While you’re registering phone numbers, think about the national Do Not Call registry (https://www.donotcall.gov/). Remember that registering only lasts for 5 years. If it’s been a long time since you’ve registered your number, you might consider re-registering.

San Diego County has a website of disaster preparedness information, Ready San Diego. If you’re looking to make a disaster plan, you might find some good information here. In addition, there is a page for signing up alternate phone numbers for the Reverse 911 system. By default, Reverse 911 calls your home landline phone. If you’d like to be notified on another number (cell or VoIP), you can register the telephone number at the website.

A couple of things to wrap-up the fire discussion:

• I was sent this Fire Disaster Document that provides information on contacting insurance companies, FEMA and the California Department of Insurance. If you know anyone who has lost property, the info may help.
• A final thank-you to everyone who provided information. While there were only 60 or so comments, they provided information to a lot of people who wanted to know how Carmel Valley was doing. The posts were very reassuring to me (I was in LA), and many others.

After the Cedar Fire (4 years ago), I got a number of requests from people to add a bulletin board system to allow for just this kind of communication. Please let me know if something didn’t work, or if some other feature would be useful for the next disaster. With luck, I’ll have many years to prepare, and we’ll do even better next time.

I’ve seen a couple of different recommendations on how to cleanup all the ash from the fire. One is at the SignOnSanDiego Fire Blog (http://sosdfireblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/advice-on-cleanup.html), the other was sent to me in an email (I don’t know its origin), and you can read it by clicking ‘more’… (more…)

Just returned home after being gone two nights. All seems well other than the wind damage from Sunday night (our back fence is down, we had some tree damage.) The air quality is better than it was, but still not great. The wind is blowing down from the northwest, so we’re getting old smoke that had blown out to sea over the previous few days. I have not driven around yet.

We drove down I-5 from Orange County. Fires in Irvine, fires in Camp Pendleton. The fires in Camp Pendleton are burning right across from the nuclear power station, right under the powerlines. Other than that, everything looked normal on the coast. Traffic was light before noon.

Thanks to everyone who provided updates over the last two days!

I’ve heard that the garbage pickup that was to be on Tuesday has been rescheduled for Saturday. I don’t know about other days. I assume the mail delivery will restart soon, possibly today. Schools reopen on Monday.

The evacuation in Carmel Valley has been lifted. This means that the specific communities of Carmel Valley, Torrey Hills and Torrey Pines are open again. I-5 south (not north) has reopened within Camp Pendleton, so you can get home if you’re in Orange County. Welcome home, all!

The Del Mar, Solana Beach and San Dieguito schools are all closed for the rest of the week. School will reopen Monday, October 29, unless there is some major change in circumstances.

Sorry if I don’t update the calendar, but pretty much everything is canceled. I just read that the trash service is suspended today, and assume there won’t be any mail service. The UnionTribune Fire Blog (http://sosdfireblog.blogspot.com/) has updated information.

If you’re in Carmel Valley north of SR-56, watch out. I’ve heard about mandatory evacuations in Carmel Valley all the way west to I-5. See the UnionTribune website for more (http://www.signonsandiego.com/). I don’t have detailed information, though.

The air outside is a lot like being inside of a fireplace, yuck. I can’t find any real information on school closings Monday, does anyone know more? The Torrey Pines website (http://tp.sduhsd.net/) says that school will be open, but they will call if the situation changes.

The Union Tribune has an article on the soon-to-open Grand Del Mar Resort that tells us that Del Mar Mesa is now in Del Mar. We know this isn’t true, and that the resort has nothing to do with Del Mar other than providing a good reference point for out-of-town guests. At any rate, the Grand adds a nice resort to the growing list of amenities surrounding Carmel Valley.