Fallbrook on Fire

We are happy to report that the Khoury family is fine and well. We were evacuated from Fallbrook on Monday and remained refugees until Friday, when we were allowed to return to our home. Needless to say seeing our home for the first time after the evacuation was a relief. The fires came within a mile from our home. That's too close for comfort.

As we were evacuating I snapped this photo of the smoke and fire coming towards us. When we got the evacuation call it was blue skys over the house and smoke to the north. By the time we got a few things in the car and drove away it was raining ash at the property.

Here's Nader and Bella pulling away from our house. You can't even see the sky it's so full of smoke. It was eerie how dark it suddenly became.

Here we are driving North on the 5 freeway. This was taken around Camp Pendleton area and as you can see the sunset was shrouded with smoke. This was the first day of this fire, I am sure it got much worst.

Here is a Google earth map showing our house relative to the fires. Nader figured out how to import the fire hotspot location from the US Forest Service. The Rice Canyon fire started on Sunday on the East side of the 15 and moved into Rainbow and Fallbrook, on a direct path to us. This is what it looked like on Tuesday. The yellow spots are the location of the fire on Monday night, about a mile away. The red and orange spots are the location of the fire on Tuesday. Lucky for us it started to head north into Deluz and Camp Pendalton. Not totally luck, The fire department made their last stand at Gird. If it would have crossed that street, a lot of us would have been in trouble.

Even though we were glued to the television for any type of news regarding the fires, we made the most of our time. We stayed the first night at the Stephen's, our friends in San Clemente and the remaining days and nights with Nader's brother, Brian, and his family in Murrieta. Here's a shot of both sets of twins playing in a lion tent.

Here's Sahara and Maya trying to pour water over their cousin Dominic.

We killed some time at the Temecula Mall which was just about the only place we could go outside the house and not choke on smoke.

Close up of Sahara.

Close up of sweet Maya.