We had a little fire drill Wednesday night. I’ve been helping my MIL care for my ailing FIL. I was on my way back home from helping her in the afternoon, thinking husband would be done working when I got home and we could go get
coffee and go pick up some lunch meat since it was too hot to cook dinner. Someone in the oncoming lane motioned for me to stop, but didn’t stop themselves, so I got out to see if I had a flat or something wrong with the car. Someone else did stop and asked if I was headed straight- I wasn’t, I would make he next left. He said “Good, there’s a fire”, and drove off. I drove home and saw on the
local Facebook group that it was a house fire. I’d seen the fire engine ahead of me before I was stopped by the first driver. I
should have been more concerned since we are in a rural area with forest fire danger, but I figured since the fire truck was there, they’d get it out and all would be well. Went to town as planned. By the time we got home and I checked again on what was going on, the fire had spread and people were being evacuated on the other side of our little hill. Firefighting planes flew from the river below us, over our house, to the fire. I kept an eye out and checked to see if we should evacuate. Tried to call my only neighbor whose number I have, she didn’t
answer. I told husband that I wouldn’t sleep here tonight if the fire wasn’t out. A big gust of wind could make it impossible for us to get out. Even if our property wasn’t on fire, the roads to get out of the area could be. I made my young “adult” kids pack up some stuff, got my totes of pictures in the car, and we all got out sprinklers and got everything wet. We headed back to the in-laws in separate vehicles. My husband called and said he wanted to stay and keep an eye on things and I told him that was dumb. He said he didn’t think it was coming toward our house and I said then you don’t need to stay and keep watch, get over here. He talked to the neighbors who had congregated at the end of our little road to watch the smoke and look for signs of the fire moving closer. The neighbor across that street was there, and his property is closest to the fire. He told husband that the sheriff said it’s mostly contained now, and our homes were not in danger. Neighbor said he was putting as much
water on his backyard as he could, and his house was between us and the fire. I double checked and we were still outside the level one zone, so I conceded and we went home for the night. Fire area is still hot today, two days later, but is contained and only took the house it started in. Of
course now I’m on higher alert to making sure that we are keeping things wet near our home and near the road. We had slacked off on preparedness due to current life stuff.
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