BIG FIRE

[mikeyr]

There is a mandatory evacuation only 3 blocks from my house for a big fire, we are under "suggested" evacuation and making plans. If that happens, Singercars.com will go down for a while until I can return or rebuild the server (nicely backed up, no worries).

Hoping some people read this and can relay to interested people IF the site goes down

[Paul Bouchard]

Mike,

Hoping that all goes well for you and your family. Keep them safe!

Paul

[mikeyr]

Well the website is still up so all is well

The dreaded forecast winds never showed up and the fire fighters got a good handle on the fire last night, its stalled but still burning about 1.5 miles from my house. They have not lifted the evacuation orders for the houses a few blocks up yet but if winds stay away, we wont have a problem, its daylight now and the air tankers are making retardant drops. On the graphic you can see where the fire is and where the airport is, tankers are having the shortest flights of their lives, less than 10 minutes from take-off to landing, bet the fire is out before lunch.

Interesting night last night, we loaded up my truck with the irreplaceable's and were pretty much ready to go. Then the discussion turned to how can we save the Singer's (I kid you not, we really did talk about it), my car trailer is at my in-laws full of demolition debris. My daughter thought we could fit most of the Le Mans in the back of her boyfriends truck and use a tow strap to tow the 1.5 out of harms way but it has no brakes so not a good idea. The Dino spent the night outside ready to go. The only good part about all this is that since we are moving in 2-3 months and we have lived here 32 years we have already started packing some things and it was easy to get all the irreplaceable's out in a hurry.

[mikeyr]

good thing I did not bet about the fire being out by lunch...winds have picked up and its grown, hopefully all the regulars by now have seen this post and will know why the site is down if it goes down.

[mikeyr]

Site went down for 14 hours last night. Fire got to the main power line that powers the area, 240 megawatt tower or something like that (sorry electrical talk is a foreign language to me), power went out from Gaviota to Ventura, that is about 70miles of coastline with no power and 240,000 people they say on the radio today.

The stars were AWESOME and I quickly got my telescope out.

Fire is still burning but power is back up obviously, server is back up also obviously or you would not be reading this. Won't guarantee that power wont go out again and that the fire wont make it to the server. So that is all the news fit to be printed at this time.

[Peter McKercher]

I noticed the server was out. Keep us posted by email if you can to let us know your status.

[mikeyr]

Fire is up to 2,400 acres and about 1 mile from the house but it is a 16 mile front and it moving parallel to our house along the base of the moutain, if the wind does not come we will be fine. We are being told we will lose power again.

[mikeyr]

Well we took the 1.5 Litre and the Dino away just in time as they ended up evacuating us for 2 days. It was a hard decision which Singer to save but it was decided to take the 1.5 since the Le Mans is in pieces, I could have saved its chassis and parts of the body but all the small parts are all over the garage and it would have made the Le Mans un-restorable with all the missing parts, the 1.5 is complete and so it was taken away. Nothing happened ! house is fine, I am sitting in it now, cars are even back home.

Over the last 5 days we have been without power from as little as about 8 hours to over 20 hours and although they lifted the evacuation order today we still lost power a few hours ago for about 4 hours as the fire is still raging near the power lines. The fire is now about 6 miles away from us and while the wind is blowing it back our way, it has no fuel to get here with as it burned it all the last few days. All evacuations have been lifted as without fuel (brush) it cant come back, so a few more days of power outages and the site being down but all is safe and well.

It was too close...

Too all who sent good wishes THANK YOU !

[Paul Bouchard]

Add my name to the list of those thankful for your family's safe return home.

PHEW!!!

Paul

[Peter McKercher]

Glad to see you are safe and sound.

[mikeyr]

More power problems and more server downtimes, the last one was about a hour and the UPS was beeping frantically, it never got fully recharged from last nights 4 hour power outage. Sorry folks, the up time of the web site is normally much better.

The fire is completely out of my area now as you can see in the graphic below is has moved far away (8 miles) but it is burning out of control right under the main 240 megawatt power lines that feed Santa Barbara and Goleta, the lines from Los Angeles can not handle the load so power will be iffy until they get the fire out which could be several days. 1 firefighter had a heart attack but will be ok, no other injuries, 3 houses damaged and 4 structures have burned (I assume barns or like that) so that is great news.