Wednesday, June 28, 2017

A Quick Post About My Day


Today is a personal post, something I rarely do outside of extreme circumstances.

I live in an area near Prescott in Northern Arizona. Currently there is a large brush fire, the Goodwin fire, that is burning to the south and east of my town. It started last Saturday and is now up to 20,644 acres burned with 1% controlled.

This was the view from my street yesterday when the fire was 4,400 acres and 12 miles away.

This is what it looks like now in my area. The smoke is so heavy and down to the ground it looks like fog or a dust storm and there is ash falling from the sky. Visibility is about 2 miles and there should be Bradshaw Mountain in the background but it is engulfed entirely with smoke.
My son’s school is being used as the evacuation site for areas that have already been evacuated. There are observation planes and helicopters flying over the house so low it rattles the walls and there are large flying tankers and Chinook helicopters towing water tanks going by regularly. Luckily there have not been any loss of life.

This is a spotter plane flying over my house, he was about 500 feet up and you can see the smoke even makes this picture blurry.

This is a Chinook yesterday flying from a nearby lake towing a water tank towards Bradshaw Mountain.
At this point my town has not been issued the pre-evacuation warning but I have begun getting things ready in case we do have to leave. I hit Walmart this morning to stock up on supplies and they are stacked in my garage ready to toss in to my Tahoe at a moment’s notice.

I am now experiencing a real life “What would you do with your collection if you had to leave unexpectedly?”

Now that I am comfortable that I have the important things ready to go I have begun to pull parts of my collection aside. This is most of what I would be taking; my entire Griffey collection along with my Buhner, Largent and Bader collections. My binders, which include relics, autographs, limited cards and sketch cards. My Griffey memorabilia and all of my displayed cards can be tossed in to the document boxes if it gets to the point I need to leave.

12 comments:

  1. As if the universe hasn't already thrown you enough curve balls in the last couple of years, now this!

    If there's one positive thing to come from this situation, it's that you at least have time to get the things that are important to you ready to go, especially considering how often people don't have any time to prepare before similar occurrences.

    I don't know if it will do any good, but I will be sending positive thoughts and prayers in your, and everyone else in the surrounding areas, direction.

    Please keep us updated.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow... scary situation. Hopefully it doesn't come to an evacuation for your neighborhood. Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sorry to hear this and have been thinking about whether you were okay. Best wishes!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Stay safe. I'm sure we all will be watching for you to say the coast is clear.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Here's hoping you don't have to evacuate

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thank you everyone. This whole day I have been unable to focus, I have been watching for updates with the fire. Since the evacuation center is still at my son's school and they haven't announced a back up location that is good news for the immediate area and means the fire isn't moving my way right now.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hope you and your loved ones are okay. It's scary when natural disasters hit close to home. I hadn't really experienced anything like that (except for the occasional earthquake), but earlier in the year San Jose was hit with flooding. Definitely puts things into perspective.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Very scary. Fire terrifies me to be honest. Lost an aunt to it in the 90s. Had a major fire in my hometown earlier this month and you can still smell the burned wood in town. The buildings that went up date to 1867.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I feel the same way because fire is so unpredictable. I have been through a number of natural disasters over the years but the anxiety I have felt over the last few days has topped them all.

      Delete