| Sunday,
August 30, 2009 The book signings in Pasadena at Noon and
Burbank at 3:30 are still on, and the Writers of the Future including many
of the judges will be there. It's just that I won't be.
I was supposed to do the book signings in Pasadena and Burbank today, but
the AQMD says the air in those regions is starkly unhealthful, and the fire
and police people are asking us to stay home. I woke up to smoke in the
house (just blown in through the open windows, nothing alarming) and decided
to button up and turn on the air conditioning. I try to do without AC during
the summer, both for the expense and to do my part in reducing the load.
Sometimes I whimsically say that I'd gladly go without air conditioning
in California if we could make it illegal to turn on air conditioning
anywhere in DC except in hospitals. Of course the Congress would immediately
build itself a meeting chamber at Walter Reed, and the White House would
find a way to declare the White House, Old State, and so forth "official
hospitals," so perhaps there is nothing to be done.
Anyway, I decided we better stay home, and I won't be doing the book
signings. Those things are mostly for the new kids anyway.
There's an enormous plume of smoke, and the heat stays because there is
no wind. The night sea wind can't get in so the smoke stays. And if the
Santa Ana does break through it will blow the fire down the canyons toward
houses. No one can really predict.
We're relatively safe here. The fires are ten to twenty miles away.
However, two blocks up hill from us begins 50 square miles of park which
last burned off about 30 years ago, and it's mostly California chaparral.
That could become dangerous, but there are no fires up there now, and the
fire roads into the conservancy are pretty good now. Last time it burned
there was no GPS or Google Earth and I had to show LAFD (city and county)
where the fire roads were (they'd all been overgrown), but that has all been
improved and taken care of. There's plenty to burn up there, but if people
stay out of it (and given the air quality they surely should stay out)
there's no reason for it to burn. We're not getting lightning storms.
So mostly we're standing by in case we need to become an emergency
shelter. There are evacuations in Pasadena, Glendale (which is between
Burbank and Pasadena) and Sylmar (where Alex, Karen Anderson, and Jackie
Freas live; it's the other side of Burbank from Glendale.
The Red Box fire at Mount Wilson has died down but is not out. All
observatory personnel have been evacuated, so any coverage from Mount Wilson
is now automatic. The basis situation is that all is well if the wind don't
rise; but no one know whether that will happen, or what that would do. Worst
case would be hard driving Santa Ana winds -- Devil Winds. We are told that
isn't likely according to the weather models. One hopes they are better at
predictions than climate models.
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