Friday, July 13 was my birthday. To celebrate, my boyfriend, Bob, and I went to the coast. It was great to get out of the Klamath River Valley for a few days. I had a great time, bought a bunch of stuff, won money at a casino that gave me play money for my birthday, and slept overnight in a motel.

When we returned on Saturday night at 11:30pm we were appalled to see a bright red mass of forest fire flames on the hill right next to the forested hill I live on. When we left on Friday, that wasn’t there. The lightning that started all the fires hit the Wednesday before. There are dozens of fires burning all through this forest, but this particular fire ignited two days later and came way too close to our little town of Happy Camp.

So my last few days have been occupied with packing for evacuation, storing valuables elsewhere, attending community fire information meetings, writing articles about the fires for Happy Camp News, being elated when it rained heavily on Tuesday night, and in general, feeling like I was misplaced.

Here’s something you never want to see happening less than a mile from your home. This is what it looked like last Tuesday. We had a lot of people praying for us and God sent rain on Tuesday night. Now there are only a few white wisps of smoke coming up in various places from the forest. I pray it doesn’t get this bad again before they get the entire fire under control. The fire is called the Little Grider Fire after Little Grider Creek, a creek that runs a mile southwest of here. The fire was between our town and the creek.

The map shows how close this fire got to my house.

I’ve been going to work every day. Yesterday at the pizza place where I work we were inundated by hungry fire fighters. I guess they had the day off because of the rain the night before. Guess what. Fire fighters like pizza. They kept us busy from noon to closing time, 9pm. Actually I heard that the night shift stayed open an extra hour to accommodate the famished. Seemed like almost everyone wanted their own personal sized mini pizzas, and we probably sold over a hundred, whereas we usually sell less than five of those in a day.

The good news is that the fire moved away from town and it looks like I won’t have to evacuate after all.

I’ll get back on my schedule again soon – I didn’t even have my computer in my home for a few days so I couldn’t do any blogging at all. For now I’ll file this with my thankfulness articles because I’m so grateful my house didn’t burn down.

Bob and I are heading out for our daily fire watch time. We go across the river every day to get a good look at fire suppression helicopters and to see where the smoke is coming from. See ya later!

[Update: since I wrote this I created a Squidoo lens on evacuation planning: Emergency Survival - Plan and Prepare NOW so if Something Terrible Happens, You'll Be Ready!.]