Good morning everyone. It's been a hell of a two week period since I was here last. Normally I'm here to talk about tech and or gaming news, but this isn't so much of a normal WRUP as it is my experience over the past several days withe the Oak Fire.

It seems I was just talking about how lucky we've been here with local fires and then last Thursday the Oak Fire started. At first I wasn't too worried about it myself, but I do have a very good friend in Midpines, where the fire began, and I was unable to get ahold of her for days. That has been resolved since that time, she's okay. Anyway, about 1:30-ish pm, if I'm remembering right, the power went out and I stepped outside to see the smoke plume looking much closer. I decided to get a couple of go bags ready and get the dogs harnessed up in case we got evacuated. For those who don't know, I live with my folks to help take care of things here and my dad who's health is declining. They had been in Fresno at a doctor appointment and arrived home around 3:00pm. My dad had fallen outside a day or two prior and broken his shoulder in three places, so he couldn't do much. My mom had recently had surgery on her face for skin cancer, so she wasn't in great shape to be lifting items to and from the house. Still she managed to pack an unreasonable amount of stuff into the car.

Once that was done I decided to grab a few extra things and toss into my truck just to be over prepared. Then I sat on my tailgate and watched the planes and helicopters fly over for the next few hours. There was a sky crane helicopter, at least one C-130, DC-7, DC-10, 737 and I believe a DC-3 all flying directly overhead so close I could shake hands with the pilots. They were preceded by smaller lead planes that were guiding the large VLAT's into position. They were not casually flying either. The jumbo jets made tankers were below deck and moving very fast making turns they were never designed for. Planes have a floor of a thousand feet legally while helicopters are supposed to stay above 500. These planes looked like were in the 500 foot range maybe even 300 feet if I had to guess. It was pretty awe inducing to see these pilots fly over and more or less turn the planes sideways into these crazy drifting turns and then bank so hard the wings would visibly flex upward with the strain of the G-forces. Were it not such a scary situation it would have been like going to an air show demo. I'm going to post a small gallery of pictures I took from my front yard. Bear in mind that they do no justice to what was happening. Also I'm sorry for the lack of clarity, they're processed down a bit.

By 9:00pm the call came in that we were evacuating. My sister and her husband were also visiting and at his mom's place a short distance away making sure they were okay. My mom wasn't going to leave until they showed up here. Some frantic texting and calling and a time later they pulled into the drive as well as a few sheriff's vehicles to impress upon us that it was time to go. One last check for things to be locked down and by 10:30 we were gone. Once we hit the highway I could see the full extent of what was coming. On the way to town we go down a hill called Woodland Grade and from there was a view of the ridge which was a wall of fire as far as one could see. It was a devastating view and for the first time I was actually worried we'd lose our home. Once in town at our meeting place we began trying to raise friends and make sure they were out or safe in the very least and we were also trying to find a place to stay for what could be quite a while. Lucky for us we had that figured out pretty fast and the local American Legion Hall became our home from then on. It couldn't have been more comfortable and we thank them so much for their immediate hospitality. We had two bathrooms, a kitchen, air conditioning, and plenty of space all to ourselves and they were totally fine with the pets being there. Which is great because the animal shelters filled very quickly once the evacuations started and to my knowledge none of the hotels had vacancy, let alone accepted pets. The Red Cross had also set up a shelter but we really wanted to avoid the crowd if possible. From there we just waited for updates both on our phones and word of mouth from people we had run across. This went on for a couple of days.

At the community meeting that Sunday the incident commander had said that in his 30 years of experience this was the most extreme fire he's ever been involved with. Lots of closures and evacuations were out of abundance of caution and hopefully we'd see some containment numbers pop up soon. The fire had burned some 22 square miles in that time with spot fires popping up from blowing embers distances away that were not conducive of normal behavior. The fire that caused my evacuation was a spot fire just north of where I live in a community called Lushmeadows. It was an ember that blew some 2 miles to start that fire and it came within less of a mile as the crow flies to reaching my home. The next morning we all got up as normal and walked down the street to the local Happy Burger diner and got breakfast and coffee. We talked with fire crews changing shifts as we had been doing, finding a normal part of the day. Then the updates came rolling in and we saw that there was now a definite stoppage of southern fire progression and containment of 10 per cent. This was great news because that's where the line would advance toward my home. It likely meant we were safe. By around maybe 2:00pm as a conservative guess the notice came in that we could get home with a photo ID, but to be aware that re-evacuation was a possibility. The timing was great because the Legion Hall needed the building back the next morning so we cleaned up, replaced what we had taken and or used and went home after eating dinner.

I got to the south side of the road I live down around 9:00pm. I had stopped to pick up a small generator that would power our fridge and swamp cooler because we were almost certainly without power still. To my surprise the CHP officer at the checkpoint to allow access gave me a welcome home and told me the power had already been restored. That was a relief let me tell you. I thanked him and wished him a good rest of his night. I didn't know what else to say but it didn't feel enough. When I got home folks were already unpacking and things were fairly normal looking. Some outdoor plants were lost due to no water for 4 days in 100 degree heat and the house smelled a little like ozone from all the burning and soot and ash blowing around. Of course there was a lot of smoke in the air. Over all a similar experience from the last time I was evacuated in 2018 from the Ferguson fire.

We got lucky. Friends of our a few miles down the same road lost their home and everything they had. They didn't even have time to load a vehicle when it came time to go. Another close friend was also lucky and while her two closest neighbor's homes burned hers was left standing. The fire stopped in her driveway. Two more friends have their home and business in the same place. They run a local U-Haul rental and have a stack of storage units. They found out the same day that their home was safe, thankfully. A dozer team had cut a fire break around their property and the team used the space they had as a temporary staging area. In the coming days we learned of many more names and homes lost. Last I looked the number of residences destroyed stood at 106. As much as I hate to say it, I think that number will rise a little longer. But hopefully not much more as the fire is now burning northward into national forest area. This is good news because there are no residences there to threaten. But it's also bad news because we don't want our forests to be destroyed. Fire is needed to maintain woodland health, but on the scale we see now it's just destructive. Current acreage burned is 19,240 and there's 52 per cent containment. By no means the biggest fire we've seen here, but certainly one of the most dangerous and destructive. I would like to wish everyone affected by the Oak Fire the best. This is a hell of a community when people actually come together. We'll all help each other pick up the pieces.

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Now What are we playing this weekend?

Yoda: Well I have become the ultimate master Archdruid in WOW now. I (mostly) understand all the abilities and rotations for all 4 different specs of the class. Which I learned by making 3 more druid characters, each a different race, and playing a specific spec with them while I leveled so I could slowly learn Bear, Resto and Balance. It was honestly a shit ton of fun. So now when I que for dungeons I just que for every role, meaning I almost never have long wait times to do dungeons. Although currently the time Walking event is for WOD dungeons and well... No fucking wonder people hated that expansion. The dungeons are all annoying as shit lolSo might try to unlock a 5th race for a 5th druid to make while that goes on. Especially since the other troll race gets to have dinosaurs as their druid forms. So definitely gotta get that. Owlbear-Raptor Druid, here I come.

AJ: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II got released on GOG last week, so I may check that out. Also, I recently acquired complete boxed copies of Golden Axe and Cool Spot for the Genesis, so likely those as well.

Greywolfe: final fantasy 5 continues. i'm at one of the game's walls [though, i made this one myself, more-or-less, since i'm trying to farm the blue magic about as soon as i can for each enemy.] - currently facing down a guy that just wipes my team before i can get the setup i need to get the blue magic from him. we'll see how that goes. space quest 4 winds down this weekend and i'm still painting in chicory, which continues to be very restful.

Scrooloose: I reinstalled Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. So I'm enjoying building my park. It's a good chill experience after this past week.