Fire!

Saturday, December 2, 2007 about 3:00 p.m. I saw from my kitchen window smoke up at the house and called 911. A few seconds later Judy called and left a message on my machine telling me that the house was burning.

I couldn’t take pictures of the first fire. My batteries were drained from a trip to Florida a week earlier and I was too full of adrenaline after getting Judy's call to find fresh ones. I couldn’t have taken them anyway once I got there and saw...

photo by Priscilla Holcomb

The photos that follow are from 12/3/2007. The blurry, bluish ones were taken about 6:00 am. I called 911 to report smoke billowing out of the house. The Fire department responded and put it out.

Skeletal spruce. The ass't fire chief said her son got trapped when this tree went up in flames. She said he knew he was in trouble immediately and was really scared. He looked for his partner (firefighters work in pairs at all times for this reason) and realized that she had gotten to the other side of the tree just as it went up and didn't know what had happened. He figured his only way to survive was to kick the fence down. His partner realized quickly what had happened and from the other side, she helped him tear the fence down.

Here is the missing section of fence the firefighters tore down.

About 1:00 p.m. Shep, Charlie and Keith; and then I, a bit later, went up to the house. A new blaze broke out. By about 4:30 they had contained it finally.

[photos not uploaded yet]