Whew! That Was Close!

So, on Friday, we came very close to having to evacuate. The winds shifted in our direction and we could see the dark brown smoke getting closer to us. Casey had gone to workout on Friday morning, and as he was heading back towards our house, he could see the flames from the highway.



Luckily, we had plenty of time to pack up more of our important stuff, and we had both cars loaded up and ready to go. Our friends, Chuck and Gaylene came over and took Casey's motorcycles and some of our boxes of pictures back to their house. We were just waiting for the word to leave. There were about 10-12 firetrucks parked down at the school, which is about a mile from us, ready to go if needed.



There was so much air power sent in that several of our friends in town said it looked like a dogfight out our way. They had lots of planes and helicopters flying around all afternoon dropping water and retardant.



Thankfully, later in the afternoon the winds shifted west, away from us, so we never had to evacuate.
Things seemed to have calmed down a bit for now. They seem to have better control of the fires now. The winds have died and the humidity is up, so that's been a big help to the fire crews.
Hopefully things will remain steady. We've sort of unloaded the cars, but still have things packed just in case. We're kind of living out of suitcases and some of our walls look a bit bare, but we want to still be prepared to leave just in case things change again.

If you are interested in keeping track of the fires, go to Enplan and check out the progress. We are close to both the Motion and Moon fires. You can locate the town of Shasta on the map just off HWY 299 and east of Whiskeytown Lake.
So, quite a bit of excitement in our quaint little town, but we're OK!! (just tired of all the smoke)

Startin' to get a little nervous...

So the fires are slowly making their way closer to our area now. There have been some evacuations in other parts of Shasta, but on the other side of the highway. There is also another fire burning in the towns of Ono and Igo, and it seems to be making its way in our direction. I can hear helicopters flying nearby that are dropping buckets of water/retardent or whatever. I can see the smoke behind the hills just west of our house.



Casey is at work right now and is keeping me up to date as to what is going on as far as evacuations and such. Luckily the winds that we had yesterday have died down, but it still seems they are having a hard time getting these fires under control. I think they are still quite a distance away from us, but they are heading in our direction somewhat. So, yes, I am starting to get a little nervous. Luckily, we are all packed and ready to go if needed. All we have to do is throw everything in the cars and get out.



This is bringing back memories of the time we had to evacuate from our other house in Redding. It was a week after Riley was born. Luckily, that fire never got real close to our house, but it was still stressful and scary.



All these pictures are from Redding.com . They have good updates there if you're interested.

So, that's where we stand right now. Hopefully, we won't have to evacuate and everything will be fine. But I think I'll keep praying, just in case...