Good news from this afternoon’s DNC briefing…
1. Power is on in El Portal and Yosemite West and they expect to have power in the Valley by 8pm tonight, with the possibility of permanent power (rerouting lines around the burn area). This means that it wasn’t a totally stupid thing to take things out of the cooler last night and put them back in the refrigerator, and that Tom is probably enjoying a hot shower even as I type.
2. Air quality is improving: the health alert has been lifted as of today (7/30). The air quality hasn’t bothered me too much, although I’ve been avoiding running in the stuff. However, I work with a bunch of asthmatics, and they have been pulling heavily on their inhalers.
3. 140 is open again – with a CHP escort between 8am and 8pm. We don’t really use this corridor often, but the fact that they’ve opened it up again, means that the fire is unlikely to jump the road and head uphill toward our house.
4. The best news: The fire is now 40% contained (up from 20% this morning). Kenny talked to a firefighter who said that the threat to El Portal has “abated” too. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but since El Portal is directly downhill of us, if they think the threat against El Portal has diminished the threat against our neighborhood has probably also diminished.
Keep your fingers crossed that the conditions don’t change for the worst, but for now we seem to be looking pretty good.
Tom has a bunch of Telegraph fire status links on Yosemite Explorer if you want to follow the action like we have been the last few days.