S'Mores Anyone????

Saturday, November 15th began as a beautiful

morning with blue skies, but warm temperatures.

I headed down to the ward building for a

Super Saturday of crafts and food.

BUT as I headed down the hill I saw the smoke

I had smelt as I left the house.

The following pictues are the account

of how bad things got as the day wore on.

Around 12:00 p.m. - my street.

3:00 p.m. - driving S/E on Nohl Ranch Rd. 3:00 -4:00 p.m. - my street

5:00 p.m.

Helicopters dipping water from the resevoir

Looking west as the sun begins to set

By this time I had a basket full of clothes,

important papers and my portable safe

out and ready to grab if we had to evacuate.

I walked out the front door around 8:00 p.m

and was able to see this red glow from across

the freeway. Out of all the fires we've been

through, this was the first one that

really put me on edge.

After a sleepless night, we arose to beautiful

blue skies, but still a lot of smoke to the north.

After spending all Saturday afternoon and night in

the house Mike and I had to get out and find out

what had happened in our neighborhood. So we

jumped in the car a drove east and then south

to check things out.

The picture below was taken toward the east end of

Santa Ana Canyon Road looking west.

That's the 91 freeway on the right.

This is looking northwest toward Brea/La Habra Heights.

This picture was taken around 9:00 a.m.

We were at the point above Hannah's school looking

north. I believe this was when Diamond Bar

began burning.

This vulture may have been looking for a crispy morsel.

And here's the view looking down toward our house.

At the bottom of the picture you can see the big, light

orange house in the center - ours is the little grey one

to the left. Looks like pretty clean air at our house!

And here's a view of Catalina. You definately would

not have wanted to be on the water. The smoke

was covering it like a blanket.

And that's my photo journal of the Yorba Linda/Anaheim Hills fire.

The bishop of Yorba Linda 4th ward lost his home.

The Mia Maid advisor in our Young Women program lost her home.

There may be others that I don't know about but all in all I

feel we were extremely blessed considering how fierce these fires

were and how thinly stretched the fire fighters were.

But what a valiant battle they fought. I cannot express

the appreciation I have for these men/women who put

themselves in harms way to protect the properties and lives

of our communities.

To me they truely are HEROES and I thank them.