Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong

Well that was scary...

There were major brushfires burning all over West Hills, Bell Canyon and Lost Hills for the past 2 days. It all started on Wednesday the 28th around 1:45P out in Chatsworth and quickly spread to our part of the west valley. Box Canyon and Bell Canyon were evacuated on Wedneday night, the rest was just wait and see. At 3:30AM, yes in the middle of the night, Daniel and his brother (our neighbors at the bottom of the street) knocked on our door. The Sheriff's Department had knocked on their door saying that they were voluntarily evacuating Hidden Hills. Almost all the houses on our street have Hidden Hills in their backyards. So what do we do? At 3:30AM, we started loading up stuff in my car just in case we had to bail out. We pulled photo albums, scrapbooks, yearbooks, computers, stuff from the safe, etc. We packed up suitcases of clothes and threw them all in my car. We left Gregg's car open for Carly and the dogs, if needed. By the time we came to a stopping point, it was 4:30AM and local news was on. At that point, we realized that the far west side of Hidden Hills was being voluntarily evacuated, close but still the far side. So we finally went to sleep so we'd get a few hours.

We woke up Thursday morning and the fires were still raging out of control. They were heading towards Oak Park and Thousand Oaks at this point. Alli had woken up in the middle of the night and if the fire jumped the freeway, she'd be in big trouble to she started to pull stuff to throw into her car if she had to get out. We stayed home all day, watching TV to see the progress. By 3PM, it was turning back towards Hidden Hills and Bell Canyon. Basically, the reservoir at Roscoe and Valley Circle was burning (where Lisa and Onica live), Bell Canyon was still going strong, including parts basically at Victory and Valley Circle and then the threat to Hidden Hills west of Round Meadow. We pulled out the Thomas Guide and realized that Round Meadow was about 1 mile away, the way the crow flies. That was really scary. Did I think that the house would burn down? No, not really but we're talking 4 fires burning within 4 miles of the house. By 6PM, the house was really smoky and awful to breathe, plus now, ash was falling everywhere. We decided to go to my parents house just to breathe. So we piled everyone in the car and off we went. Again, an awful lot of multi multi million dollar homes would have to burn before it got close to us, but the air was bad enough to get out, at least for the night.

As of late tonight, the fire is 40% contained. Approximately 23,000 acres have burned. Over 3,000 firefighters have done the job of true heroes and ONLY 2 houses were lost. Absolutely amazing. Ultimately, only the vegitation has burned and while the fire has come so close to so many homes, the firefighters have stopped it every time. Lisa said they did an amazing job at the top of her hill ready to spring into action and fight this fire down. Luckily, they were there, ready to go and didn't have to do anything as the fire didn't get close enough to the houses in her neighborhood.

Here are two photos that I took yesterday afternoon. One is from the top of our hill in the backyard looking out past Hidden Hills to the Los Virgenes area. The other is Bell Canyon burning past Hale Middle School.

posted by Juls @ 11:37 PM