Pictures of the Fire on the Mountain

This will be a lot of pictures later in the post. They are all pictures I took of the progression of the fire south of our home. The fire started yesterday from a routine machine gun training with the national guard, which is stationed on the other side of the mountain. One of the bullets (or many) sparked the fire in the dry fields. With the high temps and strong winds, this fire moved very quickly.  Last night over 1600 homes were evacuated, today some were allowed to return, but since the fire is not completely controlled/contained, certain areas are still blocked to residents wanting to go home.  We're crossing our fingers that the wind and weather work in the firefighters favor today.

Last night my husband set out his telescope so we could get a really close up view of the fire line and of a big house on the hill--that by some miracle did not burn to the ground (pictured later). Our home was not part of the mandatory evacuation, but we live about 2 blocks away from the evacuation line. Most of our neighbors chose to leave as a precaution.  The few of us that stayed were packed and ready to go in case they expanded the evacuation lines. What would you pack?? I packed a few changes of clothes for each of us, favorite stuffed animals for the kids, wedding pictures that I have no backed up, other pictures I could not replace, a few other important documents, and that's about it. Everything waited by the door ready to pack up and leave at a moments notice. A little unnerving to say the least.

With the strong winds, you could literally watch the flames jump to another part of the mountain and in minutes that area was a blaze. Anyway...enough about my fun experience last night. Here are the pictures I took from our street last night and this morning. (click pics for larger size)

The beginning.

Closer to Sunset.

Fire starting to reach the ridge.

 keep in mind this is one view...what they call the East front of the fire. West, over that hill, is where 4 homes burned to the ground.

Large flames. Most of the city had ash raining down from the smoke.

love this shot...well not love that it's fire. ;)

getting too dark to take pictures.

Fire line on the mountain.

Morning. Fire moved East and also West towards Rose Canyon area. All morning they've had a team of helicopters dropping buckets of water/flame retardant on the hot spots.

Look closely! see that BIG house on the hill?? and the black scorch marks all around it?? We were keeping a close eye on this house and by some miracle it was no touched.  surprised everyone, the flames were at it's doorstep. Most of the night it had a team of firefighters keeping the flames away.