What a night!!
As we walked out of church yesterday the air was just thick with the smell of smoke. We looked up to see the large plumes of smoke coming from behind the mountain range near where we live.
That was at 4:00 p.m.
By 5:30 p.m the fire had crested the hill and it looked like an army of flames were just marching in.
Neighbors started packing up to evacuate. Dan wanted to wait it out, which I agreed with. I was pretty nervous, but the minis were asleep and we thought we'd wait to see if we should leave.
Did I mention we get crazy winds out where we live? Oh, and that's it's been fairly warm here the last few days?
Photo by Michelle Wade
We are thankful for these great men who saved the day!! Hooray for firefighters!
We are thankful for these great men who saved the day!! Hooray for firefighters!
Booooo to the Utah National Guard who thought it would be an okay idea to have machine gun training.
Photo by Michelle Wade
I would be crying my eyes out if I had lived in one of these houses on the hill...look at HOW CLOSE it got to their backyards!!
The entire mountain - it was turning such gorgeous colors just this last week - now we will be looking at black yuck for awhile.
We did not end up evacuating. I did have a few things set aside by my bed ready to go, jewelry, documents.
I made a mental note that we own too much junk and it will be a good thing to make some copies and have a fire bag "ready to grab" that has everything in it.
I went to sleep about 1:00 a.m. Emailed my brother who is a writer for Headline News back and forth sending him links and pictures. Back to sleep at 4 only to be awakened at 5:45 by school teachers telling us school was canceled.
It was a looong night.
I am so grateful that friends and neighbors had their homes spared.
Status report as of 6 p.m. Monday:
- 3,500 acres burned
- 1,600 homes evacuated
- 5,000 residents displaced
- 200 homes allowed to be reoccupied
- 3 homes destroyed
- 400 homes seriously damaged
- 20 percent of the fire contained
- 17 fire engines, 2 helicopters, 5 airplanes, 13 bulldozers used to fight fire
5 comments:
So scary but I'm glad you're okay!
That's so weird. Everyone I know, myself included, went to bed around 1. I guess we got tired of waiting to see if we'd get evacuated. My first phone call came at 5AM (!) from the school. Yikes. I think not only was it scary but a real eye opener on what I would take with me and what I would leave behind to be destroyed.
Crazy!
It sounds like you need to go take a nap.
hugs,
Kitty
I am just glad you were safe :)
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