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
Helicopters dipping water from the resevoir
Looking west as the sun begins to set
important papers and my portable safe
out and ready to grab if we had to evacuate.
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.
blue skies, but still a lot of smoke to the north.
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.
5 comments:
That made me cry (well, what's new! I am so glad you guys are o.k. you had us so worried. What a intense weekend. My goodness! There is a family in our ward that was the rescue house to two families from Yorba Linda. One lost everything and the other ended up being o.k. The one that lost everything just had a new baby boy...so it worked out that Carter is so huge and has out grown everything so we were able to give them a handful of Carter's old things. I felt like I wanted to do SO MUCH more though. We all do. Please let us know how we can help more. This week I am cleaning out our closets and would love to send clothes that way. Will you let me know if you know of a place we can send them? Do you think your stake will be doing some sort of drive? Just keep us posted if you can.
SO Glad you are o.k. my goodness!
sending Lots of love your way!
Sarah,
It's so nice of you to want to help. That's how we all feel right now. Yesterday our stake had a potluck dinner for the fire fighters and police in our communities to show our gratitude. I'll keep you informed of anyone that may need help/donations. Thanks for your concern.
Wow, that was a tear jerker. What a scary, scary thing when it hits so close to home. Watching the news about all of this really made me sad. I'm glad you're safe. Those pictures were OUT of this WORLD! That is just crazy to see how much SMOKE there was! We were in LA and could smell it all the way up there. There was ash everywhere on Sunday morning. Thank goodness for fire fighters and police! Love you guys.
Shelley, thank you so much for taking the time to post these pix and tell the story. We were waiting to see them. I do not know how you managed to make it through that night! Darkness is creepier. I am so so grateful that you all came through it safely.
I'm with you in your appreciation of those heroes too! Seeing them at work sure makes their value and valor so much more real!
I just keep looking back at this...it's such a great layout of the experience....cannot believe how close it came to you and how devastating it was to others...
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