Palm Bay Fires may be contained, but apparently the Malabar fires arent .. and I just read the 11am update on this florida today page .. that the 2nd largest fire right now is just south of grant road .. We live off Grant Rd .. South.

The latest news is that the majority of the Palm Bay Fires have been contained .. which is good news

Thank you so much Nikki & Jason for letting us stay with you last night and thank you Keri and Keith for hanging out and bringing pizza.

The winds have shifted in almost the opposite direction then they were blowing yesterday. The west fire has moved east, but more south. Or .. I heard on the radio they were calling a fire the ‘Barefoot Bay’ fire .. which could be a totally different fire then what was west of us yesterday. Its just hard to keep up with everything. 

Here’s a shot looking west, you can barely see the smoke from the palm bay fire now. 

Here’s 2 shots moving the camera to look south west. I have no idea how far these fires are from us .. but they’re far enough away for us not to worry.

This is a shot looking north towards the Malabar fire. I barely see smoke .. but if there’s another flare up in Malabar .. the winds would bring that smoke (and possibly the fire) towards us .. but we think that one is contained. (I really should turn the news on)

The dogs are sound asleep .. poor Big Boy hasn’t been dealing with this too well .. seems to have gotten a really bad upset stomach. Could be food, could be nerves .. but he’s doing much better now that he’s asleep on his own couch. 

Here are a couple shots from our drive home around 9 this morning. We took US-1 and there were still plenty of smoking spots along the road. No firefighters though, they have bigger fires to take care of.

Here you can see smoke pouring out of a tree. This is along the west side of US-1 in Malabar.

Looking east along US1, closer to Valkaria (or Goat Creek)

This last one was taken just as I turned onto US1 south from palm bay road. 

There are more photos in my [photostream]
And here is a little video ..

I have no real news .. Sean is here, we’re all safe now. I haven’t watched the news in the last couple of hours .. but the last news update I saw said that 50+ homes have been destroyed and there were 10 fires scattered around palm bay. Nothing is under control, but I did hear one news report that the wind had died down, which is really good news.

I did find this interesting link: Map of Active Fires

Its a really slow site, but it has all the fires in the entire state. 

Hopefully the wind will stop and the firefighters will have a chance to contain the fires overnight and I’ll have good news in the morning. 

Here’s the smoke at 5:30 when I was packing up to leave. This is the west fire.

This is the north fire 

Here are a few shots on my way away from the house. 

This is like a mile from the house

This is just after crossing the 95 bridge

From Grant Rd. north to Malabar Rd. because of the smoke .. if that changes to ‘because of fire’ .. then we’re evacuating.

Okay .. the fire I’ve been calling the west fire or san fillipo or bayside fire is being called the Palm Bay fire on the news stations. WESH.com or local channel 2 (NBC affiliate) has alot of coverage of it right now.

We’re covered in smoke, and big chunks of ash are falling. They’ve evacuated the highschool by the big fire west of us. Most of the media coverage seems to be focusing on that one now, which is good because that’s the fire I’m the most worried about. They’re calling that fire the bayside or san fillipo fire.

The sunlight is orange through all the smoke. 

Here’s a view of the west fire, you can compare it to the earlier post and easily see the smoke plume is larger. 

Here’s the north fire, its moved more east .. 

Here’s a view of the smoke over our house.

If you’re watching TV or following online on news sites .. if the west fire (san fillipo / bayside) jumps a street called ‘Babcock’ or I-95 near Grant Rd, that’s when we will start loading the car. That would actually be 4 miles or less to our house, and I still dont think we’d be in danger .. but the north fire has burned that same distance. I think the smoke would just be terrible and I dont want to breath that. Also .. if they dont control the fire before tonight, I’d probably want to leave just so we wouldn’t have to worry overnight. 

.. just thinking out loud .. thanks for listening ..

I think I’m actually going to start documenting our stuff right now .. its good to have that for hurricane season too, plus it’ll keep me busy

Driving home we barely saw any smoke, and it looked like things had totally calmed down when I turned around to go get the dogs. But .. on the way back from the dog resort, I saw a new fire, due west of us that had flared up .. and it looks like the ones north are getting worse.

This is the view from our backyard, due west towards the ‘San Fillipo’ fire. Its about 6 miles west of us. The picture is really under exposed so you can see the smoke, its not that dark out here.

This is the scene looking north from our backyard. I’m pretty sure these are still north of Valkaria Rd, but the smoke seems to be coming up from at least 3 different places, for at least a mile. If its where I think it is, that’s pretty much 4 miles straight north of us. 

I think the wind has shifted from blowing towards the north east, to mainly east .. but that’s just my guess from the direction of the smoke.

We’re still not in any danger. That I know of. I mean, we’re not worried right now. They’re expecting the winds to die down. I’ll update you if anything changes.