Evacuating Playsets
(Colorado Fire - June 2012)
Thanks for sending your many well wishes to us during the most trying time in our city’s history. It wasn’t that easy for us, either, and the battles that were fought here rivaled the many times my Rebs have sieged my Union, and the Lancers attacked the Alamo. But fire, we learned, has a strategy. A very scary strategy.
Our house is two blocks from the last evacuation line – we were next. We were under pre-evacuation orders and three times, the two paintings by my Mom came off the wall and went into the truck.
Here is how it went
Saturday we were antiquing on the East side of town. We came out of the biggest mall to see a towering plume of smoke rising in the distance, which I regarded as very unusual and very dangerous looking, and felt it was near the area of our house. We were hungry, and went to a Culvers drive in to grab a bite.
We didn’t eat but sped home, and as we went the smoke was higher, and traveling faster. It was in the hills just west of us, and there was a Westerly wind. The fire was coming into town.
Soon there were helicopters and fire bombers overhead. They at first used small private planes because they “couldn’t call in the military C-130s until the commercial fire equipment was all in use because it was a conflict of interest – and until the paperwork was done”
The fire rages furiously out of control, quickly escaping any local or states’ ability to fight it. We are on the last high ridge before the mountains to the West of Colorado Springs. Directly west is Cedar Heights, a mountain subdivision. The fire crawled over the ridge and was directly threatening those homes which were evacuated. The Colorado Springs Fire Dept. (CSPD) made heroic stand there, fighting each belching gust of fire as it attacked in towering walls of flame 100’ds of feet high.
Time and again the walls of fire attacked, time and again the fire guys denied it the homes and property seen in these photos, all taken from our roof and front windows. Three days the fire attacked. Three days CSPD fought back, Soon the C-130s were turning overhead, and helicopters buzzing back and forth like very busty bees, their aim was incredible, timed as firemen dodged the drops and returned to push the incendiary’s back over the ridge upon itself.
Time and again the walls of fire attacked, time and again the fire guys denied it the homes and property seen in these photos, all taken from our roof and front windows.
Three days the fire attacked. Three days CSPD fought back, Soon the C-130s were turning overhead, and helicopters buzzing back and forth like very busy bees. Their aim was incredible, timed as firemen dodged the drops and returned to push the incendiaries back over the ridge upon itself.
The fire traveled west into huge canyons without roads, fed by dry timber -- and to the North, furiously leaping the ridges and prowling the skyline just above the lights of a terrified populace below until it reached the Northern part of the city. There it was met by the cycling winds of a distant thunderstorm which, on that fateful afternoon of Tuesday the 26th, drove the fire straight downhill at 60 mph into the communities of Rockrimmon, Mountain Shadows and Peregrine, all upscale homes intermingled on the hillside and all with “natural,” deadly landscaping uncleared for years.
Now the fire plummeted down the mountain behind the developments like hells furious curtain, in great streams so thick it appeared to be lava but it was consuming trees, fence, animals and brush. It rained flaming embers that traveled half a mile on the winds and re-ignited behind the firemen with a 65% success rate of ignition. Fire lines evaporated -- Many fire trucks and fighters somehow fought their way out without loss of life. Everyone it seems had gotten out due to earlier evacuation orders.
Evening fell.
Fueled with success the fire turned South, flanks collapsing, again attacking our neighborhood, neighbors were out spraying their roofs with water; loading vehicles as billowing clouds rose high above us and cinders and ash rained down. Again our truck was loaded and came then the time to have to choose from among the playsets which would we save. It was a game I had played in my mind many times.
Ben-Hur. The Untouchables. Robin Hood. Zorro, Strategic Air Command. The Alamo. D-Day. Fort Apache, Little Big Horn, Cape Canaveral, more Battlegrounds, and Iwo Jima. And Mike Jordan’s boxed complete MPC Pirate Ship. I couldn’t leave that. But there are miniature sets, tin buildings and more. Only room for 5.
Which could I never find again? Which were the most expensive? I had to make the choice. Even the parts Allan Ford generously sent for photography for the coming Battleground issue were at risk and had to be saved and retuned to him.
In the end, I chose a mix of those sets I loved, and that would be hardest to replace.
The beloved chosen: Ben-Hur, Untouchables, Giant Blue & Gray; and those to be covered soon: Little Big Horn and Wyatt Earp Western Town, and my favorite Fort Apache. I also snuck in that rare little Blue & Gray, the red and blue boxed half set No. 2646. The others would just have to wait until I could get back. In the end, though the sets were picked, no evacuation was necessary. The fires though absolutely destroyed 346 homes, and took four lives. The bodies were found inside, God bless their souls, three miles from here.
Just the other night, the neighbors invited us over for “Evacuation Roast Toasts”. I guess that means it all went well. The sun was cherry, fire red.
Thank you again for your kind wishes and prayers. Thanks in part to all of you, the crisis was manageable, and now appears to be over. Thanks again
Rusty and Kathy June 28, 2012.