I was watching the news today and was reminded of a time in my life when I've been the closest to being threatened by Mother Nature. Sure I've lived in southern California for over 13 years and have lived thru several earthquakes ranging from 4.0 - 7.0 (and btw the little ones are not as bad as they are made out to be). Yea the ground shakes but they only last a few seconds, sometimes it even feels like some punk just comes up and shoves you out of your chair! But hey! it only lasts a few seconds! Don't get me wrong, I'm not writing off the damage cause yes sometimes them earthquakes do signifigant damage. (even to my house ~ there is a crack here and there, but sometimes they go away with the next quake and sometimes they get bigger but to this day they have never done any structural damage).
There were only two quakes that really shook my core. The one when I first moved out here, I'm sure some of you might have read about it; the Northridge quake in 1994 and yes some of us here in San Diego felt the aftershocks and prob the quake itself (I will only admit to feeling the aftershocks since the quake happened I believe at 4am and my father in law at the time called me up and asked if I was ok before I turned on the TV and watched Los Angeles burn to the ground). What was even more scary was watching it all day CNN and seeing the live reports or the news studios shake while the ground beneath me WAS SHAKING TOO or even more creepy, I purposly set out glasses of water and watched them shake!!!
The second quake that shook me was a 7.1!!!! Fortunetly it happend in the middle of nowhere Mojave Desert so no 'damage' was done. My boyfriend (at the time) and I were up around 3am and were geeking out on video games. I was playing some version of Final Fantasy and he was playing Starcraft and all of a sudden what I swear was the longest 45 seconds of my life happened. What made matters worse was that we lived in an apartment on stilts so the shaking was REALLY bad, I freaked out and ran outside while my then-boyfriend laughed at me and told me that 'being out there was worse' and teased me until I came back inside.
Despite those two close encounters my worst experience with Mother Nature was this one Fire storm three years ago. So until the rainy season in February its officially fire season here in SoCal. Now I've also lived thru my share of fire storms (about 8 to be exact) and I still remember my first because I thought it was snowing yet it was about 80 degrees outside. It wasnt until I actually went outside and the smell of burning things crept up my nose. Lucky most firestorms here you can 'usually' get away from them by just going inside.
This was not the case with the Cedar Fire three years ago. Pretty much all of coastal SoCal was up in flames. From as far away as Malibu and Los Angeles, almost all of San Diego county all the way down to Baja CA Mexico was ablaze! (pretty much about 600 miles of coastline and about 100-200 miles inland). I have so many photos of different fires here and how they change the skyline and cover the landscapes in dirty ash that looks like frail dirty snow. It's even more strange to walk thru it and watch the ash wisp away with each footstep. I remember seeing on the news that there was a fire. Nothing new I thought, dismissed it and went to bed. The next day I woke up and everything felt wrong. My room was ORANGE!! It seemed like somebody had turned on all the streetlights outside and were shining them directly into my apartment. I went to look out the window and the sky was BLACK!!! Now, I've seen the sky dark in previous fires but it was NEVER black!! You could even look directly at the sun and could even see sun spots, that was how thick the smoke was!!! Not to mention the sun was RED!!!
It was a Sunday so for the time being I closed the windows cause the fires did smell REALLY close, a hell of alot closer than they had ever smelled before. Also the falling ashes were HUGE, it was like somebody was shaving parmesian up above. lol. I left my apartment and went to have some yummy sushi and it was just weird. It was prob about 3 in the afternoon but it seemed more like sunset, it was orange everywhere and it was raining ashes not to mention the smell which on that day was just like there was the smell of a nice fireplace going off, EVERYWHERE YOU WENT!!!
It only got worse the rest of the week. . . The news started talking about all running cost of the fires, all the property damaged and where, they talked about the people dying, I think even one firefighter died. Businesses were temporary closing due to air quality being unbreathable. Even going inside buildings with AC was not a good enough escape because the ashes were clogging the air filters. The was smoke everywhere like this nasty dense fog, it was like being in a dirty bar where everyone but you is smoking only 1,000,000 times worse. The sky was still black and stayed black for over a week. It was horrible. The news was telling everyone to 'pack up and be ready to evacuate' except there was NO WHERE to go. You couldn't go North, there were fires there, same for South, West was the ocean so unless you know somebody with a boat (I didn't) and well, if you go East, that's where the fires were, not to mention the 3+million other soCal-ians trying to escape on the 8 which once you leave El Cajon are two lane highways surriounded by mountains. So yea there was nowhere to go. I had my little box of precious items, a small suitcase and my kitties all ready to go though, just in case. The worst part was not being able to breath FRESH air so all my breathing was short shallow breaths, my eyes were itchy and red cause there was no clean air and I swear there were ashes in my lashes (lol), it was dirty everywhere, there was ash everywhere, outside AND inside. I didn't have AC in my apartment so I had to keep the windows open cause it was still hot outside. Not like it woulda helped since even having AC wouldna fixed anything. All around it was just a miserable experience.
References:
Cedar Fires
Mojave Earthquake
Northridge Earthquake
So yea, three years ago today was the start of a horrible week. I won't even bring up the Tornado scares I've been thru :)
There were only two quakes that really shook my core. The one when I first moved out here, I'm sure some of you might have read about it; the Northridge quake in 1994 and yes some of us here in San Diego felt the aftershocks and prob the quake itself (I will only admit to feeling the aftershocks since the quake happened I believe at 4am and my father in law at the time called me up and asked if I was ok before I turned on the TV and watched Los Angeles burn to the ground). What was even more scary was watching it all day CNN and seeing the live reports or the news studios shake while the ground beneath me WAS SHAKING TOO or even more creepy, I purposly set out glasses of water and watched them shake!!!
The second quake that shook me was a 7.1!!!! Fortunetly it happend in the middle of nowhere Mojave Desert so no 'damage' was done. My boyfriend (at the time) and I were up around 3am and were geeking out on video games. I was playing some version of Final Fantasy and he was playing Starcraft and all of a sudden what I swear was the longest 45 seconds of my life happened. What made matters worse was that we lived in an apartment on stilts so the shaking was REALLY bad, I freaked out and ran outside while my then-boyfriend laughed at me and told me that 'being out there was worse' and teased me until I came back inside.
Despite those two close encounters my worst experience with Mother Nature was this one Fire storm three years ago. So until the rainy season in February its officially fire season here in SoCal. Now I've also lived thru my share of fire storms (about 8 to be exact) and I still remember my first because I thought it was snowing yet it was about 80 degrees outside. It wasnt until I actually went outside and the smell of burning things crept up my nose. Lucky most firestorms here you can 'usually' get away from them by just going inside.
This was not the case with the Cedar Fire three years ago. Pretty much all of coastal SoCal was up in flames. From as far away as Malibu and Los Angeles, almost all of San Diego county all the way down to Baja CA Mexico was ablaze! (pretty much about 600 miles of coastline and about 100-200 miles inland). I have so many photos of different fires here and how they change the skyline and cover the landscapes in dirty ash that looks like frail dirty snow. It's even more strange to walk thru it and watch the ash wisp away with each footstep. I remember seeing on the news that there was a fire. Nothing new I thought, dismissed it and went to bed. The next day I woke up and everything felt wrong. My room was ORANGE!! It seemed like somebody had turned on all the streetlights outside and were shining them directly into my apartment. I went to look out the window and the sky was BLACK!!! Now, I've seen the sky dark in previous fires but it was NEVER black!! You could even look directly at the sun and could even see sun spots, that was how thick the smoke was!!! Not to mention the sun was RED!!!
It was a Sunday so for the time being I closed the windows cause the fires did smell REALLY close, a hell of alot closer than they had ever smelled before. Also the falling ashes were HUGE, it was like somebody was shaving parmesian up above. lol. I left my apartment and went to have some yummy sushi and it was just weird. It was prob about 3 in the afternoon but it seemed more like sunset, it was orange everywhere and it was raining ashes not to mention the smell which on that day was just like there was the smell of a nice fireplace going off, EVERYWHERE YOU WENT!!!
It only got worse the rest of the week. . . The news started talking about all running cost of the fires, all the property damaged and where, they talked about the people dying, I think even one firefighter died. Businesses were temporary closing due to air quality being unbreathable. Even going inside buildings with AC was not a good enough escape because the ashes were clogging the air filters. The was smoke everywhere like this nasty dense fog, it was like being in a dirty bar where everyone but you is smoking only 1,000,000 times worse. The sky was still black and stayed black for over a week. It was horrible. The news was telling everyone to 'pack up and be ready to evacuate' except there was NO WHERE to go. You couldn't go North, there were fires there, same for South, West was the ocean so unless you know somebody with a boat (I didn't) and well, if you go East, that's where the fires were, not to mention the 3+million other soCal-ians trying to escape on the 8 which once you leave El Cajon are two lane highways surriounded by mountains. So yea there was nowhere to go. I had my little box of precious items, a small suitcase and my kitties all ready to go though, just in case. The worst part was not being able to breath FRESH air so all my breathing was short shallow breaths, my eyes were itchy and red cause there was no clean air and I swear there were ashes in my lashes (lol), it was dirty everywhere, there was ash everywhere, outside AND inside. I didn't have AC in my apartment so I had to keep the windows open cause it was still hot outside. Not like it woulda helped since even having AC wouldna fixed anything. All around it was just a miserable experience.
This photo was taken from some sattelite during the fires
I didn't take these two photos, but it's the closest I can get to showing you what it was like:References:
Cedar Fires
Mojave Earthquake
Northridge Earthquake
So yea, three years ago today was the start of a horrible week. I won't even bring up the Tornado scares I've been thru :)
