Our first day in San Diego

Hello everyone!

We made it safely to San Diego, with only a couple mishaps (as in my luggage missing the connecting flight in Pheonix... it showed up at the hotel about 8 hours later), but we're here and learning the ropes. After we checked into the hotel, we were brought down to the call center to get trained in to take the disaster calls. They have two separate call centers, one for the fire disaster information, and one for the general 2-1-1 information calls. We were on the disaster line for about an hour or two last night, and the majority of calls were from people checking on which areas were under evacuation orders, which areas had the evacuation orders lifted, road closure information, and water status (some areas have to boil their water (most everyone)- and some areas have been told not to use thier water at all, so they have to go somewhere and pick up bottled water to use).

They have a TON of excellent volunteers in the disaster line area, and since Chee and I are both trained and certified in general Information and Referral (what we do at United Way 2-1-1), and we're both bilingual (me in Spanish and Chee in Hmong), they decided to train us on their 2-1-1 system so we can provide some much needed respite to thier call center staff. Their call center has been FLOODED with calls... they normally take about 125,000 calls a year... and they've surpassed that in just this week! Most of the volunteers are from the area, whose crash-course, whirlwind training only covered how to answer disaster calls. So yesterday, Chee and I got our crash course on how to use thier system, and this morning, they put us on the phones. So far, the majority of calls have been disaster calls that were routed incorrectly, so we've been sending them over to the disaster lines. The other calls I've answered were people looking for shelter, and unfortunately, all of the shelters are completely full, so the best we can do is tell them to try calling us tomorrow morning to check and see if anything's opened up by then.

It's sort of surreal... it's so beautiful where we are- a smoky haze is really the only evidence I've seen first hand of the fires. It's been interesting talking with some of the volunteers who are from the area... most of them either know someone who has been evacuated, or have had to evacuate themselves... one person I spoke with had about 10 minute's notice in the middle of the night to get himself and his family and whatever they could grab out of their house. So scary. It's good that we're here, though... most everyone seems really glad that 2-1-1 is available to get the information they need... with out us here, they wouldn't know who to call or where to go to get accurate, up-to-date information that is accessible just by dialing an easy, 3-digit number.

~Theresa