well im maybe very far from those fires but i was one time a part time fireman and those fires are bad ,.and i got a pm from a menber and friend on this club he told me the fire are 15 to 20 miles from is home so i hope for him that the winds drop soon

My wife has some friends on her forum that are close to them.
Not dangerously close, but close enough to see the smoke and get pics of the smoke filled sky from their balcony.
Ddin't realize we had any members that close.
If you want to. or they want to, let me know who and I will certainly pray for them.

Things are looking (somewhat) up for me...although the fires are now 10-12 miles away, the Santa Ana winds are supposed to die down tonight/tomorrow. If we don't get the call to evacuate by tomorrow morning, I think we'll be in the clear. If we DO have to go, the cars are packed and my Mother-in-Law lives downtown by the coast where it should be safe.

All schools and most non-essential businesses are closed all week. Poor air quality forces the family to spend all day indoors (surfing the web and playing the Wii).

News is not so good for the some 250,000 people already evacuated (in San Diego county alone) and the thousands of people who have (or will have) lost homes, businesses, livestock. Many of my co-workers live in the areas already burned.

Most of these fires are completely uncontained at this point, with the largest projected to continue to burn for another week and a half.

The Governator and FEMA honchos have already been here, and Bush is supposed to show Thursday.

The fire response is 10x better than the 2003 fires (that got to within 1/2 mile of the house), and the relief effort is 1,000x better coordinated than Katrina was.

Large picture (1200x1400) Click to view -

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...i/23424510.jpg

That'* nothing. Look at the southwest Goes West satellite image. Google it or go to NOAA and find it.

Then animate it from the last 8 VISIBLE images. (try it in daylight, night images seem a bit dark).

My fiance'* dad is part of the urban search and rescue and his team is "first in" for evacuations and to check houses for people. she as her mom are very worried as am i. I like the guy. May my prayers be with him and let him come back home safely.

I live in Orange County CA.....there are fires completely surrounding us. Air Quality is the worst I have ever seen it.

You walk outside and there is no blue sky, just brownish red smoke. Smells like someone is BBQing.

My cousin lives in Lake Arrowhead in the mountains above us, and I have not been able to reach her to find out if her home is lost.

If you look at the map where it says Anaheim, I am located right next to it in Buena Park.

My elderly mother (75) is having a hard time breathing. We have set up two humidifiers in the house to make the air passable.

We are expecting things to turn around by Thursday. They say the off shore breeze that we usually have will return and the Santa Ana winds will die off. This should give the fire fighters time to get a hand on the fires.

1400 homes lost as of this time and over a half a million dislocated from their homes.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21436901/

I have family that'* been moved to the Qualcomm stadium, scary stuff.

071023mm_map.jpg

latest map on where the fires are located, just in San Diego, CA...this map does not show LA and Orange CO fires.

hopefully this will finally wake people up and quite letting the environmentalist run our national forest policy. It'* just too bad that these people have to go through this.