Where there's smoke, there's worry

The next few days might get a little bit interesting for me, dear ones. And I mean "interesting" in that classic Chinese sense.

Sometime last Thursday, a nasty fire started near where I live. By Saturday, the word "wildfire" was being used to describe it, and other blazes across the state, in this newspaper article. As of 8 pm last night, the fire looked like this:


Now, to give you the sense of urgency I feel, let me show you on Google Earth where I live in relation to these fires:


The red polygons roughly represent the area of the fires. My house is the dot of high-contrast magenta in the top center of the map. That's about 8.5 miles from the leading edge of the fire to the front door of my house.

Some of you may say, "Palette, it's nearly ten miles away, don't you think you're overreacting?" Well, no. Back in 1998, we had a fire season that was so bad, every county in the state was on fire (with the exception of the Keys). Our county was surrounded by fire on three sides -- North, West, and South -- and so we had to evacuate across the Intracoastal Waterway. Everyone said, "The fire can't possibly cross the Intracoastal." But you know what? By that time, the blaze had become a firestorm, meaning that the combustion was creating its own wind. Wind strong enough to blow flaming embers across the Intracoastal Waterway.

So, yeah. I'm just a tad concerned. I'm keeping tabs on FlaglerEmergency.com. Let's all pray for rain, because having my house burn down would really ruin my day.