update #1

Chris went out and bought an antena for our TV last night, so we could get one grainy news channel. The fire is burning mainly in Montecito, which is where a lot of famous people live on large estates. When we were watching last night, the footage of the burning buildings, the houses were enormous! If you feel like doing some celebrity sightings, you might want to go check out the local evac. center. --maybe i should go check it out & see if my good friend, Kenny Loggins is there. ;~)

They had a few helicopters dumping water on the fires through the night, using infrared goggles. Now that daylight is here, there are all sorts of helicpters flying around.

waking up this morning to the news, we heard that Westmont (chris' alma mater) lost about 8 buildings, including some student housing, and 12 faculty houses. 2,500 acres have burned and over 100 homes have been lost. The yard where chris' company keeps all of their equipment has been put on evacuation alert. Before we went to sleep last night, we set out a few things that we would want to grab quickly, just in case we had to evacuate. So far the fire has stayed a safe distance from us. It would have to go through downtown S.B. before it got to us. It's just hard to feel 100% safe, since the winds are so crazy.

If you'd like to hear more, Fox News has a good article w/photos. it's pretty sad when the national news gives you better coverage than the local news! - but seriously, i think that's just because all the local news is just trying to tell everyone the wheres & whens of evacuations & school closures. Our schools don't close for snow days, they close for fire!

This should be an interesting weekend!

As a side-note, the local radio station just mocked the national headlines: "We're being reffered to as a 'wealthy enclave.' For those of you going to work this morning, struggling to make your mortgage payment, you can be comforted with the fact that you live in a 'wealthy enclave.'" :)