I mentioned, above, that I’ve been distracted tonight…
It’s due to a large wildfire burning just beyond one of the oldest, most settled parts of the city.
Last night it raged through an upscale senior housing development a couple of miles east.
Firefighters battled all night, saving as many houses as they could, but some were lost.
It’s a scenario that seems impossible…
everything just outside the eastern city limit has been evacuated, including a big state park, and two large city parks…
If it creeps any closer, it’ll burn areas that haven’t seen fire in the nearly 200 year existence of Santa Rosa.
A lot of them, marked into numbered sections on a map, are under what they call “evacuation warning” …
“You don’t have to leave yet, but be prepared in case we tell your section to go.”
That includes neighborhoods established in the 19th century, plus our earliest suburban type development… WWII era… and the oldest shopping center in Santa Rosa.
By European or Asian standards those are still in infancy… but in California, they set the tone of a city.
Now, don’t get worried about my personal safety…
as I’ve said before, I don’t live in one of the more heavily treed parts of town that fires are looking to gobble up,
or up in the windy hills they like to run through.
But when I smelled heavy smoke… I should say heavier smoke, about 6 pm, and went outside…
(yes, the opposite of what you’re supposed to do, I know… )
the sky was yellow, and everything was sprinkled with ash…
it had dusted my car’s windshield, and settled on the wiper blades like a light snowfall.
Smoke from other directions has been in the air for days,
and though we’re in the middle of a predicted heatwave…. 101° Sunday… the ash layer has kept it 10° cooler.
Till about midnight I was getting text alerts and updates.
It’s due to a large wildfire burning just beyond one of the oldest, most settled parts of the city.
Last night it raged through an upscale senior housing development a couple of miles east.
Firefighters battled all night, saving as many houses as they could, but some were lost.
It’s a scenario that seems impossible…
everything just outside the eastern city limit has been evacuated, including a big state park, and two large city parks…
If it creeps any closer, it’ll burn areas that haven’t seen fire in the nearly 200 year existence of Santa Rosa.
A lot of them, marked into numbered sections on a map, are under what they call “evacuation warning” …
“You don’t have to leave yet, but be prepared in case we tell your section to go.”
That includes neighborhoods established in the 19th century, plus our earliest suburban type development… WWII era… and the oldest shopping center in Santa Rosa.
By European or Asian standards those are still in infancy… but in California, they set the tone of a city.
Now, don’t get worried about my personal safety…
as I’ve said before, I don’t live in one of the more heavily treed parts of town that fires are looking to gobble up,
or up in the windy hills they like to run through.
But when I smelled heavy smoke… I should say heavier smoke, about 6 pm, and went outside…
(yes, the opposite of what you’re supposed to do, I know… )
the sky was yellow, and everything was sprinkled with ash…
it had dusted my car’s windshield, and settled on the wiper blades like a light snowfall.
Smoke from other directions has been in the air for days,
and though we’re in the middle of a predicted heatwave…. 101° Sunday… the ash layer has kept it 10° cooler.
Till about midnight I was getting text alerts and updates.
It’s all a bit spooky.