I've seen Fire and I've seen Rain

But I never thought I would see this...Saturday morning we were up diverting water from Justin's window well, and burming up dirt to stop the flow of rainwater from running through the pig pen and chicken coop. We had a torrential rain storm all night and it finally became too much. 8 inches in a window well and Lake Pig Pen had begun to form.

Only two days later we were using those same shovels to try to stop this:


The kids did all the right things - shovels, buckets, hoses, fire extinguisher. Brady coming in to say they needed help. I have never called 911 in my life before. Justin came in to call but I was already on it.
The Rock Creek Volunteer Fire Dept. was actually pretty quick getting here. Our biggest concern was how fast it was heading toward the cliffs. We were afraid it would jump up to our neighbor's house.

How did it start? Model rocket gone awry. Innocent fun. We still have big puddles of water from the recent rain throughout the burned area, but that cheat grass stuff is just like paper! I don't want to imagine if this had happend in August. We all learned a lot from this. You hear how fast fire spreads, but I have never personally witnessed it. WOW.

I called Darren right after I called 911 and he thought I was being silly. "It's so wet out there, it will just burn itself out". I started to question my frantic call to 911 until I went out again to help pour buckets on it and saw how fast it had spread. I was so glad to see the fire trucks! I called Darren back and basically yelled at him to get home, he responded that he was right behind the fire trucks and that he couldn't believe the HUGE plume of smoke he could see all the way from Frontier, I think he got the picture at that point!

My boys and their friend did exactly what they should have. I'm proud of how they reacted. Hopefully it won't happen again, but we all have a little experience under our belts now!

In the meantime, Uncle Pete, enough of you and your toys!