Glad you responded and that all is OK for now :-) Will keep our collective fingers crossed that you remain safe and the fires are contained well before they reach you.

That smoke and ash is awful!! We went through weeks of it in August and September from the fires in eastern WA and the Okanogan. I had a persistant headache for days but that was all we had to complain about.....fires nowhere near us.

Praying for you and yours, Sara.

tj

Yeah it's hard not to feel like it's right here, especially with all of the people that we know who are affected, but in truth we are out of harm's way. I was in Seattle the weekend that Mount St. Helens blew and the ash was like this - big flakes everywhere.

What is very worrisome is that looking at the fire maps, it appears that Quarryhill has burned. I just can't tell but I see reports on FB that it was devastated. (This is Sara btw - I have no idea why my iPad is logged in this way and I can't figure out how to change it.)

oh no ... not Quarryhill. So sad.

Tom Cox just called me - he spoke to Bill, who is up at Tahoe and he himself doesn't know...

Quarryhill just posted on FB - they escaped major damage!

Well, that's some good news out of all this disaster!!

yeah and goodness knows we need some...

My wife's cousin lives in Santa Rosa. We haven't heard from her since yesterday afternoon. She had no power and smoke was everywhere. She said they were still waiting for the order to evacuate.

Bill I hope she's ok. It's pretty awful. But a lot of the evacuation areas are fine; they just want the people out so that they can concentrate on fighting the fires and not saving lives.

Just heard from her. All okay, power back on, everything outside the house is covered with ashes. Cell service spotty. Thick smoky air, burnt smelling. Two of the three hospitals are still evacuated. The other hospital working hard to keep up. Many roads closed. Fire helicopters unable to drop fire retardant because smoke has reduced flight visibility to zero in some places. Fires are still not contained and strong winds shifting directions means not out of the woods yet.

We were just told to stand by to evacuate but I do not believe that it will come to that.

...still praying for ya.

tj

That has to be gut wrenching!

Mothwr nature please send them some rain and keep those winds down.

We're getting a decent rain today. Wish I could send it your way. We are sending firefighters though. One is a good friend who is an experienced faller. He's been real busy all summer.

MIke, feel free to direct some of that rain my way :-)) It's only just sprinkled a bit here and unless we get a lot more soon, I'm going to have water all my containers again!! I can't believe I am having to water in the middle of October......that's unheard of!!

My neighbor was just over and he said his rain gauge measured 1/2 inch since last night. Up here in the foothills I get more rain than down by the salt water. The monsoons are a little late this year.

I have a lot of containers that I put on large sheets of plastic. Each pot has it's own depression that collects water. Now it's time to take them off the plastic so they aren't standing in water too long.

Thinking of you Sarah and everyone affected by these devastating fires... trying to mentally send our rain your way!

Thanks you guys. We are the lucky ones. We have so many friends who have lost everything. Our vets have been working insane hours at the evacuation centers, helping evacuated horses pro bono. Our friends have gone into the burned areas, rescuing horses, goats, donkeys, dogs, cats, you name it. We are surrounded by heroes and we are in awe of them.

Sara I admire your strength. I just cannot imagine having to live through something like this. As awful as hurricanes and even severe winter storms are, they are events with discrete endpoints. With the fires, after several days they have announced one went from 10% contained to 25% contained. Only 25%! And that's the most contained fire! It just seems like they will go on and on until it rains? If the Diablo winds pick back up, they will start spreading faster again. At least there is finally a slight chance of showers towards the end of your forecast period.

One wonders if there was some long term strategy they could have implemented many decades ago to lessen the chance of a such catastrophic property destruction. But I don't know what it would have been. I guess as long as the area has those strings of pretty hillsides covered in Arbutus, et al. there's a risk of them becoming pathways for fire in the dry season. Just a part of living in a Mediterranean climate. It's actually quite interesting to stand by the fence at Quarry Hill and compare the watered interior to the non-watered exterior.

Well...devastation is devastation. And you can't fight a flood; the firefighters have done amazing work and the retardants have made a huge difference in stopping the fires spreading. There is a 747 'sky tanker' and the shots of it dumping retardant (which is dyed bright red so that it's clear where it has been sprayed) are a sight to behold. One of the reasons that I was not very nervous about the fire getting us is that we are not surrounded by woodland that is tinder-dry. Even if it got to our property line, not much to burn between there and the house. However I'm not sure how the insurance company and the bank would feel about me spraying down the garden rather than the house! There is talk that the fires began from downed power lines. That may be because that way the utility is on the hot seat (pun intended).

Our local weather guru in Seattle was saying that very thing. The very high winds last week dropped branches onto power lines, igniting the tinder. He further speculates that "turning off the juice" during such weather events might said in prevention.

Yeah and then there is talk of poor maintenance, etc. May be just finger pointing towards a deep pocket. All of the power lines around us are buried, which is the case in most newer neighborhoods.

Harrowing update on Quarryhill here, which, so far, seems to have just escaped major destruction:

http://www.sonomanews.com/news/7519456-181/sonoma-valleys-natural-havens-endure?artslide=0

Part of that I am sure is that they irrigate overhead and the garden is a wet spot in a very dry area. WE are so fortunate that it survived. The gal that hiked in lost her horse (flipped over when she was trying to load it with the fire coming) and her house has been in danger repeatedly but she went to check out the garden. I am surrounded by heroes.