Fern Valley Road Grass Fire

There's a better video here which didn't allow embed. It shows more scenes from inside the trailer park of the neighbors using garden hoses to fend it off.

There was a grass fire on the Bear Creek Greenway which runs behind the houses across the lane from us. Actually grass fire or brush fire doesn't seem to accurately describe it as, although the brush, weeds, grass, berry vines were burning the fire was also climbing the tall trees.

The two trailers across the lane from us have only a yard or so between the back side of their trailer and their fence and the fence was crawling with berry vines. One trailer's back wall was scorched and a bathroom window cracked by the heat.

But it could have been so much worse if the dozen or more neighbors had not rallied to fend off the fire with their garden hoses, keeping it on the creek side of the fence until the fire trucks arrived.

Ed was one of them, joining in after he'd made the 911 call and then gone over to pound on the door of the trailer nearest to the fire to alert the woman who, as it turned out, had been asleep in the back room no more than a couple yards from the flames scorching the back of her trailer. She also has several pets who were all indoors because of the afternoon heat.

Most of the excitement was over by the time I knew anything was happening. I'd been watching West Wing episodes on my netbook with the earbuds in and cranked and there had been sirens in those episodes so if there had been sirens from the fire trucks responding I did not distinguish them from the video.

The fire was spotted shortly after 4 by Ed's mom as the two of them sat on the front porch. It was shortly before six when Ed came in to tell me what was going on. He had just returned to the house after the firemen had gone into mop up mode. Though there continued to be some smoldering on the ground and up in the trees for a couple more hours, the yards and trailer homes safe unless there was another flare up.

It was after 9 before the firetrucks were all cleared out. At least form the trailer park side of the fence. I couldn't see over to the creek from our porch and wasn't about to go try to see. But around six I took a bunch of pictures of the trees above the roofs of the two houses across the lane. Was planning to prep and post them tonight but decided too go with the videos instead I just wish that second one would have allowed embed as well as it was the better one.