We've had one rainshower in the last 3 months. No drizzles, no sprinkles, no afternoon cloudbursts. So the grass has dried into straw, palm-thatched roofs wait like ready kindling, and most of our yard resembles a tinderbox.
Enter a neighbor who decided today is a great day for brushburning in the field next door.
*FACEPALM*
Around 9:30 Tim comes in grumbling about the stupid neighbor who has a brushfire he can't handle.
Trena: Did you call the fire department?
Tim: They won't do anything anyway. They probably don't even have water.
The fire department unfortunately has the reputation of showing up with empty water tanks, it's true. And our electricity is out, though we're on generator power, so we have limited access to the water that's in our own well.
Tim headed back outside, and Trena and I exchanged looks. Any report of fire in this dry spell is not encouraging. And then we both paused.
Trena, frowning: I hear it.
Me, with a wash of memories from the last time I heard this sound: I hear it too.
We get up and dash outside, neither of us expecting what we saw. Only feet from the fence separating our property from the neighbor's goat pasture was a wall of flame, steadily eating its way closer and closer to our parched grass and thatched roofs.
My mom read me Little House on the Prairie, folks. I know what happens when fire gets out of control in a dry field.
I've encountered fire a bit too closely on a couple of occasions now. The car accident with TUFW a couple of years ago, two years of horrendous wildfires in Colorado Springs, a couple of instances of near-wildfires started by crazies out near Cottonwood Creek behind the Doneys' house. Now this one.
So this is not a welcome sight.
Trena: My birds are going to die!
She rushes to find a garden hose to start dousing the thatched roofs of the birdcages. A cloud of smoke is wafting toward the poor trapped birdies.
Me, I stand there looking useless and contemplating homelessness, awash in the crackling, rippling flames and the burning heat that descended on us from above, amplified by the grass-fed bonfire next door. And then I get the brilliant idea that I am no good to anybody wearing flipflops, and I race upstairs to change into sneakers and frankly consider what I should pack if it comes down to that. Dratted panic.
Meanwhile, Conrad does call the fire department. And I join Yolanda and we race through the house shutting the persianas, the slatted window "shades" that are usually open all the time to let the breeze through, to keep them from letting in the smoke, which is already settling in an unsettling blue haze in the air.
And then I take these pictures and realize the only thing I can do is get people praying... so, thank you social media!
The fire department arrives within minutes, and they fight alongside our guys. But as suspected... they only have half a tank of water. So although from one side they can start drowning the flames with water from their hose, from the other side there is nothing but our yard workers pointing garden hoses with doubtful pressure and firemen running around with green branches they cut from the trees in the burning field.
Garden hoses were not meant to be firefighting tools, friends. And yet they were pretty much our only (physical) hope.
The firetruck quickly exhausts its supply of water, but by then thankfully it seems we are down to smoldering coconuts and palm trunks... no more open flames. Fire contained.
Firetruck and fire fighters pack up to leave, but they are no sooner down the road than we have another outburst of flames! Our guys all jump the fence and scramble to reconnect the hoses at a better angle to protect our property, and Conrad grabs a branch to beat it out DR-style. We don't bother to call the fire department back... with no water, what can they do anyway?
We are all grateful when they're successful... and we keep an eye on that field the rest of the day, thanking God for his protection. Bit nervewracking, that!
The following day, I ask Genaro to take me out to the field where the fire started because I have a sneaking suspicion about what I'll see: even though the fire came close, I had noted that it was almost as if there were a line that it did not cross. I wanted to see if that was true.
The goat field was coal black, but next to our property, in front of that big house (La Casa Grande) there in these photos, you can see the hedge of protection. It's almost an even line of untouched grass around our property. except the areas we doused with hose water, where it's wider. In the picture just above this paragraph, if you zoom in you can see that the leaves on the guayava trees are scorched at a level higher than the thatched roofs of the birdcages, but no sparks flew and caught flame. I know it's because people prayed.
I love seeing God's hand at work...
A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,but it will not come near you.
If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
and you make the Most High your dwelling,
No harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent. (Ps. 91:8,9,10)
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