Southern California Fire Storms

I am just one of over 300,000 people that have been directly affected by the Southern California wild fires. This will give everyone an update on our situation, but will also lay the ground work for my next few daily posts with news and announcements regarding assistance for Southern California fire victims, especially in terms of income tax relief.

We were evacuated from our home in Ramona on Sunday evening. I don’t know if you ever saw the movie Dante’s Peak, but it reminded me a lot of that movie. It was dark, lots of bright flames all around on the hill tops, way too much smoke so that it was difficult to breathe.

It was a mandatory evacuation with the fire about 2 miles away. We almost went to our friend’s home that was at the far west side of Ramona but decided to go down the hill and stay in a Marriott Residence Inn (they take animals by the way) off the 15 Fwy.

The fire was moving so fast that our friend was actually evacuated only 45 minutes later and was out before we even made it to the hotel. We were evacuated again from the hotel yesterday morning (we woke up with smoke in our room) and thought we would stay in a hotel in downtown SD, but everything is sold out.

We joined up with my fiance's family that is staying in motor homes and fifth wheels in the Wal-Mart parking lot. We thought we would be evacuating again last night because the fire crested the hill next to us, in front of us and behind us, but it retreated and I’m back at the office today.

It feels like I have smoked 100 cigars by this point, but thankfully we are all O.K. and our homes are O.K. at this point in time. They are beginning to talk about letting some people back into certain areas, but I doubt that will happen until tomorrow.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Franchise Tax Board will be issuing a number of notices shortly with income tax relief for victims of the Southern California fire storms, including San Diego County, Orange County, Los Angeles County, Riverside County and San Bernardino County.

I will be posting this relief on this blog as well on our Exeter Discussion Board.