Fire to the left of me, Fire to the right, here I am

45 hours of nonstop coverage. Three channels. Three! Yorba Linda is on fire! When I called early Saturday to see if my parents were ok they said they didn't even smell smoke. The coverage was excellent, I could see just about everything and could even track it online. I watched it get closer and closer. We could tell they were going to be in the line of fire and tried to get them out of there and over here.

Obsticle #1: The main freeway, the most obvious choice for them to get here was closed. It appears there was a fire in Corona that then jumped the free way and torched up the canyon access all the way to Anaheim Hills. AH lost quite a few homes. Also off that main freeway was another outlet that could take them in a round about way to us. Closed. Even the streets that could potentially take them to a freeway, was closed. We got frequent reports when highways, streets and freeways would open/close but I feared that they would get stuck, waiting for hours just to find the freeways closed again.

I thought of heading out there to help but there was no way in either.

The best plan we figured was to wait it out. Police and firefighters were up and down their streets asking them to prepare for evacuation. They would be notified when and told where to go for safety. I hated the thought that they would be in a shelter. They had a better idea. They loaded up their car and camper. I had forgotten about the camper. They were ready. They could sleep in there, use the bathroom and eat. They'd just need an out of fire range place to park.

So they waited.

So I waited.

And watched the news all night long. They never took a break. As feared the fire drifted into the Carbon Canyon around midnight. It's a long narrow stretch of road that hooks Orange County with Chino (Riverside?San Berdo?) It's hilly and mountainey and choc full of homes. Old ones, newer ones, it's a unique area, beautiful. They have fires in there from time to time, horrible fires, but it happens fairly often. It burned it's way through the canyon.

Today it's off in the Diamond Bar area. Far enough away from the folks for me not to worry.

But I was, goodness. The fire was all around them. I'm not sure how close. Maybe a mile. I'll find out when I'm down there next. The scary thing is that they were surounded. They couldn't get out.

Today the fire is still not contained. Soon I hope