HiBAiSHi

Many of my close friends and their families have had to evacuate their homes. It’s hard to understand until you see some of this in person, but I found these photos on a flickr community. It’s devastating. It’s estimated the 700,000 people (~300,00 households) have been forced to evacuate San Diego County. Compare that to four years ago when there were only 50,000.

I have been able to keep up despite being in London through these websites:

Two maps and other links
The fastest updates around
Official fire map
Official fire blog

The latest I’ve been hearing is that the fire is moving north to Rancho San Diego. Scripps Ranch and Del Mar are allowed to return home.

Fortunately, my parents are out of the country. I have been trying to contact them for days but they have yet to respond to any e-mails. Ironically, they have always been upset whenever I don’t check my e-mail or call enough. I guess I can see why. After going through several family friends, I finally reached the neighbor who has our keys and he has been sending me e-mail updates about the situation. I hope everything will be okay. It’s difficult not being there while all of this is going on.

Ironically, I had to go outside last night for a fire drill. Outside two boys played “Crank Dat” on their cell phones and proceeded to practice the Soulja Boy dance.

Later I went out and walked aimlessly around a part of East London for an hour looking for a place that was closed, then waited across the street because she was an hour late anyway. Then she told me about her celebrity obsession and made an awkward analogy to necrophilia and that was it for me. On the bright side, she’s in a band.

It’s cold in London right now.