Well, this was fun - I was working on a bike in my garage yesterday, listening to the wind howling outside (well, okay - it was maybe 25-30 mph) when I heard a 'thump' and the power went out. After the obligatory colorful invective, I went inside to check on Barb and looked out the window and saw a big tree had come down across the road, hit the wires and started a fire!
The View from The Road - This is Where It Started!
I said something along the lines of "HOLY SHIT!! The yard's on fire!" It was just a small patch, so I ran back to the shop, grabbed my fire extinguisher and sprinted across the yard and let loose, but even by then the fire had spread, and was EXPANDING, courtesy of the fucking WIND!
Meantime, some older guy who lives down the road had pulled up (blocked by the downed tree), and despite me yelling "HEY!! HEYYY!!! he just sat there for what seemed an eternity, looking at me slack-jawed before rolling down his window.
"What...?" he says, apparently not seeing the growing flames behind me
"CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT!!"
"What did you say...?" (I swear to God this is how it played out...)
"I - SAID, 'CALL-THEE-FY-ERR-DEE-PART-MENT,!!", having to enunciate every damn word!
"Oh, RIGHT...!" (FYI, the Faber Fire Department is literally five minutes away...)
This was something I could not do myself - even on a cell phone. See, out here in the sticks, even though we have fiber optic service, it's all electrically operated; so when the power goes out, it GOES OUT! No electricity, no phone service or WiFi, No water pressure (ergo No Hose!) ...yeah, it sucks. Meanwhile the wind keeps pushing the fire, which by now is spreading and heading for the house! I ran into the house and told Babara we had to MOVE, NOW!
I got her dressed and shuffled her to the car, but I wanted her in the car in case we had to bail; got her situated and then went back to my fire-fighting efforts.
Having no other option, I had to hand-carry bucketsful of water FROM the pool in the backyard in a Lowes bucket, AROUND the house, THROUGH the smoke, APPLY it, and then repeat - at least I know my heart's in pretty good shape...a neighbor friend of mine said he saw the smoke and came to investigate, he brought a rake with him and was raking all the burning leaves into piles, which I think in retrospect was probably a smarter idea than running around like a chicken with my head cut off - but what do I know? This was my first big fire - and hopefully Last!
As you can see in the pics, the fire came close to the house, but it's okay. Eventually the fire department did show up and hosed it all down, and we got the power back on at midnight. Apparently, when the tree in front of the house came down, it pulled the wires down but didn't snap them, instead it pulled down a pole up the road; how the fire started in my yard I'm not entirely sure about. I'm just glad it didn't make it into the woods - that would have been crazy!
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