Smoke on the horizon...

My youngest sister & I were working on a project yesterday & all of a sudden dad comes running in from the back yard. My dad never runs, unless one of his kids or grandkids is in trouble. So I said "Dad it looks like you are in a rush" & he said "OH YEAH!". Odd since he never really runs or rushes ANYWHERE I follow him out. And this is what we saw. Never a good thing to see.

Within 10 minutes the helicopters came. There is a dam about 1 1/2 blocks over & that's where the helicopters fill up. The picture does not do it justice as to how close they actually are. We were talking to a neighbor & they said that at one point she counted 5 helicopters.

We decided to go up to Ranch Top, for those who are familiar with the neighborhood, & watch the helicopters come in & load up with water.
It was suppose to be contained by 4 or 5pm but the pictures below were taken about 6pm.
Back in 1995 the mountains above my parents house burned. It was very scary. People were up on top of the houses with wood-shake (sp) roofs & were wetting them down so that the hot embers wouldn't catch their houses on fire. We were smoked out for almost 2 days & could smell it in the house for weeks afterwards. So this is bringing back memories that were not to pleasant & I just hope it doesn't go clear across the mountain scape.


About this time is when we started to smell the smoke & that's not a good thing because it means that the wind is blowing in our direction.

Since it is hard to get a night pictures I took a video.

For those of you familiar with SoCal fires... notice anything strange? About the helicopters? Yeah they are still flying! Usually at dusk they stop NO MATER WHAT! But they kept on going at least 1 hour after the sun was down & it was dark. We were very impressed with the system they had going on. Check out the video below. As one came in the next was taking off. Very efficient.

I called mom this morning & apparently they are being smoked out (no wind!). So I'm keeping Payton out of nursery. She said that the helicopters were already going & since we have more work to do on Kristin's project I hope that Payton will be able to sleep. The good thing is that they aren't going directly over my parents house but they will be basically circling their house all day. I'll post more later!
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