The Fire Through My Dad's Eyes

(from getty images, obviously)

My dad sent me this email this evening, which explains what the last few days have been like for him:

We had 3 days of fire to keep from burning our place. The CDF engine from across the road from us, our local guys were charged to save our home. They parked in front of the house from around 11am until the threat was over. God bless them, I can never thank them enough. I keep the grass low 100 yards or more from our house. Stucco house with stucco eves and a fire system inside. We were hit 3 times on the house. The first one came down slow and gave us some room from the big brush which was about 100 feet from the house. When the big hot fire came we had a dirt road to help, then a brush filled gully on our property that went up hot. The firefighters fogged my wife's garden that would have gone up next so it would not catch. I kept the horse and equipment barns alright by running around stopping little grass and wood chip fires from getting out of hand. After a neighbor's motor home went up the fire spread back to the north side of HWY 78 again which burned the Smokey the Bear sign, grass field and the old ranch house across the street. The old school house around the corner also went up as well many other homes in our valley. We are very blessed and lucky. It looked like a war zone that first day and night.

After the fire crew had the house secure they turned it back to me. I was alone and wound up stopping grass fires around the barn most of the night. It was super hot as you all know. Sometimes I literally could not see my hand in front of my face. Very scary.

The second day we had 3 engines on our west fence line as a grass fire was coming back into the wind which would have come to the house from down below. They handled it so professionally and at least one engine was here all day and parked across the road watching our hillside all night. We are so thankful. We have continued putting out hot spots up until 2am last night. Ironic as it is the last one was putting some dirt on what was left of the CDF Smokey the Bear sign. I was sitting there watching it finish up burning and the wind picked up so said goodnight to Smokey.

We are an evacuation facility for horses and have some here now. If anyone needs a place to go it is safe here now. We set up our stable area to protect the horses and it worked out so far. I did take the John Deere out and scrape a couple of places early on where I could not get to with water. The roads are not open. If you have horses and PM me to come here, I could meet you at the road block and help you get through.

Our hillside burned and we lost about 8 oak trees. There are still lots more there but from the front of the house to the road still looks normal. We are still on alert for spot fires.

On generator power and no phone. We are all helping each other out here and have no idea when power will be restored. Like camping now. We are all focused on water, food and power. We still have 16,000 gallons of water here. I am going to hook up my generator to the well pump eventually so we can keep our water supply up. Tim came by today and borrowed a water tank so we will keep water going over the hill for them for sure. Told Tim to come as often and take as much as they need and we will let him know if we get low.

We are fine so not worry about us at all. Now we can help some others.