The fire at our neighbor's house last Thursday. Those little vertical squares in this photo are the windows in the house. Fire reached 20 feet high a few times.

A fire broke out on Thursday late afternoon in our neighborhood. It was less than 1/2 mile away which is basically 3 houses down the road and the way the wind was blowing with 45 mile hour winds, it could of taken out some of my neighbor’s houses or shifted and gotten ours. Luckily it went right in between 2 houses and missed everyone. I figure about 1/2 mile burned. Many of us neighbors were on the back line putting out hot spots and hosing down the land closest to the homes. The fire got within 30 feet of one home. I shoveled the hot spots and saved 3 trees from going up in flames. After the firefighters got there (3 fire engines) they made us get out of the hot zone after about an hour. Actually this was good because my throat was killing me the rest of the night from the smoke inhalation-it went away by morning. We had most of our valuables at the front door in case we were evacuated and several friends lined up to get our animals out but it wasn’t needed thank god…The next morning I was still shakey from the adrenaline rush/crash afterwards. We were all very, very lucky..