Fire

Sunday, September 19, 2010

4:30pm: There I was driving along I-15 heading to my parents house in Herriman for Sunday Dinner. Around 9000 S I noticed a huge billowing cloud of smoke hovering over the Herriman area. I called my mom and half-jokingly asked, “Is Herriman on fire?”. She was confused. Herriman was not on fire, they hadn’t noticed the smoke, and it didn’t appear too bad from their house. As I exited I-15 I could see that the fire was on the other side of the mountain.

4:45-7:25pm: We ate dinner and planned our trip to Yellowstone. (Yellowstone is going to be so much fun)

7:30pm: We noticed the smoke was worse and then watched it climb over the top of the mountain. The flames were HUGE! We stood in awe and speculated what would happen. We hoped that the fire would have a difficult time going down the mountain. Within 5 minutes it had speedily spread down toward the neighborhoods.

8:30pm: We took Hilary and her 3 kids home. Said prayers, brushed teeth, washed faces, and put on pajamas. The girls were in their beds and Isaac was fighting off sleep in his swing when Hilary’s neighbor came over and told us we needed to evacuate. We called Cody, he came over, loaded up the kids in Hilary’s van and took them to our parent’s house. Hilary and I packed two duffle bags of clothes, diapers, toiletries, passports, birth certificates, computer hard drives. It was fascinating to sit there and ask Hilary what she wanted to take. It was unlikely that the house would burn down but she needed to be prepared for anything.

The fire was huge and intense but when a house caught on fire, everybody knew it. Those fires were Ginormous.

My favorite part of the experience was finding Hilary’s missing cell phone. She had misplaced it in the past few days. We were calling it and searching the house. I finally heard a faint rumble. It took quite a few minutes to locate the sound, as it turns out it was coming from the dryer! This is why people should buy indestructible phones. Hilary’s phone made it through her washer and dryer. It came out squeaky clean and was no worse for wear. Awesome

9:00-10:00pm: We had evacuated about 1 mile up the road to my parent’s house. The smoke was overwhelming. There were times you could barely see, and breathing wasn’t the easiest. We waited for Hilary’s Husband Greg to get home from work. He got stopped outside the neighborhood but was allowed to walk about a mile to the house to get his family. They left at about 10:30 to stay at an Aunt’s house (didn’t want the kids breathing in the smoke). My mom and dad stayed put.

11:30pm: I arrived home, wired and smelling like a slept in a campfire. It's going to be a long Monday.

Crazy!