I’m home! “So what?” you say. Well, see there was this fire here. Three actually that destroyed a good portion of area in which I live. The first one started on Tuesday just a few miles south of me. It’s cause has yet to be determined but a body was fond at the area it was ignited so arson is not out of the question as of yet.
Here’s the view from my driveway of when I first saw the smoke from that fire.
Winds were gusting to around 40 mph at that time. Notice the trees bending in the picture and notice the direction they’re bending – slightly to the left which is probably what saved our house. But it was getting close enough that right before we left a chopper dropped water directly over our house. Time to go.
We packed up all our most valuable and/or irreplaceable belongs (mine being cats, guns, ammo, and guitars) and hit the road north to a friend’s house about 15 miles away. In the meantime some asshole named Michael Jarrod Bakkela.
“allegedly” (three witnesses saw him do it, so alleged my ass) set a second fire just north of the first one and the two fires connected. He is currently being held in the county jail on $5,000,000 bail. I wish they let him out so we can dole out a little street justice. Make that A LOT of street justice and we’ll need a flamethrower. I want him burned in a few places so he can feel a little of the what the approximately 10 people he killed did. Valdez, you in?
Here’s a couple pics I snapped from car on the way out to my first evacuation destination.
And you can’t go into possibly dangerous situations without some ammo.
Don’t worry. I had more in the trunk.
So we unpacked the cars and stayed the night there only to hear that the next morning that there was looting going on in my city. So I grabbed a pistol and my AR and my wife drove us back so we could perhaps shoot some looters. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) our house hadn’t been broken into and I found no evidence of looting on our block or the nearby ones. So we left again because we weren’t allowed back in the city and had to sneak in and out via back roads.
We get on the freeway. It’s my wife’s friend crying hysterically that another fire had broken out in her neighborhood and she had to evacuate and was already on the road out.
Problem. She hadn’t fetched my cat Meep, or any of my guitars or remaining guns, or my car. Stuck in traffic I imagined my cat dead, guits and guns charred, and my car a burned out hulk.
Fortunately we got there in time as the helicopters were dropping water and the jets were dropping that orange fire retardant the next street over. So we took off again, this time south to a friend of mine’s apartment. There was only room for me there however, so I unloaded my car again while my wife went to her son’s apartment to stay there.
On Thursday my wife came over and we celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary.
Then she was gone again. And went back to the couch in front of the TV where I spent most of my remaining time until yesterday. Flames or not, I couldn’t go outside with the air quality consistently hovering right around 500.
Here’s some picture of my neighborhood some of which I saw on my way back. There fire has burned at least 3,200 acres, with 600 homes destroyed and 100 businesses.
I mean, look at that shit! We were very lucky and are very grateful. We lost nothing except a refrigerator and freezer full of food. Which is obviously nothing compared to what you see above.
And when we got home our flag was still there.
But there has been some reports of looting still so my wife painted and posted this at the entrance of our cul de sac.
Yes, although I live in an incredibly peaceful area, there are degenerates and thugs around. As an aside, I found this written at our street entrance a few days before the fires happened.
So I went back inside, filled a gallon jug with water, the half with my piss, walked out on the street and poured my urine all over it. The chalk went sliding into the gutter where it belonged.
Originally published at Def-Con News on September 15, 2020.
