Smokin' Hot News

I was talking to my oldest daughter on the phone yesterday afternoon when our power went out. I called her back using a phone with a cord and told her the reason we lost contact was because our power went out. We ended our conversation and I began to get ready to go to town. Soon after I hung up the phone I heard sirens, which is very unusual in my rural area. Once I realized how close they were to me, I thought there may have been a car accident that had probably caused the power outage. I continued to get ready to go to town when I heard a helicopter. My next thought was that it must have been a really bad accident that required an airlift.

I went outside to get into my car and I saw smoke over the hill that was really close to my home. I drove to the street that runs parallel to our driveway and there were several cars that were parked on the side of the road trying to get information. I found out the fire was too close to me for comfort and continued up the road to speak to the police officers or any other personnel that could give me information. When I spoke with the officers they said that they were not there for evacuations and the command post was a couple of miles down the hill. I decided to go to the command post and see what was going on. When I got to the Lane where the command post was supposed to be, I did not see it and new it was further down the Lane than I was willing to go. I could see the smoke and it appeared to be a lot closer to my home than where I was, so I turned around and headed back home.

We live on a farm and have 2 horses, 6 goats, 47+ rabbits, 14 chickens, 3 dogs, 2 cats, and a guinea pig. I knew that I needed to get help so I called my oldest daughter and told her about the fire. She asked me if I needed her help to load animals and I said yes. I called my second daughter at work and told her about the fire and to come home immediately so she could also load animals. My next call was to my husband who works an hour away from home and told him about the fire, he also left work as soon as I called.

I drove to my neighbors house because I saw a horse trailer head up there and asked her if she knew anything. She said that they were evacuating the streets behind and parallel to us, so she was going to get her horses loaded and be ready to get them out of there. My neighbor has over a dozen horses so I understood her urgency to get them all loaded.

I came home and hooked the trailer to the truck so my second daughter could get her horses loaded as soon as she got home. I came into the house and turned on the scanner to see if I could get additional information about the fire. I heard on the scanner that the fire was in a canyon and they could not get any fire trucks or personnel into the area so they were going to continue to use helicopters and airplanes until the fire came to the ridge where the firefighters were waiting to try and contain it. We live within a mile of a lake so the helicopters didn't have far to go to fill their buckets to fight the fire.

I went back to my neighbors house to let her know the news on the scanner and when I returned my second daughter was home from work. She saw the smoke and I told her that her sister and fiance' were coming to help us and they arrived as I was giving her that information. My husband called me on my cell phone and asked me to get the generator started so we could get the sprinklers going that are located on our roof. I hooked up the generator and the girls put the divider into the horse trailer. My second daughter loaded her horses and then made some calls to find a place to keep them. The first call she made was to the vet that she has been using ever since she bought her first horse. Since there was no answer she left a message and called the next place she could think of. Her next call went to the ranch that trained one of her horses last year. When they answered the phone, she was able to make arrangements to keep both of her horses there if we needed to evacuate. Once the horses had a place to go, both of my daughters went and loaded the rabbits. Since the rabbits are show animals we have several carry cages that we were able to use to load them into. There were seven does that had nest boxes with babies in them so I told my second daughter to leave them in their cages and we would move them into four of the divided cages that were easily removed from where they were hanging and take them like that if we had to.

We had the horses loaded, rabbits ready to be loaded and then one of the kids' friends arrived in his truck. His truck didn't have a tow hitch but we had an extra one we were going to loan him so he could hook up our stock trailer for the goats to be loaded in. We continued to listen to the scanner, watch the air show and keep an eye on the smoke to see if we were going to need to load the goats in order to evacuate. We never smelled the smoke but we watched it move to the East, and since we were to the North, we continued to monitor the scanner and watch the smoke.

It appeared the fire was moving in another direction so I told my oldest daughter that she and her fiance' could go home. She didn't want to leave but I told them that they could go since we were ready to evacuate if necessary. My husband, our second daughter, her friend, and I remained outside with the scanner and continued to watch the smoke. Around 8pm, I told my second daughter to go ahead and unload her horses but to put them in an area that would be easy for her to catch them again if necessary. After unloading the horses, she went ahead and put the rabbits back in their cages so they would have access to water. The trailer and all the carry cages were still ready for the animals to be reloaded if necessary, so we went into the house to prepare dinner.

We ate dinner, felt comfortable about the lack of smoke we were seeing and tried to relax for the evening. We continued to monitor the fire and I was able to sleep pretty well considering the fire was still going. I found out from a friend that the fire was 100% contained by this morning and there were no structures lost, which was very good news.

A friend of ours was heading into town when he heard about the fire. He came to our gate, saw where the fire was, and continued down the hill to the command post. While he was there he took some pictures that he is in the process of loading onto his website. You can see what he has loaded so far and if you check back later you will see more. The pictures that he took can be seen at http://www.kbvp.com/image/tid/506.