The weekend just before this last one, a very large fire had burned over 12,000 acres on the outskirts of our town due to a plane crash. It was on the news, there were evacuations and firemen had come to our mountain town and set up four fire camps. Multiple helicopters and airplanes were working non stop to try to contain that fire. Seven days later, the fire fighters had it contained by 95% just to turn around on Sat. and start fighting the multiple fires throughout the rest of our town, meaning the hills behind where I live and in another hillside just about 10 miles from our house.
My plans to be creative came to a screeching halt when I walked out in my backyard to see a plume of smoke directly above our property. Yikes!! I received a phone call a short time later from a county emergency center telling us to start preparing to evacuate. Yikes again!! My husband turned on all of the water on our property, sprinklers etc. to wet down everything that we could. Our neighbors were standing on their roofs with hoses, packing the backs of trucks, and getting ready just in case we had to evacuate. I hurriedly took photos of everything inside our house and out, got important things together and packed our bags.
DC-10's were dropping fire retardant on the top of our mountain (photo- view standing in my back yard) but the smoke and fire kept on moving up the mountain. As evening approached the planes and helicopters stopped dropping the water and repellant as the clouds moved in and it started to get dark. We all felt kind of releaved thinking that the fire retardant had kept the fire from climbing over the mountain but just after I took this photo the flames appeared Yikes!! visible red flames burning as hot as ever and destroying the trees and brush along the mountain top.
I took my lawn chair out in back, set it up, and sat there with my diet coke and camera. I figured I would much rather see it coming, stare it in the face. Just 20 minutes later it started to rain, I mean pour rain! It was almost dark, getting soaked, I gathered up my chair and decided to take a drive to see what we could see from a higher point. The red flames looked larger against the black sky. The rains ended up being so heavy that night (Sat), it actually put out the fire on the hills behind us. Thank goodness!! I still cant believe how lucky we were!
Even though our fire had extinguished through the night we had friends and family who had to evacuate on Sunday because of the fire that was on the hills just 10 miles away that didn't go out with the rain fall, they weren't so lucky, but I am happy to say, as of today they have been able to return home and no structures/houses were lost. YAY!! Thanks to the many amazing fire fighters 1100 to be exact, from all over our state who truly are heros. LittleGreenRoom lives on.... :)
