This entry was posted on 9/18/2006 7:16 AM and is filed under Exploring.
There is a huge fire burning in the Los Padres National Forest called, "The Day Fire". It's been burning since September 4th, but on Saturday the winds picked up and shifted. Now, it's burning very close to Ojai, where we live. The valley sky covered in thick black smoke and everything has a weird orange glow to it.
A part of Ojai, called "Upper Ojai" is being evacuated. The fire is 2 miles past Rose valley and moving 1 mile per hour towards Ojai.
I find it a huge relief that there are websites giving hourly updates (http://www.vcsd.org) and people within the community are sending out email to keep everyone informed. I also found it ironic that the one website I found on Google Saturday afternoon, when an alarming plume of smoke rose over the highest mountain in the valley, was clearly a 9-5, monday-friday proposition. There's nothing wrong with that, if you're a brick and mortar business selling something like oven mitts. But if you're in the business of providing critical information for something like fire updates, timing is everything.
