Instead of working on the many blog posts that I am behind, the last couple of days have been spent wandering around the house, watching the news and hoping that the fire that cropped up near our house will be extinguished! Of course, Joel is out of town, on a motorcycle ride to Hyder, AK, with a friend of his!
On my way home Wednesday afternoon, I spotted two relatively “small” plumes of smoke about 5 blocks from our house.
Within about 30 minutes it had escalated to a massive fire that was being swept up the mountainside with 40 – 50 foot flames visible with the naked eye. I climbed up on the roof and this is what it looked like from that vantage point, looking through the neighbor’s backyard.
There were soon multiple fire agencies, helicopters, planes and close to 200 firefighters fighting the fire. As the winds changed and pushed the fire back down the hill towards the houses, immediate evacuation orders were communicated. We were about 5 blocks outside of the evacuation zone, but it still made for a very sleepless night!
Our house is approximately at the end of the arrow – evacuation zone is north and east of the blue lines.
As of right now, everyone has been allowed back into their homes. Miraculously, no homes were damaged. A huge testament to the amazing fire-fighting teams on site … The fire is reported at 15% contained with small pockets still flaring up on the mountainside. Many firefighters remain on the scene and I am sure the mop up efforts will continue for many days, but for now it seems relatively calm.
As far as the cause, they really aren’t discussing much at this time but there was a car on fire reported in the general area and there were unsubstantiated reports that there were kids driving a vehicle in a non-motorized vehicle area up the hillside where the two fires started. Hopefully the exact cause will come out and those people will be held accountable! Way to go idiots.
Update as of 8/23/25:
Joel and Alison's Excellent Adventures 
Praying you will be OK! How scary!
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Thank You! There are certainly challenges in living anywhere but one thing seems to be the common denominator in wildfires – idiot people! The evacuations were lifted and the fire is about 45% contained right now. Firefighters will be around through the weekend taking care of any more flare-ups but hopefully the worst is over.
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