Admittedly, I was having a bad day when I wrote my last post. Speed traps do tend to do that to me. Since then, I've noticed, that I've gone silent. We'll now it is time for my latest installment describing why it is so freakin' cool to live in Colorado.
The reasons today are the Fire and Sheriff Departments of Boulder County. On January 7, at about 2:30, my wife got the evacuation order from the fire department. A couple of fires started almost simultaneously, because of the interaction between high winds and power lines. Somewhere in about a 12 hour period, 3,000 acres of grassland went up in smoke. According to our neighbor, if a fire is going to get to our houses, it will start in the same are that this one did. The canyon configuration in our area will apparently cause a suction effect, and become a tunnel for the fire.
Thanks to the fire departments of Boulder, Left Hand Canyon, Jamestown, RockyMountain, Boulder Rural, Lafayette, and I'm sure others, only two structures were damaged, one of which was at ground zero of one of the two initial fires.
Driving around the area, it looked like a moonscape surrounding houses. The fire departments went into structure protection mode, and defended all the houses that were threatened. At one neighbor's house, you can see the scorched ground go all the way to the house.
Thankfully, the fire was stopped approximately 300 yards from our kitchen. Comparatively, the fire did not get that close, yet it's a lot closer than one wants to have their home come to a fire. Without the courageous and coordinated effort of the Fire and Sheriff's Departments, this could have gone a lot worse.
There was a pot luck Thank You gathering at the Altona Grange, the following Saturday, and the firemen I spoke to were appreciative that we showed up, but I don't think there is an adequate way to thank people who save your home. Below are a few pics.
Smoke on Horizon
Closer than you want it to get...
Tight Lines,
Dave
