OK, so here is my first blog in my life so if its utterly boring and cheesy, then TOO BAD! :)
So I started my day waking up at 4:45am and leave the house by 5:15am(ish). I hop on the road and my daily ritual of listening to Kevin and Bean or that annoy a$$ Adam Corolla. But today I went with Kevin and Bean. As Lisa May reports on the traffic, I noticed that she mentioned that there were a bunch of road closures and one of which is the toll roads that I take every morning, 241. I was hoping she would say the northbound 241, but to my dismay, it was for both sides. Lisa May didn't seem too bothered by the fact that there were brush fires and what not, so I just went my normal route thinking that maybe when I get closer to the 241, it would be reopened.
I get on the 71 South (moooooooooo!!) and probably a mile before I hit the 91, traffic started and it was definitely busier than normal. After chugging along the 91, I am getting closer to the 241, but lanes getting to that freeway have already been blocked off along with a cop car sitting in between the lanes with its lights twirling. I then used the navigation to help with my route. I knew that I could probably get off on Imperial Highway, make a right, get on the 57 South to make my way to work, but the navi told me to make a left so I did it. After driving a good 15 miles, it wanted me to make a left on some street. "Make a left turn in 500 feet". Turns out there are cops there and they wouldn't let anyone through. I pass that along with a good 5 or 6 other routes that the navi wanted me to go, but they were ALL blocked by officers due to the fires. So, just a few seconds before saying screw it, I'm driving back home...I find an entrance to the 5 freeway and from there it was slow moving to work.
I get to work and do my thing, turns out that a good 75% of the employees were not even going to be in and had issues getting into the office. Our CIOs secretary tells me to go to one of the offices to look at how close the smoke is to us and I took a few snapshots of it. The picture on the very top is the shot I took in my friends office. At around 11am, I end up not wanting to stay since it would probably take me YEARS to get back home so I am about to leave when the company decided to close the facility and have everyone go home. I leave as fast as I can, but there was somewhat of a traffic jam in our parking lot since everyone is going at the same time.
So the last piece of my story is, as I'm driving down Bake street, I notice 6 or 7 MTA buses escorted by several police motorcycles and a few vans all loaded with sheriffs officers. They get on the 5 South as well and I'm thinking, what is going on in there?? Must be some high-profile criminal that they are escorting. So I turn on KFWB 980 (traffic on the 1's), they said that they are moving the prisoners out of some jail that is close to the brush fires.
The arsonist that caused these fires will find himself/herself or themselves in one of those facilities soon enough.
