still safe

We’ve been indoors at home for two days now.  The fire appears to have stopped growing, or at least it is growing away from us.  We did not have to evacuate, but we remain ready to do so.  Air quality is abysmal and dangerous:  a reading of 321 this morning!!  When we finally get outside, we will need to clean up the dirt blown into our courtyard and the ash fallen.

But we are still safe.  Happily.  Van is safe at his house as well, and we wish we were all together.

safe, so far

The fires in Pasadena are raging north of west, stretching both west and east.  So far we are not on alert to evacuate, but we are ready.  The air is thick with smoke.  It will be a long, stressful day of watching.  We got this shot last night, about eleven hours ago.

I will post here if things change dramatically.

-11 is the new -3

We were to bed early last night, and after a good, long night of sleep it was up a bit before 7 (on a Saturday - scandalous to some of our friends, I know) and time for some cereal. When I came out of the bedroom and caught a glimpse outside, I thought, "Colder out today."

You know how it is - there's a particular look to things when it's cold.
The blue of the sky, perhaps? The way smoke rises into the sky? The ice on the lake in the distance? I checked Yahoo weather a short time ago. The forecast was for a low of -3 Celsius, but the reading at O'Hare at 6:51 this mornings was -11. Hmmm.

But we are cozy in our home, thanks to the generators parked in our driveway. 3 of them, I think. Or is it four. Forgive the streaky windows at this time of year: here's a look at what is letting us live here.
Conrad finds the constant thrum difficult to sleep with, and he's using ear plugs. I fall asleep to them easily - they are white noise to me, and I can be lulled easily. We leave for Vancouver on Tuesday, and we can expect the generators to be in place until after our departure.

Meanwhile, it's 7:41, and - shockingly - this man has not gone back to bed until time to go to swim practice!

Displaced

The important thing to emphasize is that Conrad and I are fine, and that a small number of people only had very minor injuries.

This was our yesterday, post-swimming:


An electrical fire in the building - more smoke than anything else by what we experienced - happened at lunch time. Power in the building was knocked out, and people were evacuated. We grabbed some essentials before we left and got over to the Center on Halsted/Whole Foods to figure out what was what.

No power meant no one could stay in the building overnight. Temperatures in the morning hovered around freezing, but the forecast was for a COLD Sunday. Already, it was cooling off mid-afternoon, and a flurry quickly passed through.When I checked the weather online this morning, it was -19 Celsius. Whoa.

Many of our friends have checked in, and we're grateful for the offers of assistance and a place to stay. We've spent the night at Dave's place, not too far from the building. Some sushi, some wine, and we tried to keep our minds from fretting over what we might find today.
By 10, Conrad and I were drained, and it was to bed for us.

Conrad just called - he's at the unit. No smoke damage, happily, but because of ongoing problems with restoring power to the building, it may be days before we can return. He's picking up additional clothing and other things for us. An interesting weekend for us, it might be said.