Nightglow Window

Sweet Normality

My dad received word yesterday morning that the mandatory evacuation had been lifted from his neighborhood -- much to his obvious and deep relief. He bolted back home minutes after receiving the news.

The girls are still home from school until Tuesday, but Christy is back at work. Even the news stations have pulled back from wall-to-wall coverage of the fires. Things are starting to feel normal again. The sky is thick with haze, visibility less than five miles, but it smells less like smoke.

In the afternoon I drive up to San Clemente. It's surprising how inert the burned areas look. You can't tell if the charred hills have been that way for hours or for months. The scope, however, of just this one (Horno) fire staggers the mind.


These are the maps I've been glued to all week. They come from sdcountyemergency.com and chart the progress of the fires and evacuations. This one is from this morning. Purple shows areas still under mandatory evacuation. Green areas were once under mandatory evacuation, but are now open. The red lines show the approximate fire boundaries and the red dots show new burn areas. Finally, the star is my house and the asterisk is my dad's neighborhood.


The burned area of the Horno fire as seen from the I-5 in Camp Pendleton, just before the border checkpoint. The burn area ends immediately past the power plant on the north.


Looking south from T-street and the day almost looks pleasant.