Black Cat Fire

Well, we were evacuated from our home on thursday night. The fire I saw building while on the phone with my work on tuesday afternoon (now dubbed the "Black Cat Fire", and Black Cat Road/Canyon is right up the street from our neighborhood) became erratic in behavior due to erratic winds, and doubled back.

It changed directions from where the firefighters were fighting (east, towards hwy 93), and came back in our direction, sometimes traveling up to 45 mph! We saw a bunch of smoke coming our way, but that had been happening for weeks now from various directions. Then we saw burnt pine needles and pieces of (presumably) bark falling from said cloud of smoke, and next thing we knew the ridge to the east of our house (other side of the creek) was on fire (loud roar... VERY impressive in its own way).

We packed all the animals into carriers, dogs into the car, had to hunt for one more cat that was freaked out, and I drove the car, the animals and the kids down out of the canyon. Sara took the horses to a neighbor's house, who was planning on staying, but then decided that was crazy, and walked the horses out of the canyon as well (being bucked off and then crunched between the horses along the way). We don't have a truck nor a horse-trailer...

Basically we had NO official warning. We were pretty much in the process of getting out when the cops finally raced all over the neighborhood telling everyone to get out NOW, or they weren't going to get out. They were also caught by surprise by the speed of the fire. Note that the entire area was blanketed by a lot of smoke all day long. The fire-people hadn't been able to make any flights to assess the location of the fire all day, so ground observations was all they had, so I'm sure not blaming anyone.

Shortly after she had boarded the horses with another neighbor at the bottom of the road (near the frontage to hwy 90), she received a call from our realtor, who had sold us the house only 2 months ago. He had heard from a friend that Mill Creek (our main access road) was evacuating, and he basically hung up on his friend, saying "Gotta go!", and called us to see how we were doing. He drove home to grab his horse trailer and truck, and came to pick us (2 adults, 2 kids, 6 cats, 2 dogs, and 2 horses, and nothing else!) up around 11pm. We've been staying at his house ever since.

While waiting for him to arrive, we watched the fire come down the grassy slopes in multiple fronts (rings of red making their way downhill in the excessively dry grass). Again, this was VERY impressive in its own way. Very beautiful (in a deadly way). Mother nature at her most angry is still pretty beautiful, I must say.

Also, as far as I know right now, NO houses (at least not 'occupied' ones) were lost, which impresses me almost as much as the fire itself. The hill to the east of the creek (we are on the west; the fire came at us from the east) looked to us to be a goner, i.e. all houses etc. But the next day when we went back to see the status (and so on), all houses were still there! Very impressive work by the firefighters.

My house is also still standing. We were let up for an hour to gather some stuff yesterday, and I talked to neighbors that never left at all (crazy folk). The whole little valley around my house including all the immediate neighbors were lucky as the fire seems to have bypassed us completely. Not even the bone-dry pasture above my house (between me and the next neighbor) was burnt. Not even singed. Untouched. Very lucky.

Of course that was yesterday. I try not to get my hopes up TOO high, as montana is the driest it's been as far as white-man records show, record breaking heat and all. The fire is just going where it pleases, for the most part, but we are the number 1 fire IN THE NATION right now. Highest priority (closeness to Missoula is a big factor I think). If the fire manages to jump hwy 93 (runs north south to glacier national park), it's got a pretty easy run to missoula...

Here's a newpaper article (frontpage of the paper yesterday!!), which talks about some of this. Sara was interviewed for this, so you'll find her name and our last name in there in a few places. She's also in that first picture, helping load some horses from the stables further up Mill Creek from us the day after (and during) the fire (she's the second from the right, holding the gate).

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/08/18/news/top/news01.txt

I HOPE we can go back home today (sunday) or maybe tomorrow. In which case my network access will be restored to something better than the 36K dialup I'm using now :)