It's been an incredible week of watching and waiting--and feeling my heart beat out of my chest. San Fernando is completely concrete and asphalt, and while the hills are visible from every direction, we're (thankfully) on the sidelines of the drama playing out in SoCal. However, we're not immune from the smoke, the freeway closures, or the concerns about friends.
My son's school was only a mile or two from one of the fronts, and the center is less than a mile south of that. We kept him home for two days not because his school was in danger, but because of the difficulty of getting to the school from our area and with the freeway closure, that it could take several hours to go around alternate ways to retrieve him. We would have to drive right along the freeway where they were fighting the fire, and they kept closing portions of it, including parts we needed. On top of that, was there any real reason to send the kids in to breathe that crap?
The parking lot of the center has ash swirling around like little funnel clouds. I touch it and it dissolves on my finger, but I have to wonder how much we're not seeing, that we're breathing in.
I'll know on Saturday how many of the kids were affected, and how many were evacuated, because I honestly don't know the names of all the developments and enclaves in our area.
Halloween is tomorrow night, and only some of the shopping centers are doing Trick or Treat. But I'll definitely be at one of them. No way are the kids gonna come home with lungs as black as Zoe's costume. Oh yeah, Zoe wants to be a bumble bee. And for that, Michael will be a beekeeper.
To everyone in Southern California, I'm thinking of you. This too shall pass. Let's just hope it passes without any more losses of lives, homes, or sanity.
Posted by Angel Zobel-Rodriguez at October 30, 2003 10:45 AM