NO GM'S AVAILABLE!

This just in:
All Sony Online Entertainment customer service support is closed due to the wild fires raging throughout San Diego and the proximity of those fires to the SOE offices. Normal operations will resume once this local emergency is over.
Our thoughts go out to everyone affected by the fires.
Submitted by Baelish, 8:22 PM EST


From someone in the same city, it's bad. Real bad. I fetched my parents and my sister is keeping them for awhile. Basically the mayor has asked everyone to stay home and off the streets tomorrow. It's expected the hot, dry conditions and the gusty winds will pick up again tomorrow and might again on Tuesday. All the school are pretty much going to be closed.

About 150 structures have burned so far and there are 3 separate large fires in San Diego County at the moment. It's been over 144 days since the last rainfall. And there's lots of undeveloped area filled with dry scrub brush, very flammable eucalyptus trees and so on.

And some idiot hunter started one of the fires. Apparently he got lost and lit a signal fire. /sigh People never learn.

I remember once my friend's landlord during a "santa anna" (very dry, high winds, hot weather) decided to take a propane torch and burn off some peeling paint on the side of his rental house that my friend was living in. Guess what? The house caught on fire. Who would've guessed?

If SOE is in the same spot it used to be, and I think it is, then they're not all that far from where the fires are burning, so I can't blame them for sending everyone home.

Be safe Pan.

Wow, it's gotten worse. There's like a half dozen fires now and about 500 structures have burnt and 200,000 acres.

be careful guys, hope they get that under control soon

Yeah its not a pretty picture out here in San Diego. My corporate office told everyone to stay home today, all except me and our store helpdesk :( Love operations.
Almost looks like its snowing everywhere due to the falling ash. Air smells pretty nasty, unless you enjoy perma smoke. I feel for everyone thats lost their homes and to those few unfortunate ones that actually lost their lives. Very sad

Ack ! /comfort to those who in San Diego. Forest fires are bit too common now days =/

i also live in san diego, have been evacuated from my house.
500 structures is also a lil exagerated... its more like 200 houses and the extra 300 being shacks, etc. or perhaps im just behind on the news, only woke up a few hours ago.

i was kinda wondering about the soe building heh, would be quite the bad thing for it to go down, but im sure most corporate buildings are fairly resistant to any of the fires around here.

My area is still blocked out by the police, im in the san carlos area and pretty much 1/4 of a mile away from the fires near me, although i havent heard anything on the news lately, supposedly because its died down.

stay safe pan and kessel, and any other SD TDG folks.

There have also been really bad fires east of LA...the sky was twilight gray most of Friday and my boyfriend said he could see the mountains on fire...

Bunch of friends at work were evacuated from their homes...

We get fires every year, but this year is pretty bad...

Originally posted by princess0fdiabl0
i also live in san diego, have been evacuated from my house.
500 structures is also a lil exagerated... its more like 200 houses and the extra 300 being shacks, etc. or perhaps im just behind on the news, only woke up a few hours ago.

i was kinda wondering about the soe building heh, would be quite the bad thing for it to go down, but im sure most corporate buildings are fairly resistant to any of the fires around here.

My area is still blocked out by the police, im in the san carlos area and pretty much 1/4 of a mile away from the fires near me, although i havent heard anything on the news lately, supposedly because its died down.

stay safe pan and kessel, and any other SD TDG folks.

The SOE building that I knew of, back when it was Verant, was on the edge of a brush filled Canyon, just a bit North of Miramar air station. I think it's on the South side of the canyon the train runs through, and back a bit. Canyons sucks because the winds really howl through them and all that dead, dry brush builds up in them.

Here's a link on the fires from the Union Tribune: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/fires/20031027-9999_7n27main.html

About 150 homes were destroyed in Scripps Ranch and 30 in Poway. Officials estimated up to 300 homes were destroyed elsewhere in the county.

Problem is, other So CA cities can't send us help because they're busy with their own fires. In fact, we sent some of our folks to them, and we can't get them back until they're released.

The lack of help forced hard-pressed fire crews to make painful choices. In some locations, they stood their ground. In others, they pulled back, abandoning whole neighborhoods to walls of oncoming flames.

San Diego fire Chief Jeff Bowman described flying over the fire areas and seeing a single home in a cul-de-sac on fire, calling in for help down below but being told there were no units available.

"There aren't any to send," he said. "It's just really frustrating."

gawd...just heard about a guy at work who lost his house to the Old Fire...the skies are orange and opaque out my office window...=P

I've got a map of the areas effected by the Old Fire (I work for a software mapping company); I'll try to figure out how to get it up online...

*edit*
scratch my map....info and maps from NOAA

http://w3.noaa.gov/fireweather/

http://www.osei.noaa.gov/Events/Current/

Wow, I was born and raised in San Diego but now live in Wa state where I retired from the Navy. My parents still live in Mira Mesa and I have relatives scattered around Southern California from Temecula/Escondido/Rancho Bernardo area to Santa Barbara. I also still have friends living in Scripps Ranch (which I know was hit hard) and La Mesa. I hope this ends soon.

Here's a satelite map of the fires. Scroll down to the bottom to see San Diego. There's two big ones that theyr'e afraid might join up together.

http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/archive/cgb2003300_0700.jpg

Nasty stuff.

Stay safe those of you in that area!

Bet that hunter is feeling pretty bad right now.

Actually, Pan, that's a DEM (digital elevation model).

I ended up spending the day printing fire maps for the USFS and California Department of Fire for the Old Fire and Grand Prix fires...6 people I work with have lost their homes. =P (I work for a mapping software company - I specialize in printing.)

There's a private contractor who's using a helicopter to fly around the fire lines, digitizing the fire's growth...took them four hours to circle the Grand Prix fire (for the 10:00 AM dataset).

Stay safe out there Panamah and cupcake druid.. er... Chenier.

Hopefully the weather will bring a rain storm soon. =/

They say drizzle possible on Friday, which means it won't. :p

But at least the hot santa anna is gone, until next week when we get another one.

Sounds like some headway may be made today on some of the fires. It is scary to see a location map of Southern California and realize everything outside of LA and Orange County is on fire. I work in the Valley and can see the Simi-Valley/Chatsworth fire from there and it is pretty daunting. San Bernadino one is the other way.

Anyways, here is to everyone being safe.

And if the fire does happen to get close to any of you, don't be one of those people who waits to the last minute with their car "ready-to-go".

Those fire maps are really cool. It's just amazing to look at them and think "holy gecko! All that land burned?"

Right now the urban/suburban areas of San Diego are out of danger, but there's a very nice historical mountain community that is in jeopardy of getting burned up. :( Julian. It's known for the fall apple festival and cute stores and B&B's.

Homes destroyed
7:30 p.m.
According to County Supervisor Greg Cox's office this is the most recent count of homes and buildings destroyed in the fires:
Cedar – 1,533 homes , 172 outbuildings .
Paradise – 117 homes, 100 outbuildings.
There are currently 13 assessment teams across the county trying to compile the addresses of homes lost. Not all of the areas are currently accessible.



My god... more than 1600 homes burned.

I printed maps for 13 hours straight yesterday...the Old Fire in San Bernardino grew enormously in the past 36 hours...=P

Talk about no police... my guild had killed blob and two other named in VT when this other guild coh jumped over us and started killing DXV, claiming they had first aggro on DXV and refused to leave.

I think probably SOE is back at work as of yesterday. It's cleared up a lot. Although I think the schools are closed until Monday, so might be a lot of parents out taking care of their kids.

Well, just to let everyone know. The San Diego fires are pretty much under control, but still going!


Fire update
Cedar Fire
15 people killed
2,207 homes destroyed
281,000 acres burned
81% contained
Fire perimeter map
Paradise Fire
2 people killed
169 homes destroyed
56,700 acres burned
60% contained
Fire perimeter map


The one fire, Otay fire, isn't reported here.

I heard a guy on the TV talking about how the chapparal brush is meant to burn. It's part of the life cycle, even needed by some species to germanate. People come here from other areas and want to live in woodlands. So they build in the middle of nowhere, with this brush all around them. We've got tons of these tress from Australia that are really, really flammable too. Combine that with lots of dead trees from a beetle problem, lots of years of drought, people not replacing their wood shake roofs and it was just going to happen if the conditions were right.

Hindsight is 20/20 now. Hopefully they'll make people replace those types of roofs and hopefully people will take brush abatement policies more to heart, though I'm not sure they help when the wind is gusting 50+ MPH. And hopefully next time it won't be 2 days before they send us help from elsewhere.

God, what a week!