The Fire

On Sunday afternoon, 9/4/2011, I started my first crock pot meal (Bacon Ranch Chicken) and played with Dylan as Scott and Jake took a nap together. Around 4:45pm I noticed it began to get really windy outside so I went in the backyard to find a really overwhelming smoke smell from what I thought was the neighbor's grill. Silly neighbors-sucks for them that they burned their dinner! The first fire engine went by on John Simpson (our street) so I took Dylan in the front yard to see what was going on. There were ashes swirling in the air like snow that reminded me of the images I saw on TV of 9/11 after the towers collapsed. Cars started peeling out and racing up the street that dead ends into our house (Medina) like bats out of you know where. Another fire engine went by and the cars were pointing them in the direction of Medina. I brought Dylan inside because the smoke smell and ashes were so strong that I was worried about his breathing ability. I woke Scott up and asked him to hold the baby while I went down Medina to investigate. As I'm walking, our neighbors are packing up their car with belongings and their babies and said their realtor called them to let them know they were evacuating our neighborhood. At this point there were more fire engines and a Sheriff began driving down the street with a megaphone telling everyone to leave. I ran in the house and woke up Jake and put him in the car without even shoes on his feet. I grabbed Dylan and the diaper bag not even thinking to fill it with Dylan's formula (or anything useful for that matter) and put them in the car. All I could think about was getting over to my Dad's to notify him and get him out. Gracie was terrified of all of the sirens and I couldn't get her out from under the bed. Not realizing the gravity of the situation, I left her there to go help my Dad.

Once we got to his house in the next subdivision, he took FOREVER! He is on 24/7 oxygen and fiddled with his tanks for what seemed like at least 10 minutes. He was mosying around his house as if he had all the time in the world and I was seriously about to jump of out my skin. All I could think was his house was about to freaking explode with all of the oxygen tanks in there. There was a heavy cloud of smoke coming towards us from the end of his street and I was becoming panicked. His cat, Murphy, was hiding, too, and I couldn't find him anywhere and by this time the Sheriff was at his door demanding that we leave immediately. We drove up to the hill in front of the elementary school to watch it all unfold and my Dad was just devastated that we left Murphy. He said he didn't know what he'd do if anything ever happened to Murphy so we went back to his house. Luckily, Murphy had come out of hiding so I was able to shove him in the car and turn on his sprinklers. My Dad's neighbors were standing on the top of their roof watering down their roof with a garden hose! Holy sh-t, this is for real. We drove back to my house to try and get Gracie and turn on our sprinklers, too, but they had already blocked off our street. Ours was the first street to be evacuated so I knew at this point that something pretty serious was going down and it was headed right for our home. I had so much regret at this point of everything I had left behind. All of our pic's are on SmugMug but my Mom's whole life and memories are boxed away in my closet and I couldn't believe I didn't grab her stuff. How could I have done that?!?! You always think about what you would grab in a fire but when it is staring you dead in the eye, a rational thought process is non existent.

So we drove away empty handed to the nearest Walmart to stock up on everything I was too shell shocked to remember to gather as we were evacuating. It took us about an hour to get out of the neighborhood and then another two hours at Walmart. We ran into so many people from Steiner there and everyone walked around the store just terrified, trying to keep it together for the kids. Scott called and got 2 rooms at the Embassy Suites in the Arbor because my requirements were a suite and room service. We were so lucky!

That night was terrible. Everyone was telling us that the park on our road was on fire and that our subdivision, Plateau, was the worst affected. We knew it had hit John Simpson area pretty hard and we were just hoping to have been spared. Dylan was up every couple hours that night as he was not sleeping well in his pack n play. Scott and Jake slept on the pull out bed in the living room and I walked around the suite most of the night trying to get Dylan to sleep. The news was absolutely worthless and the only pieces of info we could find were on Steiner Ranch Facebook pages. People were sneaking into the neighborhood on foot and posting addresses of homes that burned and homes that were still standing. We probably checked the sites at least once every couple of minutes for the next few days scanning for info on our address. The next morning we went to the Mansfield Dam and parked our car on 620 along with thousands of others just watching the smoke and trying to figure out where it was coming from. We ran into a guy that lives a few houses down on Medina that said our house was fine. He had snuck back in the neighborhood that morning and claimed that he knew we had the house with "the boat and cool kid toys". At that point a sense of cautious optimism sank in.

That night at the hotel we met so many Steiner neighbors and shared our stories. The next morning (Tuesday) they announced we could go back home at 12 but not to rush as it would be a massive traffic jam and take hours to get back in. Of course we immediately packed our things and drove home and started lining up to get back in the neighborhood around 11:30am. It only took about 30 minutes to get back in and what a surreal drive that was. We had no idea what to expect as we scanned the roads searching for signs on the fire. When we got home and opened the door, Gracie was so excited to see us. She's alive!!!!!!!! The house reeked of smoke and the electricity was out but there was absolutely no damage. In our yard we found huge pieces of burnt ash, some of them almost 6 inches long! We are so very lucky that those burning pieces of the homes around us that settled on our lawn and roof didn't catch fire. There was little rhyme or reason to the path of destruction the fire took. Some houses were unscathed while all of the houses surrounding them burned down to their foundations. 25 homes in our subdivision burned down. Homes within a mile radius to us. We will be forever grateful that we were spared and forever sympathetic for those that were not so lucky.