The strange thing, EBarnacle, is that the fire happened in an area that you wouldn't think would burn. Now, I'm in an old farmhouse in the kind of area that is very vulnerable. We have what they call a "defensible space" cleared around the house, but there's still enough vegetation that I really doubt that we're safe. And if we cleared it all, our comfortable house would heat up like an oven.

Near my friend's home, there was a gully that apparently amplified the wind and funneled the fire up into the housing tract. I saw the fire site today. It burned grass around buildings for a long distance and did very little damage, and then funneled into that one housing tract and brought total devastation. I didn't get into the housing tract, so I didn't get to see the worst of the damage.

My friend Judy, who's from the Auburn area, called this evening and sounded very serious. She had heard that we had lost our home, and she was relieved to hear we were far away from the fire. I've had several calls from friends who wondered if we were affected, but Judy was the first who actually thought we had been hit. I said above that's an interesting phenomenon about living in a rural area - you may know people really well and see them several times a week, but not even know exactly where they live.

-Joe-