Here is a letter from my Dad, he has been keeping us updated on what’s going on: Hi everyone,First of all, thank you all for your thoughts and prayers on our behalf.Our family and home are fine but I have many friends who are still displaced and some I know have lost their homes. This is a huge disaster for our area. So many people have been displaced and many have lost everything. We are thankful however, that there has been so little loss of life. That is in part to the aggressive evacuations that have been instituted as a lesson they learned from the wildfires three short years ago.We have taken families into our home who have been evacuated to stay with us. The evacuation command came to about a block from our home so we were watching things carefully. We were packed and ready to roll if needed. Merrilee has been busy running the evacuation shelter for our city. We have had several hundred people staying there and the generous outpouring of donations and service has been outstanding. Their generosity and service would make SAP proud!I was asked to go out with the city Engineer to photograph all the homes and property that was destroyed in our city as documentation for FEMA. After a full day, we are only about half done with the ~100 homes that were destroyed in Poway. It is so incredibly sad to see all these homes reduced to ruin. It really makes you think about what is important in life and how you need to always be prepared, like the Scout motto says… We’ll be back at it today.This is a terribly weird way to meet and get close to your neighbors, but I must say I have made a lot of new friends this week. Anyway, we will get through this and rebuild like we did three years ago. It will take time, but we will heal.LAF. That is my new acronym. It means “Life After the Fires”… We still have lots going on. I am planning a Scout service project on Saturday. We are trying to get materials and make as many “sifters” as we can. Then we will distribute them and help people wherever we can to clean up and search for any trasures that might have survived… Here is a photo of the sifter we will be building. I am not sure how many we can make. Maybe 100. It would be awesome if we could make one for every family. We have put the word out to other Stakes for materials and volunteers to help too.

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