Because Our Life is Just Not Exciting Enough As It Is

So .... this afternoon I left the house to take Minsy to physical therapy and pick up Spencer from school. As I left Herman told me that he wasn't much feeling like working on his dissertation today, so he thought it might be a great day to burn some brush. We basically live in the middle of a forest with trees coming almost up to our house, and it's a wild forest with lots and lots and lots of underbrush. Here's the winter view from my bedroom window:

It's so much prettier in the spring and summer.

For a few years we tried to use pygmy goats to control things, but it turns out that they were the only goats on the planet to be picky eaters, so they didn't help much. Herman has been trying to reclaim the land ever since we moved here, and I guess he decided that this was going to be the afternoon that the forest lost and Herman won. It was a wind free day, so I didn't think twice as I left the house on my mission, until ...

I got a call from a not-quite-desperate Herman asking that I send Spencer down to help him out as soon as we got home. Apparently the fire had gotten pretty big after hitting an area of thick brush that hadn't ever been cleared before. I still wasn't terribly worried. Maybe it was a bit too big for Herman to do alone, but with Spencer it would be okay. I was okay, until ....

Our good neighbor helping to water things down.

I got another call from a pretty desperate Herman asking that Laney and I grab rakes and start containing a fire in a leaf pile on one side of the property. Herman and Spencer were working on containing the fire on  the opposite side of the property with the help of our neighbor. Laney and I (because we aren't the brightest fire fighting girls on the planet) headed outside in our flip-flops to do what we could ... not much. We found another neighbor with a hose working on containing the fire there. As I sat and talked with him I surveyed the forest surrounding our property and found little smoldering fires all over the place. It looked a lot like that fiery hill from The Lord of the Rings. Maybe not quite as red, but very smokey. The weirdest sight was seeing Spencer at the bottom of the hill with his shirt off, swinging his t-shirt toward the ground to smother the fire in front of him. His trekkie shirt! He loves that shirt! He was obviously dedicated to the task at hand. All Laney and I could do was watch as our neighbors, Herman, and Spencer worked to contain things.

That's when I heard the sirens. 

Oh no! Was it that bad? It didn't look quite that bad to me, but obviously someone in the area was concerned about it. But the sirens were heading away from us. That didn't make much sense. We live in the neighborhood directly across the road from the Waynesville fire department, so they shouldn't be heading away from us. We figured out what was going on when we saw their trucks by the apartment building across the ravine from our property. Obviously someone from the apartments had called about the fire, so they headed over there first. Soon we heard the sirens again, this time headed for our neighborhood.

When the first responder arrived on the scene, he could only see one of my neighbors hosing down an area near Herman's office building. I hear a voice over a loudspeaker say,

Everyone clear the area. Now!

No problem. I was hiding inside the house with our neighbor's 7 year-old son, pretending that this was all happening to some other family. My neighbor looked a little funny being asked to clear away from his tiny pillar of smoke, but he followed protocol and moved away. After seeing that this was the right place, the lead guy radioed everyone else to tell them where to drive. And everyone came. Everyone. We live in a weird slice of land that is in between St. Robert and Waynesville, a Waynesville address with St. Robert utilities. It's weird, and because of its weird location, it wasn't quite obvious which department had jurisdiction over the fire. On our side of the ravine it is Waynesville's job, but on the other side it belongs to St. Robert. Since it wasn't clear where the fire was, both departments showed up. Our entire street was filled with emergency vehicles and personnel from the two fire departments, way more than the situation called for. Still, it was nice to have them there.

The good news was that the fires were already contained by the time the fire departments arrived. They didn't have much to do, so they didn't even get into their gear. They did use their hoses to help us finish putting out the most troublesome areas. That was nice since their water pressure was so much better than ours. It only took less than an hour for them to have it all taken care of. The fire fighters told Herman that it really was an ideal call for them since it wasn't dangerous at all, and it gave them a chance to train a little on this sort of situation (brush fire on a steep hillside in a residential neighborhood). I'm still sorry that they had to come out this afternoon, but at least it wasn't a high stress situation for them.

Our local firefighters doing a great job!

 Katie, Hyrum, and JoJo rode the bus home today, and I met them at the stop so that they wouldn't freak out when they found a load of emergency vehicles parked outside the house. JoJo's reaction?

What's going on????

Classic.

So today ends with a lot less brush on the forest hill behind out house. Hurray for that! I am grateful for excellent fire fighters who came to help, and were just as friendly as they were competent. And I'm super glad to live in a neighborhood with so many people willing to help when we got ourselves into a bind.

I know this ... the next time Herman chooses to burn things when he is avoiding his dissertation, I will probably pay a bit closer attention. When he chooses to procrastinate, he goes big. :)

Herman and Spencer surveying the damage
after the crisis is over.
And BONUS! Spencer's trekkie shirt survived!