Glad to hear that they're out of harm's way! I grew up in southern California, and brush fires were VERY common! When I was in 8th grade we could see the entire range of hills that separated us from Orange County on fire for weeks - we'd just sit on the roof and watch (and hope the wind didn't shift to push the flames farther down our way). That winter we had mudslides and flooding, since the vegetation that held everything in place was gone...
My husband (a native upstate New Yorker) refers to California as "nature's amusement park of natural disasters", lol! It doesn't help that he was there for the
Landers earthquake in 1992, and the
"fire siege of 2003". Fire, flood, earthquake...hmmm...maybe he's right... (I still miss the beach, though)