The Dump Fire

On June 21st I wrote this on facebook.......

Proof we live in the sticks....... My boys come home dirty every day. I have weeds in my yard that are completely foreign to me. When a Vole got in my window well, the neighbor boy came and took care of it with his air soft gun, and told me I could call him any time. And.......... we have lived here two weeks and have now seen two wild fires. The second one was a little closer than I like them................ 

Here is the full story

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It was about noon on Thursday June 21st.  The boys were out with a friend riding their bikes. I looked out the window to check on them.   I saw smoke and a line of orange headed our way.  It was still pretty far out there so I grabbed my camera.  (because the picture lover in me wanted a picture)   by the time I got it the fire fighters had thankfully gotten the big line of orange stopped and the only orange left was the little bit you can see in the center.  A few minutes later it actually looked like they had gotten the fire out.  I was relieved.  There were quite a few houses between ours and the fire,  but it has been very dry this summer,  and there is a lot of kindle around us.  

I started going about the day again,  and then I saw more smoke.  The fire was not out.  It was raging again, but this time it was headed up the hill and away from us.   We spent the rest of the day getting things done,  but at the same time watching the fire climb the hill as the planes and helicopters flew over it to fight it.  That night the mountain glowed orange, and we were not sure what the winds would do with the fire.  

Friday Joe had cub camp with his old troop so we had to leave early to get him there.  We had planned to spend the day in Sandy with our friends while he was at camp and then return when he got home.  I checked the news websites before I left to see how the fire was doing.  Everything seemed OK.  The fire was still burning,  but away from us.  So we left for the day.  Around 10:00am  I started getting phone calls from friends and family.  Evacuations had started.  Were we evacuated?  Was our house OK?  I really didn't know.  I got online and looked and as far as I could tell we were OK, but  the evacuation line was just a couple blocks from our street.   The next choice was to go back and get things.....most of which was already in boxes...photos important documents..... or just stay out because we were already out.  

The fire still seemed to be burning away from our home,  so I decided just to stay away,  Ryan headed back to the house around 2:00 to check things out, and found everything was fine.  As long as the wind didn't change we would be OK.   Emily was away at Girls camp, and Joe was going to stay over night with a friend so we didn't have to get up quite so early to get him to cub camp the next day.  That night Josh, Valerie and I returned home.  We followed the advice of the local authorities and packed our bags and were ready to go.     

This was one of those situations in life where you can't do much but pray for your safety and wait and see.  As I was trying to decide what we needed to pack in our bags,  there was a point were I found myself laughing a little.  How ironic would it be if we did loose our house in this fire, before we even made our first payment on it. We waited so long to buy a house.  We knew this was the house to buy.  That would be a little mean wouldn't it?  But when it came right down to it the only thing I really cared about was that my family was safe.  Our bags were packed with a few clothes, photo disks and important documents.   Everything else would stay and I didn't care if it did.  It was just stuff.  

Packing our bags got Josh worked up a little.  His bag contained clothes, cowboy night night (his blanket), and his DS.  We watched the orange mountain a little before we went to bed to try to show Josh that the fire was way over there and he didn't need to worry. But he woke up a couple of times in the night to make sure we didn't need to evacuate.  Part of me wondered if he wanted to.   

We woke the next morning to find that while the fire was still burning, most of the evacuated homes were now out of danger.  Over the next few days the fire was put out.   Our community was very blessed.  The fire came within 200 feet of some homes,  but no homes were lost.  It is still very dry here and there have been other fires burning all over, many much worse than the one we had here.  I am very grateful to all of the people who are working so hard to put out the fires and keep everyone safe.   May they be blessed and protected.