Flood, fire and locusts?

Fire, flood and what's next?

I admit that my fear is that this is just the first one! Which leaves me in a rather grim mental state as well as being very tired. I have not worked nearly as hard
as Robert, but I've had enough of filling the wheel barrow with wet mud, dumping it and all over again and again and feeling like there is absolutely no end to the mud in our barn.



The dark area of the barn is all mud and debris!

But thanks to Viki, Keegan and Robert
efforts yesterday, today the Prius got winched out of the barn.














Yea Eric!

It's interesting that the fire caused so much
out pouring from the community. It's destruction
was so widespread and so obvious. The flood for
a few was terrifying and destructive. In our
town two houses were hit and hit hard. Both are
filled with mud. I haven't seen them, but been
told they have 3 inches of mud. That would be
so awful! Our barn has much more than that, but
it is a barn NOT our home, thank goodness.

I was go have book club Wednesday evening. It
was raining hard and so I called Julie who
lost her house to the fire and is now living in
town to say I was cancelling book club. I
knew we'd all be nervous about her driving
down the canyon after book club. She was
disappointed, but she and Shannah, another
town member, were together and went off to
do something else. I called at about 6:50 PM.

Robert said he guessed he'd go and move the
Van. He set off, first to the pool to turn off
the water into the pool because the creek was
getting muddy. Then to the Van to move it.
He never made it to the Van...he only made it
to the ground around the elm tree near the
road on the front side of the barn.

I was in my office and doing something..when
I realized he hadn't come back. I went out
to the living room and saw from the window
that the "creek" went from our wall to the
cliff on the other side of the pool and was
roaring. I raced outside looking for Robert,
but couldn't see him and knew he was gone. I
went back inside and screamed and screamed,
a useless thing to do, but it helped a
little. After that I called Carl to have
someone to talk to me. He was great and
helped me calm down and insisted I call
911 which I assured him would do no good
because there was no way anyone could get
to us.

I then went out again and headed toward
the barn although I knew I couldn't get
there. This time I heard Robert call me
and found him on the other side of the
river and on a very small piece of
ground between two roaring currents.

He told me to call Vernon which I did,
but Vernon's phone was out and he wouldn't
have heard it anyway...He had his own
problems to worry about.

We waited hoping the water wouldn't rise
anymore. It seemed like forever, but
finally it did start to go down and we
knew Robert would be OK.

About this time the water rescue came
responding to my 911. They were happy
to see Robert was alright! They had tried
two ways to get to us, but were blocked in
both directions and just had to wait until
the water went down.

Before the road-river was completely gone
Vernon showed up and he and Robert took
off to see the sights. I went back to the
house to get a dry jacket (my rain gear
was in the Van and still out of reach).
While there Marion Sikora called offering
a place for people to come if they were
washed out of their home.

I went to check the fish pond. It was
full of mud, right up to the top and at
the same time, Ariel's old sandbox had
been scrubbed empty of sand.

I walked down the road a little way, but
really didn't want to see any more

The following URL is a video taken by our
neighbor, Steve Le Goff, who lives behind
the barn. He is also known as one of the
bicycle guys:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v​=6gVuhSvoHYA&feature=share