Panic Button

On the night of June 13, I had just changed Rachel into Jammies for the night, and since we were about out of wipes, I thought I'd hop online and order some from Amazon while I was still thinking about it. Facebook was open, and my eye was immediately drawn to this picture:

 I recognized the shed and the mountain. This was clearly taken from my neighbor's backyard. I quickly ran out the door to see for myself. In shock, I came back in and told Brian to come see. This was sometime between 9 and 10 p.m.

It's an understatement to say that I started to really panic. Earlier that day, Brian and I had been discussing the Colorado fire, and remembering how blessed we had been last summer. So, seeing those flames with the damage reports from the Colorado fires fresh in our minds, all I could think was, "Please not again!" The wind was blowing extra hard that night, and the fire had started much closer to our house than last time, just a little south of where the 2012 fire had stopped.

We tried to stay calm. After feeding Rachel and tucking her into bed, we took pictures of everything in our house so that we could remember what we owned in the event that our house caught fire. We talked about all the things that we would take with us this time. We turned on the news. We looked all over  Facebook. Thankfully, it looked like the fire was getting put out. I got in the car and drove up the hill to see what I could find. Brian stayed home and checked Twitter.

I saw a few flames, which I tried to capture on our camera. The long exposure makes them seem slightly worse than they really were. I talked with a couple of police men who were in charge of keeping citizens out of the way. Both said that the fire was contained, and that we most likely wouldn't have to worry about it. At least four different stations responded to the fire, and two hadn't even been used, at least that is what the police man said. The quick response along with the cold front had helped them get a quick hold on the flames. By morning, we couldn't even see any smoke.

Once again, we are so grateful that our home is safe and that the firemen were so diligent and quick to respond.