Pioneer Living Survival

Right after hitting the Publish button for the FireFlies For the Soul post the other day on my blog at http://moderndayredneck.blogspot.com, my phone rang and I noticed it was the wife calling. I answered the phone the same way I always do, "Hey babe, whats up?"

What came next through the ear piece was mixture of tears, panic and total chaos. The first few sentences there was no way I could make out what she was saying, but I knew from the sound of her voice it was not good. I told her to calm down and start again.

This is what I got, "Fire! (huff, huff) House! (holy crap, holy crap) Neighbors house is burning! (come here puppy) I'm out of here! (sounds of running) Ours is next! (truck door slamming) I will call you back!"

This of course got my curiosity up a little and I decided to go ahead and leave work early and I defiantly did not break any speeding laws on the way home. 

Upon arrival forty five minutes later (I work an hour and a half away) I saw the street was lined with fire trucks and clouded with smoke.

As I drove up near the end of our road, through the smoke and the haze I saw the wife with several people around her. She was digging through the BOB handing out water bottles to other evacuees.

My first thought was "I hope they are not eating all my MREs".

A fire is one of those occurrences that I would define as "IT". We have drilled on this and our evacuation plan many times. The wife executed the plan with perfection and I got to see the Bug Out Bag at work.

I overheard many of the neighbors telling their spouses that they were going to make up a bag just like mine. My unemotional response was, "You should already have one". 

 I am telling you right now friends, you can do all the planning and drills you want, but when "IT" happens, you have to be able to control your adrenaline so you can make the decisions that have to be made. If not, all that prepping you have done is for not. I am proud of the wife for keeping her head and taking charge of the situation.             

Through the help of neighbors and the Fire department, they were able to stop the spread before it got to my house. Not much damage on this end but that is not the case for my neighbors. They lost their house.

 A Round Baler was the cause of the fire. A stuck baring caused sparks to fly and with this drought we are in here in Texas, it was not good.

This picture was taking from my property line.

I will say, that was a close one.