The Fire

The following is a true account about the time I found out our house almost burned down...

At about 4:30 I get a text message from my friend Laura. Here's how our little text chat went down:

L: um... glad your house didn't burn down!

C: ?

L: The fire behind your house?

C: There is?!

Ten seconds after I sent that last text Laura calls me. I think it's cause she knows I'm a worrier, and my nerves were not going to be settled through a series of texts. She quickly explains how earlier that afternoon a lady that lives a few houses down (and goes to church with us) was out running and as she was coming down our street she noticed huge flames - taller than our house - right behind our house. There were 4 fire trucks out front of our place. Since she's friends with Laura and knew that Laura and I are friends, she calls Laura to let her know. Laura assumed Tyler and I had already been contacted, but she headed over to our house just to make sure everything was still standing.  

Needless to say, neither Tyler nor myself had been told... so it came as quite a shock. Apparently this fire was on the news and everything! Anyways... no damage was done - at least to our property.

Our house backs up to an alfalfa field. They were burning the irrigation ditch and the wind picked up all of a sudden and blew the flame into the field. I guess the flames just took off - probably didn't help that it's been an incredibly dry year. Luckily for us at the end of the harvest last year the farmer had chopped down all the weeds next to our back fence - so there was about a 4-5 foot gap between our back fence and the start of his field. I know that it's because he chopped those weeds down that our back fence and yard weren't burned because the flames stopped about 3 feet from our back fence. We believe it's because the flames ran out of all those super dry weeds to burn.

So of course once Weston and I arrived home we made sure to take a walk down the block and around to the field to go check it out. Here are some pictures of the damage:

I am standing with my back against our back fence - there's about 3.5 feet between our back fence and the charred ground.

Looking the other way - you can see the part where the weeds had been chopped down last fall - it's still green.

The view from our bedroom window looking left. You can see how far into their field this fire went.

View from our window looking right. That row of shrubs is where the creek is that they were burning.

Weston and I were happy our house didn't burn down.