Two Months After the Fire

Ed and I went for a walk with Bruiser on the Bear Creek Greenway that runs between our mobile home park and the creek. We walked through the damage from the fire in July just a couple of days before I left town which I blogged about here.

The top pic is taken from the bottom of the ramp that leads to Fern Valley Road. The nearest edge of fire damage is behind me by maybe 100 yards. The mobile home park is behind me and to my right and the creek is on the other side of a stand of trees and brush to my left.



Above: taken in the middle of the ravaged area facing the creek and showing the stumps of some of the trees chopped down by the firemen because fire got inside their trunks. Five good sized trees were lost this way. And more will probably have to come down before winter winds and ice arrive.

There is an RV park across the creek and on the other side of it is a mall which is beside I5. It was not a paranoid fantasy that the fire could have jumped the creek, taken out the RV park and threatened buildings and vehicles at the mall. It could also have gone the other way towards our mobile home park.

In fact it began just a few yards from the backyard fence of the two homes directly across the lane from us.



It was either maliciously set or accidentally by kids playing with fireworks (just days after July 4rth). And if not for the quick thinking and cooperation of about a dozen neighbors who commandeered or volunteered yard hoses, hooked them together and fought the fire with them over the fence, keeping it off those two homes and from spreading along the fence to either side of them until the fire trucks arrived.

Ed was one of those neighbors wielding hoses over the fence seen above. But that was after he pounded on the door of the house seen on the left to alert the neighbor lady who was asleep in the bedroom abutting the fence. No more than fifteen feet from the flames which damaged her siding and broke her bathroom window.







Above: the stand of trees as seen from our porch over the roofs of those same two houses.