Peoria Illinoisan

Have you been following the wild fires? I began watching the reports on Sunday about the fires in Malibu when Castle Kashan was destroyed and have continued following the story by listening to SanDiego’s ‘news and talk’ 600am for the past couple of days. I don’t know the street names or the Mountain ranges that are constantly being bantered about, but it’s still fascinating to listen to firsthand accounts, as only AM radio can bring it. Frequent commenter JW is a recent San Diego transplant and checked in on Peoria.com forums to give us his account of the situation.

Well, it’s hell!

The 3 counties of the tri-county have a population of about 350,000 and cover 4,844 square miles. San Diego county has a population of just over 3,100,000 in 4,526 square miles. If you have ever been here, or looked at a map, you will know that we are closed in on the west by the Pacific Ocean and the south by the Mexican border. To the east are mountains and desert, to the north are Orange and Riverside Counties, both of which also have large fires going.

Imagine going to bed one night knowing there is a small fire outside Edelstein. A friend of yours wakes up the next morning, in their lovely Glasford home, to find that same fire in their backyard.

And the wind is blowing east, toward the city of Peoria, sometimes at a crisp, sustained speed of 70 miles per hour. People in the city of Peoria can smell the smoke. At dusk, the setting sun in the west is a blurry orange ball, if visible at all. You are uneasy knowing that all the fire fighting equipment in the city is out fighting the fires (if the house next door catches fire, as some houses do, you are out of luck).

You, living near Northmoor Road and Sheridan (I threw a wad of gum at a map) start to pack up the important stuff, track down the outdoor cat, wag your finger at the kids that you are “serious” and wonder where the heck you would go, if need be.

Local TV tells you that embers from the fire are as big as basketballs and can travel a mile. Fires break out here and there, just west of the airport, north of the Wildlife Prairie Park, and another within view of the Shoppes at Grand Prairie.

It’s too windy for an air attack, water pressure begins to drop. Fires start to burn large power towers. You are told to conserve power and water and all the schools are closed. By afternoon, officials are urging everybody to not work the next day, to keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles. Bradley students are ordered to stay on campus.

Then the governor comes, gathers every local person ever elected to any office, holds a press conference, only to thank all those present for their hard work. Oh, and the president sends his regards.

You learn that 15% of the people in the county have been evacuated, over 1200 homes and 300 commercial buildings have burned down, 1 is dead, 37 are in the hospital, the winds are not changing and you are told it will take a week to put out the fires now burning.

But…your local professional football team has been evacuated to a nearby state so they can practice for the game this Sunday, which is in your local stadium, which is currently filled with evacuees.

And worse, all the local TV stations repeat the same coverage over and over and over, all night. You don’t get to watch Marie Osmond faint on Dancing With The Stars. Life sucks!

I have to go blow ember residue out of my nose now.

As of this writing Southern California has approximately 950,000 people evacuated, leaving 350,000 homes behind, with 1300 homes destroyed and two dead. Nearly 600 square miles have been burned so far.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.