Fire! Fire!

A Couple Miles from the Opposite Side of Where We Live

We were settling into our home and spending a little more time in our home, now that we had it mostly furnished. I searched for ways to decorate each room, but we were still spending our weekends building. It needed to be done before winter weather began.

Jer and I were busy at work when Jer got an alert on his phone. This is a great app that alerts you to fires throughout the state, any state really, but it focuses on where you tell it to. Several miles southwest of us a fire had started. There are a lot of great hiking paths around our area. I had a feeling some careless smoker flicked their cigarette butt and started the fire. There is a lot of dry underbrush in summer.

At first it wasn’t a danger to us. It had been very windy the last week or so. The winds were blowing a good thirty-six miles an hour eastward around the caverns. This wasn’t good for the fire but good for us. The skies were blue and clear with no smell of smoke. In fact, we wouldn’t have even known about the fire if it wasn’t for Jer’s app on his phone.

We weren’t concerned at this point and kept working. Update after update showed the fire closing toward us and moving slowly up the hills. They began to put people in different areas on evacuation notice. We were clear until we weren’t. Jer received notice that we were on evacuation level three.

This basically means start preparing to leave. But we had just moved in! All work ceased and I laid on the bed crying, not because I was afraid we would lose our home, but because I knew in my heart we were safe. Still, we had to go through the motions of what to take. I was so angry about having to do this.

It was hard to decide what to take. We were not leaving until the next day unless we had to, but it was late afternoon. We finally decided to load the two trailers mostly with larger items that didn’t belong to us and pack up important paperwork. We took pictures of everything else.

They closed the road below us for a few weeks, so we had to take a longer way home. The winds continued blowing eastward for weeks. Eventually the fire was put out in its entirety about a month later. We were grateful the fire never made it up to us but sad that forty-four homes were lost and it was determined it was a careless thrown cigarette butt that started it. Such a waste.