Sept 19th THE FIRE!

We were at the church this day until about 3:30. When we were driving home we saw smoke from the mountain we live up against. It was quite a ways away, and we decided not to worry too much.

We turned on the TV and saw the picture below. Jon told me not to worry, it probably would not get too close to us. So, we deiced to go on to Sandy where there was a family dinner being held. I spoke with our next door neighbor and said if it got closer to give us a call. At about 8:00 PM she called and said it's getting pretty bad. We headed home and could not believe what we were seeing from the freeway as we drove home. It was like a lava flow of flames down our mountain.

When we got closer we could see everyone out on the streets watching or packing up. I asked Jon if we should go to his moms. He still did not think we had anything to worry about. Riley started to cry. I told him I was going to take the kids and go to his moms. At 9:00 PM we got the evacuation call on the phone. Now Jon was going to come with us. I still was not too worried. Only got a days worth of clothes for the kids and I.

I got the kids to Grandma Mosers. Jon stayed behind to load our R.V. and the ATV along with other items. As I watched the news and neighbors posted pictures and described what they were seeing I started to get so scared. It was 12:00 AM. Jon along with other men on our street were staying behind to watch the show. I called him and begged him to get over to his moms. He said he was on the way that they would not let him go back into the house anymore. When he arrived we talked about how he knew we would not have our house the next morning. The wind was blowing so badly, they could not control the fire. I was thinking about all of the things I should have grabbed. I was also so sick and tired from being pregnant. I did not sleep a wink that night.

(Below is a picture taken from the bottom of our street)

I could not wait for the morning to come. At 7:30 A.M. on Sept 20th, the news did a live broadcast of the view from the helicopter. This is what I saw:

(Our house is almost the last toward the bottom of the picture. You can see the sport court behind our house)

The fire had gone right to our back yard, but our house was still there. We were evacuated for a total of 3 days before they let us back home. It was a very long 3 days for me.Reasons why our house did not burn: The wind changed at 3:00 AM. The guy below drove a bulldozer and made a fire break just behind all of our homes as firefighters sprayed him down with a hose. The fire fighters did an awesome job fighting the fire. Lots of prayers.

(This picture was taken for the newspaper. You can see our play set behind him.) We only had a small amount of smoke damage done to our house. Here are the cleaners taking care of the soot.

The fire fighters came by to try and straighten out the bulldozed hill. It is quite the rocky mess behind our house. They also reseeded our hill. In a couple of years it will be green and beautiful again.