California Wildfires - Everbody OK?

[JSngry]

Had some coworkers who had to evacuate last night. Now they're evacuating Malibu.

Thoughts and prayers and general positive mental energies being sent.

[Neal Pomea]

Terrifying!

[JSngry]

The Camp Fire burning through the town of Paradise, Calif., as seen from space on Nov. 8, 2018. Photo: NASA

[BFrank]

In SF we're about 150 miles from this fire, but the smoke has hit the Bay Area big time. LOTS of people are wearing masks.

[Guy Berger]

8 hours ago, BFrank said:

In SF we're about 150 miles from this fire, but the smoke has hit the Bay Area big time. LOTS of people are wearing masks.

Out of curiosity I compared air quality here and in Beijing - comparable

[JSngry]

[Matthew]

19 hours ago, BFrank said:

In SF we're about 150 miles from this fire, but the smoke has hit the Bay Area big time. LOTS of people are wearing masks.

Also very bad air quality here in the Napa area, AQI is 181. Fires are scary things, they travel so fast and destroy so much...

[ep1str0phy]

Chiming in--this has been pretty worrying. As a lifelong Californian, the peril feels very real and, if it makes sense, real like never before. The 2017 fires got close to my family both down in LA and up in Plumas County; the 2018 fires are also very close but coming from different directions. I have very vivid memories of a miserable holiday season spent jogging in desperate, ashen weather and mainlining Joe McPhee albums like they were the only thing alleviating the strangling touch of the LA air.

BFrank is not underselling things. The air in the Bay area is really, really bad--maybe worse than last year. I hopped out of an elevator at the hospital the other day only to find an elderly lady wearing a full-on gas mask. Activities are more or less limited to indoor stuff (not so hard for music work), but a week into this air quality and I'm feeling the effects both inside and out. 

Underreported (due to lesser significance) is that we had fires out in the East Bay the other week--they were contained with immediacy, but with the climate this time of year I'd advise any fellow locals to assemble something resembling an emergency plan. 

[lipi]

Can confirm Bay Area air quality is pretty bad.

On the plus side, we're totally ahead of the curve on the whole menthol cigarette thing.

[BFrank]

This is what it was like on Saturday, which has been the worst for smokey skies in SF, so far.