From Variety‘s Chris Willman, a Sierra Madre resident who’s coping with the possibility of smoke, flames, floating embers and whatnot:

Early this morning: “It looked like the fire was moving away, but now it’s come back south, and they’re saying it’s less than a mile from the Sierra Madre border, just over a mile from the nearest houses in town. I’m down enough blocks from the wilderness that it would have to burn through probably hundreds of houses before it got to me, and it’s slow moving enough that I think they won’t let it become an urban holocaust. I wouldn’t feel so confident if I was on one of the canyon streets here. Anyway, they’re saying we’re still probably at least a day away from having a mandatory evacuation order, if one’s going to come. I feel pretty confident I’ll be okay here, if marginally less sure than I was last night.

This afternoon: “Looking at that wall full of mostly unwatched Blurays, do I grab the Criterions, the Twilight Times or box sets first, if there’s an advance? Prioritize vinyl over CDs in all cases, or try to take time to locate the OOP CDs too? Do I need every one of the dozens of film noir books I’ve ever bought, or will just a couple do me for the rest of my days? These are the questions that occur when you’ve got tens of thousands of pieces of physical media stuffed in one house and cellar, more than could probably fit in a dozen carloads. The odds that they’d let it get down here are probably less than 1%, so not really worth the effort yet. But if that 1% came to pass, I’d be wondering why I didn’t spend days dispersing the library across Los Angeles when I had the chance.”