Friday, November 18, 2011

Fire Surrounding My Apartment

To be honest, while there has been a "State of Emergency" claimed here, and a raging inferno that has destroyed more than 20 structures, we haven't been bad off at all; in fact mostly lucky. But, in case you're curious why Mer and I left our house early this morning, check out this picture:

Fire "Boundaries" as of 1:00pm, Fri 18-Nov-2011
Details at Reno.gov
View in Google Maps
If you're not up to speed on this whole thing: Woke up to a call from
my buddy Leland at 2:40am this morning (18-Nov-2011) saying, "Yo man, look out your window. There is a wildfire out of control less than a mile away from us and its getting pretty bad out here. I just drove up to check it out. You might think about packing some stuff to prepare to evacuate." Yeah, so there's that. Once we got out to the cars at about 3:00am it was like Dante's Peak: Orange glow over the trees to the East, ash flying everywhere, thick smoke, and extremely strong winds. We grabbed a few important items and headed out to our friends Matt and Chelsea's house (Thanks guys!).

Some houses haven't been so lucky (fortunately this isn't our place, I've been there once already)...
From the RGJ
Anyway, winds aren't supposed to die down until after 4pm this evening, so I hope everything is still intact when we get back (We were in the Evac Zone). There have been quite a few limbs flying and bushes rolling through the streets not to mention the dust storms. They'd been saying all day that it wasn't contained at all, now with more than 400 firefighters on it the claim is that they have "halted forward progress" of the fire.


NVZ450-191330- WESTERN NEVADA SIERRA FRONT- INCLUDING A PORTION OF THE HUMBOLDT TOIYABE NF 527 AM PST FRI NOV 18 2011

...HIGH WIND WARNING THROUGH 4 PM THIS AFTERNOON...

...

20-FOOT WINDS....

... VALLEYS/SLOPE....VERY WINDY. SOUTHWEST WINDS 20 TO 40 MPH. GUSTS UP TO 65 MPH. RIDGE TOP....
....SOUTHWEST WINDS 30 TO 50 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 90 MPH.