The Fire

So last Monday, August 25th there was a huge fire about 2 blocks from Eric and I's house.  A total of 20 homes were affected, 11 completely burned to the ground, and 9 others that were damaged pretty badly.  Here is what happened....

I was sitting at home with my dog Buster, watching television, Eric was at work.  There was a huge windstorm that night that was suppose to hit that night, and the news kept breaking in, and updating us on that.  Around 7pm, I smelled what I thought was a BBQ, which made me hungry.  A few minutes later, the smell got really strong, and I thought that maybe something was on fire in my backyard.  I went to look, and noticed black smoke just pooring over our fence into our backyard.  I freaked out, and called Eric at work.  I went into our front yard, and total chaos began.  Eric stayed calm on the phone with me, and told me to gather up our dog Buster, our important documents, a change of clothes, and any photo albums.  He then told me to get out of the house and that he would meet me at the Albertsons that is near our house.  

I grabbed a laundry basket and ran through our house to get this stuff, and our smoke detector started going off.  Buster started barking, and I tried to make it a game, so that he didn't get to nervous.  We got out of the house in a matter of minutes, and drove up to the Albertsons.  Eric met us there, and he wanted to drive back down to see if we could get more information.  

By the time we drove back to our house, the police had blocked our road, and we had been officially evacuated.  Our neighbors who had been at dinner weren't even able to go in and get their dogs out of their house.  We hung around a little bit to see if maybe we would be able to get back in, but it wasn't looking good.  We ended up driving out to Eric's parent's house, Teri, and Monte's and stayed the night.

They got the fire under control, and we were able to go back to our home on Tuesday.  Luckily we had no damage to our home, just a little smoke.  I am glad though that Eric stayed calm, and we were able to at least get some items that we knew we would not be 

able to replace. 

On Tuesday, Eric and I walked down just to see how close the fire came to our house.  We walked 2 streets down, and about 1 block over and that is were the last home that was destroyed was.  Here are some pictures.