June 5, 2008

Well, this has been an interesting day and a not so fun night… we had (are still having) a big fire near our community. Earlier today, or technically yesterday now, I began to smell something burning, I went outside but didn’t see anything. About an hour later, I smelled it even stronger, we went outside to see what was going on, this time we could see smoke, a big column of smoke rolling over the mountains to the south south west. We have been having smallish grass fires, burning a few acres to a couple of hundred acres, the local fire departments have been able to put them out in pretty short order. This time, it was/is a BIG fire, I understand that some 20,000 acres have been burned, and it appears that the fire is still going, as of 2:24 this morning. Most of the people who live out here chose to follow the volunteer evacuation, packed themselves up and left. We talked to a couple of our friends, one set decided to leave, the other set decided to send his wife and kids out but he stayed, he says he knows the area and knows how to get out if it gets too hairy. Anyhoo, we watched the smoke roll over the mountains all day, it got bad enough to make my eyes sting on more than one occasion today. The smoke column went up high enough to begin to block the sun, it made the evening turn orange/red. We decided to stay and ride it out, at least until we could see it would get too dangerous to stay, ie seeing fire coming over the mountain.

I called a few of the other people we know out here, couldn’t get an answer from most of them, I did get a hold of the lady who owns the local store, she said she was leaving because she had her grandkids here for a visit, she got a hotel room in town (safe from the fire) and gave us an open invitation to stay with them if we decided to leave. She said she thought everything would be OK, but just didn’t want to take the chance with the kiddos. I don’t blame her.

All day we watched the smoke billowing over the mountains, earlier in the day, Bob and one of our friends went out to the main road outside the community and watched the fire, they couldn’t see the flames, just where the smoke was coming from. He was one of the people who left this evening, with his family. The wind has been up all day, and the wind was blowing the smoke and presumably the fire right towards us. I was told by the store owner that the fire wasn’t in our community yet, it would have to travel a bit further and jump the …