Pine Canyon Fire

Wednesdays are usually pretty boring right? It's right in the middle of the week, nothing much happening. Well yesterday was certainly not boring around here! Around noon I started hearing lots of sirens, both police and fire. Chels kept telling me that someone forgot to "poof out there fire with water" (don't you just love 4 year old lingo?) and that she could smell fire. Then Jake called me and asked me if I had heard about the fire. I told him no but I'd heard sirens. He said it was pretty bad and asked me if it was smokey here and I said no. I didn't think much about it because I couldn't see any smoke and things seemed pretty calm around here.

I was standing at my kitchen sink washing dishes a little later and I could see my neighbor in the street taking pictures behind our houses. I thought this was odd so I walked out into the backyard and then I saw it. This huge billowing cloud of smoke, and it wasn't far away at all! It was so scary looking.

Jake called again a little later and told me that the fire was near the front gate, only about one mile away from our house. He told me if it started getting too smokey to go ahead and leave because he didn't want the baby breathing in a whole bunch of smoke. I told him I didn't want to go anywhere in case they evacuated housing while I was gone and then I couldn't get back to our house to get stuff. So we waited it out. The power went off and was off for the rest of the day. Airplanes and helicopters started flying over dumping water and fire retardant on the flames. It was pretty intense. I was scared that they were going to evacuate us. I didn't even know where I would go.

We went into Lompoc that evening, just me and the kids since Jake had to stay at work, to get some dinner. I was wishing I had taken my camera because while driving into town we were so incredibly close that I could see flames. The helicopters were still dumping water and the horizon had an orange glow. Then as we drove a little further I was wishing I hadn't left the house at all because it was so smokey it was difficult to breathe and I felt bad for the kids. Chels started coughing and then I felt like a horrible mother for taking her out!

The power came back on late last night and it has only gone off once more, but it was in the middle of the night. I was able to watch the news last night and they said they fire had burned 300 acres so far and it was 50% contained. I guess it was started by a snapped power line or a transformer that had blown or something. It was looking like they had it pretty much put out this morning but this afternoon I've started seeing huge clouds of smoke again and the airplanes have returned with the fire retardant. I hope it doesn't get any worse. I really don't want to evacuate my home!

Jake has been at work the whole time except for a few hours last night when he came home to sleep. I'm really stressed because I was counting on his help these last few days with getting everything ready to move. Oh well, I'll just have to make due without him.

I did manage to get a few pictures when the fire first started in the afternoon...

The scary big smoke cloud.
You can see 2 airplanes in this picture if you look closely.

A better picture of the airplane.

Just something kind of cute out of all this. Chels keeps asking me why they don't just pour water on the fire like the Care Bears. Apparently she has seen an episode of Care Bears where they put out a fire, she's so funny.