I cheated on the entry for the 16th, as I posted it Sunday night. I stayed in the office after the parade to do the entry for the 15th. I’m telling you this because the events later that night are worth telling. Lori went home and called to let me know that it was almost impossible to get the Del Sol down Rose and into our driveway. Sitting in the shop and hearing the wind rattle the building I had a feeling the fire department would probably be called out again for downed power lines, so I figured I would stay in town awhile longer and work on some changes on the Aesthetic Design site. (sorry they didn’t work John)

Sure enough, around 8pm the siren blew and after a short jog across Main St. to the fire station, I found out the call was for a house that was fully engulfed. They also said power lines were down in the area so to be extra careful. Engine 1 arrived on scene to find a two story Victorian fully engulfed. There wasn’t much we could do except to try to protect the surrounding homes.

There were a couple of things in our favor and one big negative. First the negative, the wind was fanning the flames and blowing embers all over. In our favor was that in the direction that the wind was blowing we had a big wet soggy field so not too much to worry about in that direction. Most importantly, the house was vacant at the time so there wasn’t any worry of having to do any rescue work. It took us about 3 hours to get the blaze under control, which meant that basically there wasn’t anything left to burn. Pretty amazing when you consider how much water was being pumped onto the blaze and how much was falling from the sky.

I finally got home around 11:30 to find our yard almost completely under water, and the wind was still howling something fierce. I managed to get some sleep and I awoke Monday morning pretty sore and was really looking forward to a hot bath. Only problem was that we had lost power about 2am. Since we pump our own water, no electricity, no water. No bath, no coffee, the morning sucked.

I had a photo session scheduled for the afternoon that had to be cancelled due to lack of power in town, and we weren’t even sure if Fernbridge was going to be open. Finally around 11:30 am the power came back on at the office. Fortunately in the afternoon the weather started calming down and the rivers and creeks receeded a bit again.

This morning I was surprised to see a bit of blue sky, and the drive in to work was pretty nice and since I had my camera with me I drove around a bit to take pictures. Today’s picture was taken out off of Centerville Road where the overview showed pretty extensive flooding all around. I thought about taking the day off to spend it photographing, but it started pouring again about 9:30 so I went back to the office. But at least I got some photos to share.