Fire!

After an eventful month I thought I would add a few posts. Last Sunday June 24th a fire started on Lake Mountain about five miles south of us. This was the second fire this month and we left home for an outing confident that the fire was too far off to be of any consequence. By the time we returned in the early evening the whole neigborhood smelled like a campfire. 75 mile an hour winds gave the fire a good push.

At four a.m. I awoke to choking thick smoke filling the house. These are the pictures taken from the front porch when I went to investigate. The pictures don't really do it justice. What you can't see are what looks like several strings of glowing pearls. When I drove a couple of miles down the road there were little glowing spots all over the hillside as if you were looking into the embers of a dying campfire, but imagine that covering two square miles of hillside. Awesome!

The fire came within about a half mile and while we were not in any danger it was the closest I have ever been to a full scale forest fire. It took six days to fully extinguish the blaze and crews are still camped on the mountain to deal with hot spots. We were not in any danger because we have a natural fire break of hardpan building lots for about four blocks in every direction.