Saturday, November 15, 2008
15
At last count 15 houses have burned to the ground in our town.
The fires are still blazing. There are not enough firemen and crews to go around.
I am sure they are feeling as frustrated and helpless as the rest of us.
The fire started this morning around 9:00 a.m. not to far from our house.
The winds were strong and heading to the west which quickly sent the fire into the other neighboring towns where it jumped the freeway this afternoon and has created such destruction it is almost unbelievable.
If the winds had been blowing to the East this would be a very different post because my house could have looked like this one.
or this one.......
While I am feeling lucky and blessed, I am also feeling like a bad person for being thankful that someone else's house has burned down instead of my own. I really didn't want that either. I just wish the heavens would open up and rain would pour down to help out these poor tired fire crews.Those of us who don't live in the heavily wooded area's have always felt safe. Yes, fires raged all around us but we didn't have a lot of brush to burn and we had tile roofs. Our tile roofs would surely save us.
Wrong.
All it takes is for the embers to get underneath the eaves and take hold and your house will burn from the inside out. That is what is happening tonight.
As we drove home from the mountains this evening the night sky was lit up and you could see the flames still burning brightly. Our children asked tentatively if our house was OK, wanting reassurance that their lives had not been turned upside down in a matter of hours.
I wonder how many children can't say that tonight? As of this writing more than 100 houses have burned to the ground.
Labels: California Wildfires
