Safe

In case anyone is wondering… we are all fine around here.  This week has seen over 10 wildfires in San Diego county.  Over 10,000 acres have been burned and numerous homes lost.  The Bernardo Fire started a couple of miles from my office on Tuesday morning.  By 3pm on Tuesday it was making its way south and west and inching closer to my neighborhood.  I decided to go home and I’m so glad I did.  As I approached our street, I saw flames & smoke.

As I called Todd at work to get a plan of action together, I could hear the police on their bullhorns in our neighborhood, telling everyone to evacuate.  I got Noodle into his crate and into the car, and just took my purse and a backpack with me.

As I exited our street, I saw this.

Turns out the fires were not as close as it seemed, but at the time I was worried.  I drove east a few miles to our friends Cat & Mick’s house, and Todd met us there.  It took him over 75 minutes to go only about 10 miles.  We were so grateful for Cat & Mick’s hospitality, providing us safe shelter and dinner.  By 9pm on Tuesday night, the evacuation orders were lifted and we went home.

The Bernardo fire was the first big fire this week.  We had no idea that Wednesday and Thursday would entail over 10 wildfires burning in San Diego and thousands of people evacuated.  We’re thankful that we’re all ok and our house is ok.

When I was evacuating, I didn’t bring any of my scrapbook albums with me.  I realized as I was getting Noodle that all my scrapbook pages were either digital or I had photos of all my paper pages and Project Life pages.  My entire computer is backed up online to Crash Plan, so there was no need to haul all my scrapbook albums to the car.  That saved me a lot of time to just get out.  I didn’t even take my desktop computer because everything was backed up 100%, including most of my photos (except for some older ones that haven’t been scanned) and all our important documents.  If there’s one thing that I know for sure, I will always have all our computers backed up offsite.  Crash Plan is very reasonably-priced and the peace of mind is priceless.  It’s automatic so you never ever have to think about it.  I have access to all my files via wifi connection on my iPad from anywhere else.  And all your files are encrypted for security.  If you don’t have your computers backed up offsite to the cloud, I STRONGLY urge you to do it as soon as possible.  You just never know when you have to evacuate your house in a hurry and all you can do is get everyone out.  This is the second time we had to evacuate our house due to wildfires.  The first time was in October 2007 and we were evacuated for three days.  Offsite backup.  Just do it.