mighty_sam

The punctuating moment of the Wedding of the Century.

Quick and dirty, aspect ratio screwed up, but better than nothing!

Cool... I found an open wireless network here at the wedding site. I'm running sound for the event, so I'm here with my computer and stuff and will endeavor to do live blogging of the wedding in updates to this post, and answer any questions or pass along any messages that appear in comments. It may well be that everyone who is interested is already here, but we'll give this a try.

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We got back to the house around 6:30 tonight, after going to Steven's house to retrieve our cats and clean up after ourselves. We were in no major rush to hurry home because we knew everything was basically OK here. The extent of smoke in the house was unknown, and the possibility of burning in our back yard was unknown, but I could tell yesterday when I got the cats that everything was probably fine.

The house is not very smoky at all. There is no damage, and nothing burned on our property. The wind was very strong though: it blew the cap off our chimney, and the dish on the hill in our backyard that connects to our ISP was blown totally sideways (I re-aimed it and it is fine).

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We'll return home after work. Once we do, and have a chance to take a good look around, we'll report on the state of the house and our neighborhood in a picture post.

In other news, we dropped Demi off at the vet for her amputation this morning. We should be able to pick her up on Friday or Saturday. I'm going to miss our doggie the next few days. Classes start next Monday, and I have tons of work to do. Never a dull moment.

Again, thanks for all the positive energy that came to us the past couple of days.

A little after 4:00 this afternoon I got a call from the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Department, telling me that a deputy would escort me out to the house to retrieve our animals.

Our house was fine on the outside and inside. I did not even see any signs of anything burning in our yard, at least as much of it as I could view. The kitties were in their crates, and started meowing their heads off when they heard my voice. They continued meowing for the next 30 minutes or so, until we got them back to Steven's house and let them out. They ate, drank, and used the litter box and seem to be fine.

The last mile of road out to our house (Trailmaster Drive) now has charred black scenery on both sides, almost all the entire way. The side of the canyon across from us is mostly burnt, but I did not see any damaged structures. Granted, I did not linger to look much. It is hard to believe that everything is OK, considering the swirling and rushing maelstrom of smoke and embers it was like out there just a little more than 24 hours ago. We were running for our lives yesterday.

There is another public information meeting at 8:00a tomorrow; assuming the fire does not flare up again with some winds expected tonight, my guess is that they'll let us return home sometime tomorrow.

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH to everyone for your well wishes, support, prayers, and contributions. We'll report in more detail when we get to go home. In the meantime, we're going to decompress.

There's not much changed with respect to "official" news at this point, though there is a public information meeting at 4:00p that we'll attend. We have picked up on some scuttlebutt, though, that I will pass on:

* According to a neighbor of a neighbor, the house across the street from us, and the one back into the canyon from there (SE), were OK as of this morning. These are two of the four houses nestled in the Box Canyon Road - Corral Drive loop.

* In another neighbor via neighbor report, the guy next door to us (maybe 75 yards away), toward the back of the canyon (SE), called his house and got his answering machine this morning.

* There is one house, across the canyon from us, that I have heard from multiple sources has been destroyed, but is not reflected in the official count.

* Reports are still that only two homes have been destroyed. The one that I thought I knew the location of is actually a little bit closer. The other is further away.

* Our house is in what is considered the current "hot zone," but with the firefighting forces present out there, their effectiveness, and the defensibility of our house, I'm guardedly optimistic at this point. On the map from the earlier post, this area is enclosed by the crook of Trailmaster and Box Canyon.

If all of this is true, it is not at all unreasonable to think that our house and cats stand a decent chance of being OK at this point. But the fire is still growing, the hot spot is nearby, and there's a windy afternoon ahead.

We'll post more later this afternoon, after the meeting.

The site for the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation now has a site for information on the fire. The site is slow loading, but it always has been. The must have a 286 or something for a server.

"Jack Conner of the Bureau of Land Management says about 50 fire engines are trying to protect homes in the subdivision. He says they're staging themselves at homes in areas cleared of vegetation where they can defend the homes."

Our house is cleared of vegetation and is as defensible as any house in the subdivision. It's funny how much Kim and I have bitched about the previous owner and some of the funky things he did to the house: weird renovation choices, some shoddy work, etc., but... the one thing he did a great job on was fire-proofing the house. He's an environmental scientist specializing in sustainability, wilderness, and forestry, so he knew what he was doing.

Update 9:30 a.m. Monday: The Emerald Hills fire has spread across more than 1,000 acres and is still growing, said Lockwood Fire Chief William D. Rash Monday morning.

Officials have called in a type 3 incident team to fight the blaze.

The evacuation order for the homes in danger will likely not be lifted today, Rash said during a press conference. Officials say their biggest fear is the strong and erratic winds predicted for this afternoon. There is no estimate of when the fire will be contained.

Fire engines are stationed at those homes in the most imminent danger, he said. Officials have called in additional firefighting resources including three more small tanker airplanes, three more helicopters and a large tanker airplane.

Again, good support in place. If our house is still there at the moment, it will probably continue to stay so. The county Animal Control unit called and said that they were aware of our cats, and as soon as they were allowed to they'd get a crew out there to try to save them. That's all we can ask at this point.

Kim and I will soon head out to Target or Old Navy or something because we only have the clothes on our backs. And, we need to go get a leash for Demi since we did not bring it out with us. Actually, we'll probably just go borrow one from our vet, since she goes in for her amputation tomorrow and will be in the vet hospital for a few days afterwards.