Today marks the 4th anniversary of the terrible fires that hit our San Diego community. The fire destroyed hundreds of homes in the city and several thousand around the statewide fires.  It was an amazing time for our community to unite and help one another. Who would have thought that four years later we would have another major fire hit our town that could end up being worse!

Yesterday afternoon, Joel and I drove back from Coronado after spending the afternoon with my mom, dad, Curtis and his fiance, Shannon. My mom pointed out earlier that it looks like there was a fire. I looked over towards downtown San Diego and saw something that looked like smoke. I shrugged and said, “Nope…probably just a marine layer or something.” When we walked back towards our cars several hours later, I smelt smoke and told Mom, “I think you were right.” I drove over the Coronado Bay Bridge and was shocked at the site of our city. Though I saw no flames, smoke filled most of the city and headed for the ocean cities. I turned on the radio and listened to the reports. It was threating the Julian area and Campo (both about 1 hour away from my home) but it did not seem to be a major threat, yet.

This morning, I drove to work at about 6:15 for a shop meeting. My dad came right up to me to ask how I was doing. I thought it was a little weird he would do that, because I was late for the 6am meeting, and he wasn’t in the meeting! He started chatting with me and told me the guys are not working due to the fires. I couldn’t believe how active the flames got over the night. At least one foreman has evacuated his home and one of our current customers (in progress) are evacuating as I write. It is possible that a huge area we work will be evacuated as well.

Please pray for our community. People are saying this is worse than the fire we had four years ago, and that was very bad!

I have a few things to wrap up at work and a couple of appointments today. I will keep writing to let our family back east know what is going on. Please pray!