Moments in Time 09/2012

With the kerfuffle going on around here, I haven't had the time to document a whole lot.  I've had pictures on my camera but no time to do anything with them.  So it's time I got to it.

About a week and a half ago, this is what we looked out the window to in the late afternoon.

Smoke and lots of it.  Thoughts of last year's crazy grass fire just west of the city in November came to mind as we wondered where this fire was.  Next thing we knew this was on the tv and radio:

We don't see that often around here.  Scary stuff as it sinks in this is really serious.

Yup, another huge grass fire just west of the city.  Did I mention the winds where gusting at 115km an hour? That would be 71 miles an hour!  I think there where about 4 city and county fire departments fighting this one.  A state of emergency declared.  A town just outside the city evacuated, a trailer park on the west side evacuated and tons of neighborhoods on the west side on evacuation notice. 

And in an eery coincidence, in last year's grass fire there was a second fire in another town about half an hour away that was totally unrelated that had fire fighters scrambling.  Again with this year's fire the same town was also in a state of emergency and evacuation due to a grass fire encroaching upon them.  Again totally unrelated causes to this fire.  Weird.

Did I mention it was windy?  This is the tree in front of my neighbors house.  You can see how tall it is by the lampost barely visible about about halfway down on the picture on the right.  There is a bus stop directly under this tree that several seniors and a disabled person use frequently.  Thank God no one was under it that afternoon!  There were broken trees all the way down my street that day.

That wind was nuts.  This made me so sad.This is a tree that was in park I used to go to as a kid so this tree has got to be at least as old as I am.  You can see the swing set just behind it. It came crashing down right on the periphery of the playground.  Thank God no one was hurt in this one either.  Again, you can see how huge this old tree was by the park bench just to the left of it. 

A crazy day, that's for sure.  On a lighter note, it was someone's birthday this month.  He would have been happy with a bone but we'll take any excuse for us to have cake!  Personally, I would have had tirimasu, but then it wasn't my birthday.