IAP Political Forum

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20071022-9999-1n22main.html

My buddy (and about half of san diego) has been evacuated.

70mph gusts (that is hurricane force wind speed) have been fanning the fire.

why are people buying/building homes in these areas?

Lots of land has been developed in these areas, about 10 years ago there was hardly anything there, now it is entire communities of development projects (think "Weeds" tv show). Land is cheap, the houses are built on a mass scale, so it is cheaper to buy than a traditional residential house in a regular neighborhood.

Many of these are being destroyed by the fire.

Here is a photo from space:

(http://chovy.dyndns.org/img/pics/193857main_wildfire_oct22_full.png)

500 K evacuations for San Diego.

I can see the fires in Santiago Canyon in Orange County from my house, but we are safe.  Family friends that live closer have been forced to move, so we set them up in our house for a few days.  Another family lost their possessions in their home in San Diego.

Lost a few photo albums too, but, and I take pride in advising them of this, I told them they should make high quality scans of all their personal photos, contracts, warranties and documents.  They did this, so the loss isn't too hard to recover from.  Its amazing how many important papers we have in our homes that we don't normally know about or think about until its too late.

removable harddrive too -- about a year ago I installed a removable harddrive (300gb) that stores *all* my important data (and mp3 collection -- don't want to loose that!)

In a fire I can grab the drive only and run.

(http://static.grupthink.com/answer/b/be27ae84deca0e952c41b9adad8431db)

Tragic.

Here's a link an Google Maps of the San Diego County fires and evacuation areas:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/firemap/