As I was driving home from work I looked across the valley and saw smoke — lots of smoke — in the area where we live. I dialed 911 and was told that help was already on the way. I then called Nina and told here there was a fire “behind our house.”

Amazing how communication doesn’t happen. From my view, the fire was beyond our house, hence the word “behind”. From Nina’s view, behind is out the back door. “I don’t see any smoke here,” she said. I told her to go look out the front door and to look south. She did. And screamed. The fire was directly behind the houses across the street. These two houses were all that stood between the fire and us.

I was stuck at a railroad crossing while not one, but two trains went by. A Very Slow Train coming in and just about as it was about to clear the crossing, another train left going south. There I sat in my car watching the fire, seeing one … just one … fire engine go up the hill, and then seeing huge plumes of fire and black smoke.

Wild fires burn with white or light grey smoke. If the smoke turns black, something bad is happening. Often it’s a house burning. Meanwhile, Nina is near panic, telling me that the neighbor across the street is losing their home. She asked if she should leave. I told her to get her purse, leave everything else behind, and get out of there.

Instead she put her purse in the car, backed it out of the garage and turned it around, and then walked up the street to watch the fire. A couple more fire engines arrived and she told me the fire was out. About that time the trains cleared the crossing and then I had to, very impatiently, wait for the line of cars to cross. There was no passing as a line of cars were waiting on the other side to come my direction.

I pulled into the driveway to see quite a crowd of people on the sidewalk watching the firefighters. The fire was pretty much out. The firemen were getting ready to walk the fire to verify that it was out. One by one the fire trucks, ambulance, police cars, Idaho Power trucks, and gas company trucks left. A small rain shower came over. That was sufficient. The last fire truck left.

We went up and took some pictures, including the one above. That picture is a link. Click on it for a larger version and some information about the picture. I also took a short (50 seconds) video of the fire and put it on YouTube. The black smoke? It wasn’t our neighbor’s house, thankfully. It was from the tires on the tractor that started the fire. That’s one machine that won’t be able to be used again.

That fire was much too close.