Backyard Fire

We had some excitement last night. I was just taking note on how it is starting to get dark earlier and earlier. I looked at the clock and it was 8:30 so I made a mental note to plan for outdoor portrait photography times I'll need to start planning. I also heard a lot of sirens, which isn't totally unusual as I live along a north-south thoroughfare between town and the foothills. I settled in with the dogs to watch Sully. At about 9:15 I went to let the dogs out when I saw this:

I can't quite explain the primal flight reaction that came over me. This is over a mile away, basically the beautiful backdrop to our backyard view, but glowing bright orange, and the sirens! It sounded like the whole valleys first responders were driving past my house to get up there. I later found out that that was the truth. All the local city fire departments, the National Guard, and the BLM were there.

I scrambled to get my camera after taking a few initial terrible cell phone shots. Pretty quickly the fire came over the hillside.

That's when I decided to go out front to make sure our fire hydrant was clear in case it was needed. Our street was lined with cars and crowds of people trying to watch the fire over the neighborhood rooftops. I thought to myself I could have charged to let people in my backyard for the best seat in the house. Of course I didn't do that. I'm to stingy with my view and didn't know if any people were under serious threat up there.

 The last photos seem to be when they contained it at about midnight. About an hour later it looked pretty much under control so I decided it was safe to go to bed. I read that they had it mostly out by 3:30 in the morning and are spending the day cleaning up. The amount of traffic going past my house is still pretty heavy.