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Walk Through The Fire
May. 24th, 2010 03:22 pmTurning on CNN and seeing your neighborhood: NEVER A GOOD THING.
One of the hazards of living in the desert - I am sure this is shocking to all of you - is that in the late spring and summer...things tend to burn. The brush gets dried out, the wind blows really high, and accidental fires start pretty easily and controlled fires get out of control very very fast. We don't usually get as much coverage as the fires in California (since usually a lot more people are threatened by those), but the Los Alamos fire when I was a kid was pretty devastating, and a fire a few years ago took out huge chunks of the Rio Grande Bosque. So, you know, after twenty years of living in NM summer fires are pretty routine - bad, yes, but not unexpected - and yet when it comes up on the news I still start going OMG WE'RE ON FIRE!!!
So yeah, my mom's neighborhood caught on fire last night.
Everyone is fine, thankfully, and their side of the neighborhood didn't have to evacuate, although they thought for a while earlier in the evening they might have to. Which would have...really, really sucked for everyone, because horse-moving is not a fast job at the best of times, and my mom and the boyfriend wouldn't have had anywhere to go with the animals. The fire's still only about 15% contained(!), but according to her it isn't spreading and if it doesn't shouldn't go toward them. So that's okay, I guess?
But seriously, this has been the weekend of never-ending family drama. Topping it off with a forest fire really doesn't surprise me in the least. :/
One of the hazards of living in the desert - I am sure this is shocking to all of you - is that in the late spring and summer...things tend to burn. The brush gets dried out, the wind blows really high, and accidental fires start pretty easily and controlled fires get out of control very very fast. We don't usually get as much coverage as the fires in California (since usually a lot more people are threatened by those), but the Los Alamos fire when I was a kid was pretty devastating, and a fire a few years ago took out huge chunks of the Rio Grande Bosque. So, you know, after twenty years of living in NM summer fires are pretty routine - bad, yes, but not unexpected - and yet when it comes up on the news I still start going OMG WE'RE ON FIRE!!!
So yeah, my mom's neighborhood caught on fire last night.
Everyone is fine, thankfully, and their side of the neighborhood didn't have to evacuate, although they thought for a while earlier in the evening they might have to. Which would have...really, really sucked for everyone, because horse-moving is not a fast job at the best of times, and my mom and the boyfriend wouldn't have had anywhere to go with the animals. The fire's still only about 15% contained(!), but according to her it isn't spreading and if it doesn't shouldn't go toward them. So that's okay, I guess?
But seriously, this has been the weekend of never-ending family drama. Topping it off with a forest fire really doesn't surprise me in the least. :/