Our Experience with the Fires in Southern California

While Lynn and I were in Hawaii, the wildfires in Southern California broke out…so far they have burned hundreds of homes in our home town. Over 800,000 people have been evacuated and as of 2:55 pm today, our area is still closed for evacuations and no one can get back into their homes to see if they are still there. It’s been a crazy time. To show you just how random and dangerous this fire has been, I checked the list of burned homes in my moms neighborhood, and then mapped them out on an aerial photo with red X’s. Take a look…it’s pretty amazing. The crazy thing is that this list of burned homes isn’t complete! There may be many many more that have burned. Click on the map to enlarge it. The green circle is my mom’s house.

For those of you who were concerned about our home, thank you for your concern and prayers on our behalf. We were concerned about our home as well since there is nothing to stop the fire if it reached our backyard. Looking back we can kind of laugh at the situation…but suffice it to say it would not have taken much for our house to burn if the fire reached us. Here’s why:

1. We have a fabric patio cover off our master bedroom that would have burned easily if an ember landed on it.
2. We have a large wooden doghouse next to our house.
3. We have a stack of construction lumber over our propane tank (to protect it from the rain). If the lumber would have ignited it would have been a disaster.
4. I left my little convertible (with a fabric top) in the driveway, next to my truck which was filled with HAY BALES!
5. We have an expansive wooden patio cover that stretches the entire length of our house.
6. We have huge trees that touch the wooden patio cover. An many trees around the perimeter of our house.

Needless to say we are very, very lucky. Here is an aerial photo of how close the fire came:

The solid red in the photo above is the area completely consumed by the fire. The firefighters plowed huge fire-lines directly behind our yard to prevent it from entering our yard. Thankfully they stopped it before it reached them.

Friday night, the night we returned from Hawaii, we were looking out the window and saw a faint, flickering glow in the distance…and just dismissed it as lights from the firemen on the distant hills. However, a few minutes later we saw sparks flying in the air, and the hill behind our house was glowing and we realized that the fire had flared up again right behind our house! Luckily, the fire department was camped on our street, and they reached the flare up quickly to put it out. GOD BLESS OUR FIREFIGHTERS!

Here are some photos of my Mom’s house and other’s: