Wow. I'ts been a long time since I've posted. I haven't really had anything interesting to say or show you.
That is, until yesterday.
Wednesday started out like any other.
I lounged around in the morning, then prepared to go to the bank in the afternoon to pick up a new check card.
I opened the front door of my house around 2 p.m. to see this:
I dragged my husband out of bed (he works nights, so sleeps during the day), rounded up my cellphone, purse, novel-writing bag, two dogs, and loaded everyone and everything into the Suburban so we could evacuate.
By the time I left the house, it looked like this:
The dogs and I headed out of the neighborhood, but stopped to shoot a few more pictures:
I contacted friends from church, and they let me house the dogs in their kennels. I don't know what I'd done without them!
When I came back, the police weren't letting anyone in the neighborhood, so I waited at the top the road to find out where the bus would drop of the kids. This was around 3:30 p.m.
We saw several fire trucks from surrounding communities, including Slaughterville, Little Axe and Purcell. Steve said he saw even more firefighters out, including Dibble and Pink. Thank the Lord for these men and women who risk their lives to save our neighborhoods!
For the record, on a normal day, seeing more than one or two cars on the road is considered high traffic. This amount of traffic was nuts!
Anyway, while I waited anxiously at the top of the road, my husband remained at the house, watering the yard and getting a couple other items at the house ready to bug out, if necessary. While he was there, he had the once in a life-time experience of having a Chinook helicopter drop a load of water on his head. Er, nearby…
You can see the blade of the helicopter to the right of the sun. And that's the water falling out of the basket carried by the helicopter.
I believe that basket of water put out this lovely little blaze right across the street from our house:
Sometime after this, I picked up the kids at a nearby gas station. One of our neighbors called us to let them know where the kids were. Thank the Lord!
We finally returned home around 9 p.m. — just in time to put the kids in bed!
I took a few pictures today of the areas that burned:
You can see more grass fire photographs in my Flickr account.
BTW, you see that truck and trailer over the the tree in the first two photographs? We’re moving those. They are on their way out of the yard as we speak….
AWESOME pictures and commentary, Michelle. Your journalism/newspaper talents have not left you. sure glad I didn’t see these pictures yesterday and know just how close to your house the fire came. But enjoyed looking at them tonight. Thanks for sharing. AND praise the Lord for protecting you and everyone else. A BIG thank you to the firefighters and others who helped put it out.
Thank you!
Yes, the Lord really was watching out for us and working through everyone involved in putting out the fire, housing our dogs and offering up their homes as a place for us to stay had we needed it.
I better stop before I start crying. LOL!