The West Fire
Tuesday afternoon, July 27, at around 2:40 pm, I headed into town to do my volunteering at the library. But I got no more than around 300 yards down the road, when I saw smoke from a fire off to the right. A couple of trucks were parked along the road, and a fire truck was just arriving. Merle, our Property Owners Association President, was parked on the other side of the road. She told me to go back and park alongside the road—they wanted to leave the road clear for firefighters. She said someone had been clearing brush, and a spark from his equipment had started a fire. At the time, it was still confined to that one property, but the fire was clearly getting bigger even as we talked. She kept one eye on the blaze, and saw flames shoot 30 feet high!
I told her I would just turn around and go home, which I did. I called my mom next door to let her know what was happening, then called the library to tell them I wouldn’t be coming.
Not long after that, one of our neighbors and volunteer firefighter, George, came by to tell us to evacuate. The fire was getting out of control and we needed to get out. So I called my mom again and we started hurriedly packing. I threw my laptop/iPod/books/bandages into bags and a lot of random clothes into my suitcase. I told mom to bring her stuff and her cat down to my place, and I’d fix a cardboard box with holes in the top for her to use as a carrier for her cat. I needed to do that for one of my cats, too, since she’d outgrown her carrier ages ago and I’d never gotten around to getting a new one. I continued packing and soon Mom arrived with her cat, Buddy.
Then George came back. “We have to go right now! Take what you’ve got and let’s go!” (more…)