(Gap) Fire Again! (Outage!)

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We were watching a pretty good documentary on the 628 assassination attempts made on Castro when—bingo—out goes the juice for the second time yesterday.  So it’s nearly 8, not enough light to read what with the dank skies, and I am about ready to explode.  At about 9 the juice comes back on.

This morning we meet some friends who have come into town for a funeral at a little, nearby restaurant and we talk for a while and start figuring our plans for the day and—bingo—the juice goes off.  End of all plans.  My friend wanted to go to the UCSB library, but is it open?  Carol wanted to go work out, but is the club open?  Me, who the hell knows what I wanted to do—but probably it involved the use of electricity.

This juice stuff has been going on for a week now and it’s more than an irritation now; it’s pretty much a painful aggravation.

I started talking about the PDA’s people have—like the Blackberry—that allow you to go online and watch movies if you want on your telephone, and thought maybe they should design one with a tiny pull out grill so that in case of juice outage you could fry up like a miniaturized burger or something.  But that would of course require that they build in a miniature refrigerator.  So I sat there trying to imagine a PDA with a built in grill and refrigerator….

You open up the tiny door to the tiny refrigerator to see if the milk is still good.

We are the only people sitting in the dark little restaurant.  I ask if it’s OK if we sit there and they say it is.  The owner starts putting out little candles. But when I go to get coffee I see they are not really little candles at all but little things that look like candles but are power not by fire but by batteries.

We get back to the condo to find this tall guy with tattoos all over his body pulling up the planks of our deck out back.   This is our carpenter’s son.  I am glad to see him because he was over in Iraq and I was afraid he would get killed.  He is pulling up the planks because Carol wants to get our own jacuzzi, but before that we need to get the deck fixed up (it looked pretty ugly) and also get supports under where the two tons of jacuzzi will go.

I am not in favor of this jacuzzi for numerous rational reasons—oh, well, this is not the place to go into that….And I should wrap this up before the juice goes off again…

(Gap) Fire Again (BS Levels)

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Outside—grim today.  At first, fog.  That was good because it helps to cool things down.  Now the sun is out and it’s still grim, from remains of smoke in the air.

Soot and ash all over everything.  Cars, bushes, driveways, rooftops.  I saw a kid skate boarding with little plumes of dust rising up from his rear wheels.

Also are the outages out?  Hard to tell.  I thought they were over yesterday morning, but we had half dozen outages for briefer and longer stretches from around 1 PM to 6 yesterday afternoon.

The fire in official speak was at first called an event.  Since the event started, they would say, or the event seems to be going this way or that.  Later the fire was downgraded from an event to an “incident.”  The “incident” seems to have started when the Feds moved in and took over the “event” management.  That’s what the top Fed dog called it: an “incident.”  Personally, I think it’s neither an event nor an incident but a fire.

This afternoon they will have another news briefing about the “incident.”

It’s just like it in the movies.  The locals never like it when the Feds move in.  The woman who had headed up the locals mispronounced the name of the new Fed boss.  Clearly she did not like turning over the reins to the Feds.

Early on, on the second day maybe, I had the TV on without the sound.  I began to hate this woman who was talking even though I didn’t know what she was saying.  I told Carol, this is an awful person.  She is full of bullshit.  So I turned on the sound to see if I was right and sure enough I was.

She was a spokesperson for the Chamber of Commerce.  Make no mistake, she kept saying, Santa Barbara is still open for business.  Meaning of course, open for tourism.  Just like in Jaws.  The locals want to keep quiet about the shark so the tourists won’t get scared off. 

Like come on up, SB is open for business. Bring your asthmatic children and elderly and you can stay in a motel room with no air conditioning because the electricity keeps going off.  Amazing.

Really, if I had a BS meter tuned to local TV and radio reports on the “incident,” formerly none as an “event,” the thing would be measuring off scale.

If I hear once again about how “the community is coming together” I will puke.

(Gap) Fire Again (To Be Continued)

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 Yester eve for the first time since the fire started, the juice did not go off.

The fire appears to be moving away from us and was this morning 28% contained.  Mandatory evacuation orders for some areas have been removed and people are able to get back to their homes.

Fire Warnings for other areas have also been removed. Still the fire could continue to burn, at considerable distance from us, for a week or more up towards the north (away from us) and to the west.

Yesterday for the first time since the start of the fire we walked out to the bluffs.  Properly attired.

This morning we walked out again and got a call from Cousin Janet while sitting on the beach.  Very good to hear from her.  Thanks for the call, Janet.

We are very lucky with our local beach. No access road runs to it; one has to walk.  Given the aversion of many Americans to any form of exercise, the beach remains relatively people free.  Surfers hang out.  An occasional jogger passes, and people walk by with their dogs.

One cure for the obesity crisis might be to give every American family a large dog, one of the types that require at least 1 30 minute walk a day.

Perhaps I am returning to my normal aggravated state since I now seem to have the energy to have crabby thoughts about my fellow Americans.

 

 Properly attired.

(Gap) Fire Again (14% contained)

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The juice went off yester evening only twice and only about twenty minutes each time.  That was a bit of a relief.  But the condo was very uncomfortably warm by about 6 PM.  We had been keeping the windows closed to keep out the terrible air.  But finally about 6 we had to open them for a while to let some cooling air in, though it was not all that cooling and smelled of smoke.

We are fairly tired out from not sleeping properly and from this arduous business of staying vigilant.  But we are not in any immediate danger; in fact, while the fire continues only about 15% contained and with authorities still authoritatively insisting that they are not in control of the fire at all (and thus we should remain vigilant), I think we are in less danger than yesterday.

Were it not for the terrible air—and it is quite terrible—and the need to remain eternally vigilant I might be able to return to my normal state of low grade anxiety and returned to thinking about somewhat less immediate concerns such as the collapsing economy.

Here’s a link.

And the fire receives mention in the NY Times. 

(Gap) Fire Again (Car Wash)

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We had a pretty miserable day stuck inside stifling.  Still we appear in no immediate danger.  Probably we are in fact 50% safer than yesterday; but the authorities seem most authoritative when they say they can’t predict anything and everybody should stay vigilant.

OK.

Our big outing for the day was going to wash off the cars.  The soot and ash looked so bad that to my eye it threatened the paint. So we drove over to one of those wash your car your-self places, put in our quarters and washed down both cars.  Carol’s is now back in the garage.  We had it out of the garage in the first place because we were not sure, if the power went out, if we could get the car out.  We think we have figured out that problem.

 

Car windshield.  Outside view.  

 

From inside car.  
Carol appropriately attired for car wash outing. 

Here’s a pretty recent article.

And short updates on Twitter.  

(Gap) Fire Again! (And Good Bye Bozo)

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Seems as if we will stay inside today with the windows closed.  The air quality is terrible…invisible particulate matter seems bad for the lungs; and right now the air is full of that.  I ran my fingers over the cover a book parked near a window previously opened and felt grit, not visible to the eye, but there.

Yester evening, the juice went off round seven, came back round eight, went off again round 930, and then came back on round 11.

Listening to folks calling in to one radio station from different parts of the area was tough.  People were very nervous.

At the moment—about 8 PST—the fire is said to have burned about 5000 acres, but only one home has burned so far, that I know of, and no life has been lost.

We can look out our upstairs window and for the first time in three days see no smoke.

The fire appears to be heading more towards Santa Barbara and back up over the mountains.

Here’s a link to the best article I have found.  There’s a good map midway down the page and the article raises questions—ones I have—about the way the whole thing was managed and the incredible lack of preparedness for things like this fire.

One cannot entirely blame the government.  For years now the people of California have voted against measures and taxes that would build up the public sector and strengthen the infrastructure.

And on a sad note, I see that Bozo the Clown died.  Good bye Bozo.  Along with Hoody-Doody you were among the first TV characters I ever saw back in the mid 50’s.

(Gap) Fire Again (Weather Conditions)

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Now about 330 PM and waiting to see if one’s house is going to burn down turns out to be a lot like waiting to see the dentist.  One wants just to relax, but the anticipation of pain produces anxiety—and that combined with having nothing to do but wait produces an odd sense of boredom.
 

I was a bit alarmed to hear a spokesperson for the fire people say that when one gets right down to it whether or not or more precisely when the fire stops has more to do with the weather than any form of human intervention.  Tonight and tomorrow those sundowner winds that blew the fire to its present proportions will happen again.  On the upside the humidity is not nearly as low as it could be, and the fireperson went on, monsoon like conditions, with wind but with high moisture are likely this weekend, with the possibility of even of a thunderstorm or two Monday.  He seemed really happy at that prospect, while I was alarmed to feel that this fire business may drag on a week, with the potential, throughout of something really unexpected and untoward happening.  Like another fire—or hurricane winds that might lift the fire who knows where.

Still, I gather that we are not likely soon to be burned out.  But the chance of another power outage this evening remains very high.

Great.

 

 

Fire during blackout from condo window. 

 

 

(Gap) Fire Again! (No Juice, Darn it!)

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At about 830 Thursday morning, the fire is no longer visible from our condo window.  You would think that’s good news.  But not necessarily so.  In fact it’s bigger now—about 2000 acres—and having burned further down the mountain is now hidden behind lower hills from which a thick, grey pall now arises.  Impenetrable.

The local government, seeking more “resources,” will declare a local state of emergency at 11 this morning.

All the juice went out at around seven PM yesterday.  What a bummer.  I hate it when that happens because I am reminded that our little civilization is very juice dependent.  Without it, we are pretty much kaput. 

I think the juice came back on around 11, and I was happy for that because I am pretty sure nothing in the refrigerator had a chance to go bad.

During the blackout, we sat around with neighbors for a while talking by candle light and then went back to our place, lit up some candles, found batteries for an portable cassette player Carol had with a radio in it, and ran up and down the dial looking for some information.  Without luck.

So we felt in a quandary.  The radio said, “Stay vigilant.”  But how is a person to stay vigilant while asleep.

Finally, I guess I must have gone to sleep.  But from the way I feel at this moment, I don’t think I slept all that well.

So looks like another day of waiting to see what’s up.  Precisely.  I hope I can stay "vigilant."

(Gap) Fire Again! (darn it!)

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The fire–they are calling it the Gap Fire–has increased considerably in size and is starting to freak me out.  Amazing in this high tech era of instant communication how difficult it seems to be to get an up-to-the-minute report on the fire’s status.

The best written coverage I have found appears in our local Independent, a free paper subsisting on ads. 

Below a picture taken about about 6 PM PT from our upstairs window.  Flames faintly visible, approximately 3 miles away:

 

Below taken outside, as the sun starts to drop in the west:

 

 

The picture below as taken about 3 PM:

 

Continue reading (Gap) Fire Again! (darn it!)→

Fire Again! (darn it!)

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Last summer–as reported in this blog–a fire burned on backside of the mountains abutting Santa Barbara for nearly a couple of months.  I don’t think we are in for that again–necessarily.  But I was alarmed to note a) that my car was covered with ash this morning and b) that when I turned my head slightly I was able to see smoke rising close to us ON THIS SIDE of the mountains.

So far–in our favor–the fire is small (300 acres) and most importantly at the moment no high winds.  Also–worse cases scenario–if weather conditions were to worsen the four lanes of 101 lie between us and the fire.  That makes a "natural" fire break, though flames did leap 101 in the 80’s.

 I suppose I could sit outside in the falling ash and totally depress myself by watching the progress of the fire down the hill.  But I think I will forgo that and mostly stay inside–which is where the authorities say a person should be considering the air quality.

For a while at least, updates on the fire may be found by clicking here.