While the kids and I were in Logan at Sarah's Utah State Orientation, Dave was off work early to sell our camper (that's another story). After he 'did the deal,' he headed over to Smith's to buy some groceries. When he came out of the store, he could see smoke in the mountains above our neighborhood. Again. Really. By the time he made the six-and-a-half minute drive home, flames were taller than the homes. This time, having been through this not quite two years ago, he didn't wait for authorities to tell him to evacuate. He grabbed the dogs, my wedding dress, a box of pictures, the kids framed school pix from last year, and our computer hard drive. Since he was home alone with only one, quite small running car (that's another story), that was all he could fit. And ,since the flames were reaching the landscape of our neighbors about five houses away, that was all he had time for.
As I said, the kids and I were in Logan and Dave hesitated to call us for fear he would worry us for nothing. But, then one of Brian's friends texted to see if he saw the smoke. Engage panic. Needless to day, we called Dave immediately (in fact we spoke about 30 times in the next 30 minutes - hurried snippets about 'want me to grab this' and 'what about that' and don't forget the . . . ') and he reluctantly told us that it was really bad, much closer than last time. Again. Really. This is what he saw from our front porch. The glowing yellow part in the middle is the flames.
Again. Really.
We finally hooked up in the Home Depot parking lot and headed to my friend Jana's house who had been checking up on us regularly throughout the afternoon. She was gracious enough to let us stay there for what ended up almost 2 days. The news kept us blissfully uninformed, as they were being blocked out of the area as well and had to keep re-airing - same story, different newscaster.
On Saturday, it was really weird because we could smell smoke, but couldn't see any. Of course, the news was still no help. So, we all went off to do our own things. I took the kids to the rec center to swim and so I could get on wifi and do homework. Dave headed to a local restaurant to meet up with neighbors and swap evacuation stories. The evacuation was finally lifted at 6:00 p.m. but, unfortunately, the authorities had shut off all of the power and natural gas, so there wasn't much point in returning. We did however, rescue some of our quickly thawing food from the freezer and put it into coolers with ice, pitch the now warm contents of the fridge, and gratefully change clothes. Unfortunately, we also witnessed the damage to all of our western neighbors who lost fences and significant amounts of landscape.
By about 9:00, we were about ready to head out of the dark and back to Jana's house. But then our neighbor called and invited us to share burgers with them for dinner. As we were all sitting on her front porch, the neighborhood lit up like a Norman Rockwell painting and we all cheered and scattered! (She said it was like watching roaches run from the light!)
We are so fortunate, again, to have a home. This time, we feel even more fortunate to not be battling smoke for the next several months. In fact, we just got rid of that smell from the last fire - almost two years ago! There will be blowing ash for a while, but we're old pros at that.
In the meantime, disaster preparedness has bumped itself up to the top of my priority list. I'll keep you posted on my progress!