Coming Across The Mountains

So there we all were,
In the middle of winding down for the night.
It was after 11:30 pm. 
I was in the living room, doing a bit of last minute computer things before bed, when one of my roomies came out of her room saying that she'd seen a posting on Facebook that there was a fire on the mountain near us.

Now, when I thought 'near us' I thought it was over on the other side of the valley where most of the fires were last year.

Nope. Not the case.

I follow her outside to investigate.
And we can see the orange glow from the fires reflecting in the smoke cloud from where we stand.
Which means it close.
Though we couldn't see flames.
So I thought it was still closer to the other side of the valley than it was to us.

Since we couldn't see any flames, both me and roomie agreed it wasn't that close and went back inside.

Though roomie was still worried -as we have been on edge when fires are mentioned due to the fire last year that nearly took our house. 

So while we were getting ready to go drive over and investigate.

Fourth roomie comes out and says she just heard there was a fire outside.

So we head back outside to show her...and the orange glow has doubled in size in like the five minutes since we'd been outside. ()_()

To give us peace of mind, we all ended up piling into my car and hitting the road turning left at the light at the bottom of our street to head towards the next city over so we can see this fire.

Oh.
The fire was so much closer than we originally believed.
As it was like maybe a two minute drive down the road before we were right below it. 
Which meant it was close.

I think estimates are that it was like 2 or 3 miles away from us?
And since we've been going through a heat wave...there's a ton of dried grass and brush covering the mountain, so if the winds shifted wrong....things could get ugly quickly.

It was quite the site to behold though it was only around 50 or so acres when we saw it last night. 
But the wind would kick up and the flames would kick up and send roaring spurts of fire high into the sky. Like higher than tree high...so maybe a good twenty feet....though I do think some flames later on in the evening reached like 100 feet. 

It was crazy.
Scary to see.

And when we got back to our house...we could now see flames from there. Which meant the fire was approaching us. 

:S :S :S

Needless to say....there was a lot of worry there.
We could see the flames.
So that meant the fire could get closer.

So we ended up staying up and watching the thing until like 2 am this morning, when my roomie's mom came by and took us on a 2am drive to see the fire from a distance, where we could then tell that the fire was smoldering down and looked to be contained by the fire crews and such on site.

And thankfully today has been colder, cloudier, and wetter with rain fall, so the fire was basically out by the time I got off of work today. 
It burned a nice swatch of nearly 400 acres across the mountainside.
But thankfully no one was hurt and no buildings were damaged/destroyed.

Mostly because the fire started above a trail line that goes along the mountain, and that trail line acted like a fire trench preventing the fire from getting too close to any houses. 

So yah.
It was kinda scary.
But thankfully the fire kept its distance and we didn't have to worry....well I didn't have to worry much. I think my roomies are doing fine too...but it's hard to tell for sure. 

Until you next see these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi