fires

There were drifts of ash in our front patio; the sun was a bright red ball, the air a putrid brown. It looked like twilight at 1 pm. The air steadily worsened inside. My parents stopped by on their way out of town--their house was in a voluntary evacuation zone. We're only about ten minutes away from them.
We decided to leave.
We packed our car with (hopefully) all our important documents, clothes, a roll of toilet paper (for a while, I imagined us in a refugee camp) and our computers. We prayed in the garage before we rolled out of our street, thinking that we were still in little danger of losing our house. But that was before we heard about the neighborhoods that surround our neighborhood being evacuated.
We braved really crappy traffic out of town (funny, you don't complain about traffic jams as much when you know people are running from 200 ft. flames) were surprised by a mostly happy baby, and made it to Dyami's parents in Ojai after only six hours in the car.
We're thankful to be here, in a familiar place, with family. Very thankful that the trip wasn't awful. And that we're further from flames.
We're not out of the woods yet--there are fires east of here, too. I'm not sure there's any place safe in Southern California tonight.
I pray that if you're in SoCal tonight, you're safe, and breathing clean air. May God protect San Diego.