, although still under an evacuation warning at the edge of the foothills in Fremont CA. Last week we had fire about three miles away over the ridge to the east. Yesterday, we put our to go bags together along with important papers, computers photos etc.. The two daily drivers got moved to safety with our X3 and CS staying with the plan being to drive those out along with our small travel trailer if the call comes. The forecast for dry lighting and high winds last night did not happen here, so we are probably in the clear for this week even though the red flag warnings go to 5 PM.
We have watched the local news each night in sorry showing the destruction of our beautiful forests and hundreds of homes in little towns like Bonny Doon above Santa Cruz. Hopefully the worst is now over, but the total area burned in CA this week is 1,700 square miles! A staggering affect of global warming and 100 years of fire prevention leading to forests far denser than natural. In my lifetime I have never experienced the intense dry lighting storm like we did last weekend. Thousands of dry strikes over CA started thousands of small fires that converged into the large fire complexes that we now have.