The firefighters who saved almost all of the homes around this mountain were nothing short of heroes and miracle workers! It is good to be home again. My house smells like an ashtray, my every last possession stinks to high heaven, my eyes and throat are scratchy and raw; but my children are healthy and well, we have more friends and family than we could've possibly ever utilized to take us in and shelter us, and very few of our neighbors were faced with any serious damage to their homes or property.
It could've been a lot worse.
So left staring up at our burnt, black, smoking mountain, I'm grateful for the many miracles, big and small, that are bringing most everyone back to nothing more than a stinky house.
6 comments:
That is so scary I am so happy that you are all safe and back home...
Wow. I'm so glad everything turned out allright! How scary.
I was so worried about you all! I am glad this all ended so well!
Driving home from my parents house Sunday night we could see the orange flames. So crazy scary! Did you actually get told to evacuate or opted to on your own. I probably would have opted to. Glad that the worse is a stinky house. At least it's still warm enough that you can throw open lots of windows when the smell outside dies down and air it out quick. Glad you are all okay.
Initially we weren't going to evacuate. I was home with the kids, Greg was at work. Fortunately my sister was visiting, and as it got worse my parents sent my little brother to come sleep over at my house, in case we had to evacuate in the middle of the night, I wouldn't be home alone. But, while he was on his way, we had someone come to our door and tell us to evacuate. My brother, Cody, took the kids immediately to my parents, while my sister, Star, and I stayed behind to grab a few things. I was never overly worried about my house actually burning down. We're close, but not that close. (I guess there's always a slight chance of burning embers or something causing fires further away though). So I just grabbed clothes for all of us for two days, in case we couldn't get back to the house right away (notable exceptions: totally forgot pajama pants for Greg, and his contact lense solution and glasses. In my defense, he wasn't even home, he's lucky I even remembered to grab him clean socks and underwear!) :-) I also grabbed my external hard drive (pictures) and our folder with all our important info (birth certificates, passports, etc.) Just in case. As we were leaving we were hearing of people in our Ward being evacuated with flames less than 20 yards from their house. I'd been trying to call Greg, but had been unable to reach him at work. This is the one and only time I LOST it and cried. For like a minute or two, then we were at my parent's house (just a 1/2 block North) and I didn't want to cry in front of the kids and I'd calmed down on the 2 minute drive to their house. The air was HORRIBLE though, and Annie has asthma, so once I got ahold of Greg and he came home, we wanted to leave. One little glitch though -- Greg was stopped by cops a few miles from my parents house, and they wouldn't let him drive past the check point. So Greg WALKED in from there. We got the kids out once he got there, and headed out to my Aunt and Uncle's in Sandy. It was HEAVENLY to wash my hair that night (four times to get it to stop stinking), but then the problem was once we came back the next morning (when the checkpoints moved past our house) I was struck all over again by how bad everything smelled! :-)
Now we're just doing non-stop laundry (drapes, all blankets, debating whether I wash ALL our clothing or not, anything that was out and fabric.) I'm also chucking all of our pillows -- they were too close to the one window that let soot in and it now smells like my bedroom spent the weekend in Vegas :-(
I was worried about you guys as I heard news of the fire on radio national news all the way out here in Charlotte, NC. My bro-in-law is in the Nat'l Guard and was fighting the fire (he used to fight forest fires for work). What an unnecessary tragedy. So glad your house only smells like smoke, and nothing worse.
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