Are any of our Southern Californian fugees being affected by the fires?

Or any Brisvegans hailed on yesterday? Beej? NatCat? Diogenes? Ozzy? Kiryn? Kimp?

Yeah we've got quite a few people we know from another board who have been evacuated - you SoCal lot should all check in!

I'm fine, but thanks for the concern. I've had to keep my front windows closed all day, because smoke-smelling air is blowing in... from the west, the ocean, oddly enough. I think it must be getting carried down the coast from the fires to the north of us.

I saw coverage of the fires on the news last night - they look awful. Fingers crossed for all of you. We Australians are very aware of the danger of bushfires, and I always get twitchy when I hear about them, where-ever they are.

Take care, you guys.

I do hope everyone is okay. Fires are not good things. The last few years here have been particularly nasty.

So fingers crossed all are well and nothing is lost.

I totally hear you eej about the smoke. It's so damn dry and you can't get away from it. I hate it.

Been meaning to check up on the Calerfonians and Brisvegans. Fire always makes me nervous.

The weather is going a bit crazy this year. We've just had the coldest october in 52 years in Adelaide.

I'm in the same boat as eej. I'm fine, nowhere near the fires but am having to deal with the smoke and the ash from the fires. One of my cousins was visiting from Indiana and staying closer to the San Bernadino fires than where I live. I had to take the 210 to visit her at her hotel and it was a little scary going home at night because the visibility was reduced because of the smoke. Otherwise, when having to venture out, I avoid wearing black because, with the ash blowing round, it looks like I have a bad case of dandruff.

I'm fine, and our house if fine. We've had a number of coworkers evacuated, and as the Disaster Recovery Planner for our building, I've been very busy planning the recovery of some functions to another state. I'll be leaving to go to that other site in a couple of hours, and will spend the next few days there (at least) helping out.

The smell in my building, which has very good air filtration, is quite smelly and unhealthy, but it's about 50 times worse outside. I gave Mr. B my mask because he'll be here for days, and I won't.

I'm glad you're okay, Bol. Here's hoping that the wildfires will be out soon.

Glad to read everyone is okay.

I didn't get affected by last Sunday's hail storm but the weather in BrisVegas today is a bit frecky.

30 degrees by 7am, mucho gusty winds and a dust storm coming in.

Hoping that Southern Californians are all safe. We just had an earthquake. It appears to be centered in San Luis Obispo and it was a 6.5 (which is pretty strong). I'm on the West Side and it didn't do much damage but I'm worried that people closer to the epicenter weren't as lucky. Please check in since I am geographically impaired and have no idea where anyone besides ejg and Boliver are in relation to San Luis Obispo.

I just spoke with my grandparents in SLO and they said things were alright there, however nearby Pasa Robles is apparently not as lucky. They're busy checking out gas lines, etc on their house, but for the most part everything seems to be in the clear so far.

I'm currently 3,000 miles from San Luis Obispo. Did it do any damage in your apartment, mj? I'm a little nervous about how my place is.

Hope everyone (and their everythings) are okay.

me too - keep safe over the festive season.

Sorry this took a bit to answer, eej, I was at work when the quake hit so I had to wait to get home to check out the damage, if any. Everything is fine. Nothing knocked off the shelves or broken. It was a weird earthquake in that it just rolled back and forth, without any real jutting. But it lasted almost a minute and when your building is rocking back and forth, that can seem like a very long time. But it doesn't look like there was any major damage this far south so I think you can relax about the state of your apartment.

My one cat is not handling it well. This was her first earthquake and when she decides to get off the bed (or me), she walks crouched down, very low to the ground. It's breaking my heart.

Poor cat. Did she act funny before the quake? You hear that they can sense them coming.

Glad to hear that nothing was broken.

No, my cats suck at being an early warning system. The same thing with the Northridge quake. I was living with three cats at that time and not a peep from any of them.

Poor Kitty hope she is feeling better.

BrisVegas has had a week of thunderstorms, but right now we are having our worst yet. The sky is green, I can't see the building across the street because of the rain and the wind & thunder is making all the office windows vibrate.

Oooooo.

Brisbane has surely taken a battering. I abandoned my Pond after about 2 hours of no electricity. I was one of over 120,000 homes in Brisbane to lose power last night. On the way to FertWorld this morning, I saw whole, fully grown eucalypts uprooted and lying by the side of the road, branches covering complete lanes of traffic on Old Cleveland Road, and major intersections with no traffic lights (including the intersection at The Pond: Old Cleveland Road and Creek Road.)

Here's the story in the Courier Mail.

Our floor at work sustained major damage in last nights storm, the windows started leaking and there were streams of water coming from the lights in the boardroom. Certainly made for interesting end of month drinks!

I've been extremely lucky with this week of storms. Aside from getting drenched to the core on Wednesday afternoon, I haven't lost power once and the Shack seems to be holding up okay.

Sounds as though it's been pretty ferocious up there.

Beej, do me a favour? I'm very pleased you're coming to stay with me this weekend, but please leave the storms in Brisbane? Thanks for that.

The Pond was without power for about 19 hours - thankfully, I wasn't there to be inconvenienced, but will be throwing out all the food in my freezer and starting again. My Aunt on Bribie Island lost their power for 21 hours a couple of days earlier, and blew up their television and telephone.

Hope all the Birsvegas survived without too much damage to themselves, home or pets.

There is some wild and wacky weather happening around the world. Hope everyone in the UK and US is alright after all that snow.

Thankfully it's been awhile since this topic surfaced.

I've been watching all the news footage from the devastating tsumami in the Indian Ocean and I just wanted to send out some love to all those hundreds of thousands of families all around the area who have missing loved ones.

It's unbelievable, isn't it? The sheer scale of the disaster is hard to comprehend.

It's also been interesting watching all of the footage being shown on the 30th anniversary of Cyclone Tracy - maybe because I was only 9 when it happened, but I never really appreciated how bad it was until recently.

The footage has been horrible so many places which were already in trouble experencing more trouble. The last thing Aceh and Sir Lanka needed was a natural disaster.

It's funny which story hits you the most but I'm feeling worried about the 16 year old Aussie Boy who has downs syndrome and has been separated from his family - really hope he is alright.

It's strange to think that the best thing we will be able to do for these places is go on holiday in the once they are up and running again - the economies are too dependant on the tourst trade to cope with a slump.

I got a brief e-mail: the one person I know in Sri Lanka is alive and well.

In this day and age it should have been possible to warn people. I know not every disaster is avertable, but this so seems like it should have been--at least for coasts an hour and more away from the epicenter, which many of the affected areas were.

But I know that some of this is just me wanting to be able to control the uncontrollable. Ultimately, it's all just very sad.

It was possible to warn people. The countries just didn't invest the time and resources needed to do so. I know you have to pick and choose where you spend your money and a tsunami is infrequent but the countries were told by the U.S. and other countries that the tsunami was going to hit and these countries just didn't have anything in place to alert their citizens. In some instances, U.S. officials weren't even certain who they should contact. I know it's Monday quarterbacking but to not have in place anything resembling an emergency evacuation program (not for tsunami but for other natural disasters) seems negligible. It's typical human behavior, though. Some horrible human cost has to occur before any real change is made.

While you make a good point MJ I think you'll find the real situation was a bit more complicated than that. It wasn't just that there was no one to contact but the experts weren't even sure were the earthquake had happened - they had a rough idea but to work out from there and then who to contact wasn't going to happen in the time avalable and even if they did contact someone what could be done? They don't have a siren to alert people to get to higher ground even then quiet a few places didn't have higher ground.

But don't they have t.v.'s? I'm not saying it would have saved everyone but in the tourist areas surely some people who are now dead would have been alive. Also, according to this article, the countries were warned within 15 minutes of the earthquake that something was headed their way.

Sadly, I think this is one of those many occasions where it takes something awful to happen before authorities will take the steps necessary to prevent or to minimise harm. It reminds me (on a much larger scale, of course) of the times local communities have lobbied for traffic lights at dangerous intersections, and nothing is done until a child is killed. Then the traffic lights go in. I have been interested to read about the warning systems in place in the Pacific Ocean countries, and whilst many would still have lost their lives in this tragedy if there had been something similar in the Indian Ocean rim countries, the scale of lives lost may have been reduced.

The local radio stations are getting behind the relief effort, asking listeners to donate. It's wonderful to hear people phoning in with donations, saying they'd rather give the money to those that need it instead of buying up big at the January sales. Even people with little or no money to spare are digging deep.

When I gave to the red cross earlier it was through amazon - at that point they had almost 3.2 million they'd helped to raise for it. I think thats so great - although I know its going to take so much more.

Yeah I've been watching the reports makes you feel that despite the tragedy there is hope for the world. We're not selfish just a bit self centered some of the time.

I heard they raised $1 millon at the fireworks display in Sydney - just from donations from people there.

Earthquake! 5.3.

We had one good swaying rock back and forth. That's only the second genuinely feelable one I've had in four years... and they're disappointingly never how they seemed on Buffy. Most of them, you can't be sure it's not just your imagination or someone's stereo cranking out the booms in an action movie.

I didn't feel this one, but a client just called and he certainly did. Ron and I felt the one the night before last (or so), so much so that I got up off the comfy recliner and stood around for a minute or so.

Feeling an earthquake will never be as weird as watching TV the other day (bizarrely, watching it live, despite rarely ever doing that) and seeing a tsunami warning scroll across the top of the screen. That was totally a WTF moment.

I didn't feel that one that hit in the ocean up north at all. It's weird how random it is, depending on the bedrock your building is on or that sort of thing. For instance, my desk at work is over the parking garage and I feel vibration and rumbling from the cars going under frequently (lovely sensation), so I felt the quake. But a girl two cubicles over felt nothing... maybe she's sitting over a support beam?

You know, years ago I wrote an article about how store owners should protect themselves before and after different types of natural disasters, and they laughed at me when I wanted to include tsunamis...

I felt it. I work in one of those office buildings that are on rollers so, while I guess it makes the building safer, it also makes the earthquake last longer.

eej--The ones that are like Buffy are the ones like the Northridge earthquake and I'm okay not going through that again. Whereas the earthquake we had today was kind of like "Wooooh! Earthquake!", the Buffy-like, Northridge earthquake is more like "Shit! I have about 15 seconds to live."

I was in Eagle Rock for the Northridge quake, and while it was a big one, for some reason, I wasn't fearful. I can't say that for other kids in the dorm who weren't from the west coast.

Okay, that's disappointing.

Those reactions are a little bizarre - "it would have been fun" - er, didn't 17 people DIE? Just seems like an inappropriately jaunty article, considering.

What the heck's happening on the Gold Coast? Yikes, it sounds awful.

I don't think the reactions were too bad. There are always mudslides here, record rain or no. Plus, bottom line, it was just a lot of rain.

Only in L.A. could you be like five inches short of a record with four months left to go, and four months later still be an inch short.

I've been watching the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and the devastation in New Orleans in particular. It's hard to believe the pictures we're seeing are from the US. I hope everyone's family and friends are safe.

All of my friend's that are in NO and mississippi are OK, thank god. I can't believe the photos are from the US either, or that we can't 'fix this' faster.

So many people are talking about whether or not to rebuild because its going to cost so much. I'd rather my money be spent on rebuilding something here than another country. Sorry if that seems callous, but its how I feel.

There are all kinds of contentious issues associated with this whole mess. The funding for flood protection being halved, even though it was one of the top 3 disasters-in-waiting according to FEMA being one of the most contentious.

But - Go, Georgie - cut estate tax. Y'all don't need the money.

*rolls eyes*

(Nal: You aren't spending money rebuilding another country. You (and we!) spent the money destroying the other country so that your (and our) privately owned companies could make a fortune rebuilding it.)

The destruction in New Orleans is horrible. I have a harder time looking at the photos and stomaching the stories because I feel like these are people like me. Seeing photos of war torn villages in Iraq or places that were struck by the tsunami last year were horrible to see, but I guess easier to handle because I can't relate to the people as closely.

Honestly, the stories that I've had the hardest time reading are the ones from the animal rescue groups. I'm more okay reading stories about dead bodies floating in the streets than the people who had to leave pets behind. I'm not sure what that says about me?

Well, the story that gave me the most pangs and makes me want to know how it turned out is that of the homeless man who left the Superdome before the landfall because they wouldn't allow him to keep his cat. So I guess I'm in the same boat.