Southern California Members OK?

[krminyl@...]

I live in Orange County, about 12 miles from where the Santiago Fire is
burning. I work as a Park Ranger for the County of Orange, and the regional
park
where I work is currently set up as a fire base camp, new home to over 1500
firefighters from all of California, New Mexico, Nevada. I've been working
14 hr shifts, 10:00pm-noon everyday, and I'm beat. The fire officials last
night said the fire camp will remain another 5-7 days. Well over 400 fire
engines of all types in the park at all times, while the other 400 or so are
out
on the fire lines. It's quite a sight to see a "city" develop in 24 hrs,
with kitchens, showers, maintenance shops, fueling, Incident Command Centers,
news crews, etc.

Where Curt and I live (me in Yorba Linda, Curt in Anaheim Hills) is away
from the danger zone. I live next to a urban wilderness area that could burn,
but in 20 yrs, no flames yet. It's a possibility, but I have a good break
around my property. Lot's of smoke in the air, smells like a fire, and it was
almost a 100 degrees today. Still trying to clean up after the wind
storms...winds at the Category-1 hurricane level for nearly 48 hrs. Hopefully
we'll
get the park cleaned up (the oldest regional park in the State...
_http://www.ocparks.com/irvinepark/_ (http://www.ocparks.com/irvinepark/) )
Hundreds of
heritage oak trees, 150 yr old sycamores destroyed, lots of wind damage,
but no fire damage at the park. We are waiting to clean things up, but because
of the hundreds of fire fighters sleeping all over the place, and they don't
want to disturb their slumber with the sound of chain saws.

For now, all is well on my home front. Just glad it didn't make it to my
house. My best wishes to those truly affected by the fires. got to grab a
quick dinner with the family, and get back to work in a few hrs. It's a real
mess...kind of surreal....

Kevin McKeown
Yorba Linda, CA
1986 38' PT (For Sale) (working great for those 4-5 hrs of sleep I've been
getting each day...it's for A/C!!)




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