The fires here in California are close enough to me that it looks overcast out but it's really just the smoke from all the fires around here. Fortunately none of my family are adversely affected by the fires (I have family in Santa Rosa.)

What has affected us is our link to the Internet goes through Napa County. Right now our headquarters building where I work is fine, but we don't have connections to our branches. But the County is down. They're working with my boss to set up something to get the rest of the County on Internet through our connection. We have this screaming connection that we get at a deeply discounted rate because we're a library. CENIC provides us with a 100GB connection for pennies. (When we work with vendors that have to download their product or app or something they are always surprised how quickly a 20 GB file will download.)

Every time someone comes into the room we can smell the smoke.

There's a photo in this link you really should see. It's an overhead shot of a neighborhood that's just gone. We're not talking about rural homes that are inaccessible and have no fire hydrants. It's just a regular neighborhood like the one I live in.

http://www.ksro.com/2017/10/10/fires...s-devastation/