Rootie Tootie American Hootie: Man is in the Forest

As we drove to home to Herriman that morning, we wondered what we would encounter. Would they let us in to our home? Would the air still be smoky? Would the mountain still be on fire?

This is what we saw:

This is what the mountain looked like at the start of things on Sunday as well. The only differences then were that the smoke was on the right side of the picture and the mountain was still green.

If you hadn't known that the smoke on the mountain was actually smoke, this might look somewhat Utopian. What we knew though was that part of the mountain was still on fire, and most of the mountain was black. And rows, upon rows, upon rows of homes were still, miraculously intact.

Although the fire was somewhat contained by this point, as we drove into our community, I could feel my throat starting to burn from the lingering smoke, (which had been much worse the night before) my eyes started to water, and I started to sneeze.

We drove to the first major intersection in our neighborhood. The guardsman read our address from my driver's license and didn't want to let us in, seeing as how they were letting families in up to 14100 and we lived at 14172. I told him we really only wanted to check on our pets and then we would leave again. His buddy said he wasn't sure if the next checkpoint would let us through, but he let us give it a try.

We saw the next checkpoint as we were almost to our home. My clever husband drove 3/4 of the way around the block in order to avoid him, and we pulled up into our driveway. The garage smelled awful. The house smelled smoky, but not terrible. We walked in, noticed our disgusting hastily abandoned dinner dishes, and headed to the basement door. We let our cats out, and they made a beeline for upstairs. I picked up Falfie, our tiger-striped boy, and held him for a moment. He was pretty agitated, so I let him go. Knowing they were no longer in danger, we left.

We talked to some of the law enforcement who were blocking the way to the homes a block east of us. We asked them if they knew when the evacuation would be lifted. They didn't.

We drove over to the evacuation zone (the local high school) to see if we could find people we knew who might have more information. We couldn't find them. What we did find, though, was that volunteers from the community and the Red Cross had a plethora of food for the few people there. It actually brought tears to my eyes to see how many in the surrounding areas had jumped to aid the evacuees. Several fast food restaurants, Wal-Mart, and even some nicer restaurants all heeded the call to bring food up to the evacuation zone. The volunteers insisted that we leave with food, and they loaded us up with snacks, salads, and bread. We headed off toward Salt Lake City to plan our next move.

I was completely worn out. Not having had even an hour's sleep the night before had caught up with me. I knew everything was safe, and any adrenaline that had been keeping me going, was gone. Michael dropped me off at a hotel that was about 15 miles from our home, and went to retrieve the kids. I don't remember anything other than turning on the air conditioning, and dropping into bed. I woke up when Michael brought the kids to me. He and Frankie went to do something-- get more clothes from the house, I think. And I entertained the boys. Thomas was a little wild man, completely out of his element, and off his schedule. I was grateful when Michael finally pulled back up the hotel.

Not long after Michael came back, we learned that our home had been cleared for return. We still had to pay for the hotel, but they were kind and gave us a discount. We headed home. We ate leftovers for dinner, marveled at being home, and went to bed early.

The next day, Tuesday, my friend and co-teacher, Sherry, came over to school with me. The whole time she was with me, I was blowing my nose, itching my face, and wiping my eyes. I was so allergic to whatever had burned. It was awful. I didn't know how I was going to live this way. My hope was that once the fire was out, the allergens and smoke would clear, and I would be okay again.

Shortly after Frankie got home from school, (around 3:00) I found out that the wind had shifted and the fire was heading back our way. The air outside was smokier and had turned gray. Since I was the only adult home with the kids, Frankie and I gathered up everything we had evacuated with, loaded up the car with the kids, our stuff, the dog, and four cats (my two, my nanny's one, and the outside kitty we feed), and drove back to Salt Lake. The cats meowed the whole way. They were not happy at all to be in the car. Michael and our nanny, Devin, were both working in Salt Lake at the time, and we arranged to meet back at the home we stayed in on Sunday night.

At that point, I had no idea where we were going to go, or how long we would have to be gone. I got on the phone with our insurance company, and started explore our options.