Last night around 6:45 someone came knocking on the door. I had heard helicopters outside, but didn't think too much about it. My son came and said there was someone at the door. We never answer the door because it's always someone wanting to sell solar panels or paint our house. I sat there for a couple of minutes and then thought that I probably should get up and just check. Something didn't feel quite right.
When I went outside, the entire neighborhood was out and this is what I saw. The fire was on the hill on the other side of the road. Since we've lived in our house (2005) the hill has burned twice. It has never made it over the two lane road. Before we moved in, there was a fire that burned the field and actually made it to our neighborhood and burned down a house. At that time, our neighborhood wasn't part of the city yet and so the firefighters couldn't decide who should hook up to the hydrant. Vacaville and Fairfield argued until the house burned to the ground.
We were told we had to get out of the house. I grabbed the four dogs and my son and got them in the car and took off. My husband was looking for his wallet and got his medicine and a couple of boxes of his expensive comic books from his collection. He called me to say he had locked himself out of the house. So we came back and were told that we could stay on the street, but to be ready to get out if things got dangerous. This is a view out my living room window. The fire truck parked here and stayed over night watching the hot spots. I realized last night that I really needed to clean up the mess back there. I hadn't realized just how much trash had blown back there from the wind. It is either super windy or super hot in the summer and I don't spend much time on the side of the house. This morning I spent an hour and cleaned up the mess!
As we watched, the fire got closer. This is my across the street neighbor's house. When the last fire came, it burned down their fence and they never replaced it. You can see the fire access road on the other side of the chain link fence and just on the other side of that is a drainage canal that has about a foot of water in it. It drains our entire neighborhood. Good thing most people don't follow the rule and actually still water their lawns.
We have the fire hydrant on our property. We also have 6 really big redwood trees. That's our property to the left of the picture. The fire truck pkarked here at the end of the court, but never hooked up to the water. They just watched the fire.
The palm tree here in the left of the picture is on the outside of our fence and belongs to the city. If the fire had jumped the fire road and caught the palm tree, it would be a very small jump to our house. I'm going to get someone out to cut that tree down. About 5 years ago I had someone cut several palms down on our side of the fence. The fire burned all the way to the drainage creek. Just out of the picture to the left is the first fire truck. They came in my backyard and cut a hose I had hooked to the back of my property to water my plants. They used that to put out a couple of hot spots that jumped over the drainage creek. A very small price to pay! I went out this morning and got a new hose.
This was the view this morning around 6:30. The hills were still smoking and the wooden fence posts in the field were also smoldering.
There was ash and soot everywhere.
Here's the small fire truck that had been parked behind my house all night. Just to the right of this picture is a canal that helicopters had used to pick up water to drop on the fire. There were 4 or 5 helicopters working the fire for about an hour last night.
It's a crazy site. There is a road right before the hill starts that is a major thorough fare to get between Vacaville and Fairfield. It was closed this morning. One of the power poles had burned and fallen over. I know some people are without power. It's really hot here, high 90's to low 100's. At least we have power still.
Around 9:30 the firefighters started going out and putting out the hot spots with water. They drove all over the field. Normally there are cows in this field, but they haven't been here for a month or so.
Just when I thought things had calmed down and everything was over, I heard helicopters again. This is the view from my son's bedroom window.
Here come the helicopters again. At first there was one every 15 minutes or so. They were flying really close to our house and if I was on the roof, I could have grabbed that water bucket and gone for a ride. The whole house shook when they flew over.
Then they started coming every 2-3 minutes. The fire must have picked up again. They were dipping the bucket in the canal that leads from the Sacramento river into the North Bay Water Treatment Plant. That supplies our water for drinking.
We've also had a ton of lookie-loos come by. I guess it is pretty exciting. We even had a company come by hoping to get our business. They do fire restoration. The guy asked if our house smelled like smoke. Well, sure. He asked if we were going to do anything about it or just live with it. I guess everyone has to make a living somehow, but wow, way to take advantage of people.
I sure hope things calm down, at least for a little bit.
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