Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, you surely know about the California Wildfires that are ravaging San Diego County and other parts of Southern California. Firefighters haven’t been able to get a break lately it seems, but hopefully they will later this week. This touches home particularly for me since my brother now lives in Oceanside, CA which is part of San Diego county.

Image courtesy of CNN.

He was able to call earlier in the week and get an email out saying he was ok (he’d just returned home from his Honeymoon too…welcome back buddy!), but communication is sporadic since authorities want people to limit phone calls to emergencies only (and you can hardly get through anyway). Last I knew, he was 10 minutes from the current evacuation line, but now that Camp Pendleton has been evacuated (his wife works there as a Marine), I’m pretty sure they’ve been told to get out. Hopefully this is all under control soon and my brother as well as everyone else there can return home and get back to their lives.

UPDATE

My brother sent me the following image he took from his car (click for larger version):

The windshield is a little dirty, but you can see how much smoke there is in the air an how the sun is just a faint orange ball. He’s about 10 miles or so from the nearest fires and haven’t had to evacuate, but they’re not out of the woods yet. He said its finally snowing in San Diego (we’re originally all from the Northeast), except there’s no snow. Its snowing ash!

I also found this video that basically shows the same thing. I’m not sure how far my brother is from this guy, but my guess is that they are pretty close.