fire in the taco bell!

ok, so there wasn't a fire in the taco bell, a la the electric six song, but there was a fire in the nabe, as you know from my previous post. and it got pretty scary around here last night.

we had to go to the west side to grab some cheap european clothes for our trip and pondered whether it was safe to leave. after watching the news and hearing that they expected the fire to be contained shortly, we headed out.

cut to 8ish. the mister and i have just plopped down for some delicious deli food at canter's when we get a call from our friend and neighbor kenobi saying that things were outta control. this was one of those moments where you realize just how big l.a. is. as we grabbed our food to go and zoomed home as quickly as possible (our dogs!), it was surprising how many folks were just going about their evening in other parts of town we sped through. the bottom line in a big ol' metropolis like this is that something affecting one part of town has no bearing on another.

anyhoo, we made it over to los feliz, the neighborhood just next to ours, only to find crowds, no power, and citizen traffic cops who had no idea what they were doing. at that point, we started to get a little freaked. it was 100 degrees at 8:30 according to the car thermometer, and we started to wonder how long our dogs had been in the house with no a/c, if the power had gone out. about that time, the ashes started blowing around the car. yikes!

we got home and the a/c was on, but blowing low levels of smoke into the house. the dogs were ok, but you could tell they were a little skeeved from all the helicopter noise, etc.

it looked really bad from our backyard and like it was marching down the hill towards homes and possibly, eventually, to our house. the neighbors with all the kids and the pool below is were outside spraying down their yard and house and asking us where we were planning on evacuating to. the smoke was blowing directly into the canyonish area where we live and immediately gave me a headache. it felt like the end of the world as we know it, and i didn't feel fine (bah-dum-dum).

in the end, it all ended up ok. we're not out of the woods yet over here as they are expecting 100 degree high today and nearly zero percent humidity, but luckily it is completely still outside right now, which is keeping the fire in check.

it really is interesting when you have to make an on the spot inventory in your head and figure out what you should take if you have to leave. for us it was wallets, computers, hard drives and the dogs.