At 8 in the evening, we saw smoke. We had heard the fire was South of Blackwell, which would mean it’s well over 30 miles from us but around 9, we saw the glow, then at 10, saw the flames. We knew it had to be closer so we headed out to check it out.
Here on the ranch, there are a few camps, one of which was just a couple of miles from the fire. He had already gotten his favorite belongings out of the house just in case it got consumed but it’s not something he could spend too much time on, after all, he’s also the assistant chief of the Maryneal Firefighters so he had to get busy fightin’.
When we drove up, we could instantly tell it was at least a couple of miles long and who knows how wide. It was an amazing but scary sight. I have been that close to a fire in about 16 years, when we lived on the JA Ranch up at Palo Duro Canyon. Anyways, you can see how we started out seeing it from afar, the glow, little flames, big flames, and then right up on some of it.
If you look closely, you can see the windmill.
We topped out on a hill to see everything really good!
It was AMAZING to see the maintainers and bulldozers in action. HOLY COW!! The maintainers were widening the path in hopes of keeping the fire from crossing over towards the direction of a house. The bulldozer was literally picking up the fire and pushing back so that it didn’t jump the path. It was really an awesome sight I must say and I’m in awe of the guys who do this!
Meet two of the volunteers that were helping last night and I’m sure that are still there.
The fire is still going and the winds are up to 40mph today. Keep the community in your prayers. We do have a chance of rain tonight so lets hope it comes!!!  For bigger photos, you can check out my flickr album and for updates, I’m on facebook.
HOLY COW.
Amazing photographs, but damn.
Prayers to everyone xoxo
Holy crap that’s scary and so close. Hope everyone and everything came out of it okay!
Heartbreaking. Good luck to you and your neighbors.
So frightening. Sending up a prayer for you and your community. Be safe!
Wow! How scary and magnificent at the same time! Keeping my fingers crossed that you get that rai!. It seems we can’t get anything but rain around here.
I mean rain. Oops. :)
Praying hard!! How close is the fire to Sweetwater?
Praying for rain! That’s scary! We live in the woods on the border of a national forest. Hubby has been working hard to make our place as fire resistant as possible. We had a US forest ranger come out and check the place over, so we’re feeling pretty confident that we’ve done everything we can to help save our home if we ever have a wildfire here.
Praying! I was in Caldwell, TX last week and it was so dry I hope that we do not see more of this. I pray everyone is safe.
Lori, where in Texas do you live? I am a little north of Houston…close to Conroe, and we are having fires all around here. Message me in Facebook. Kay ‘Crismon’ Philips. It’s crazy here, and we were hoping the rain they’ve been forcasting would help squelch some of it, but we havent gotten enough to make a difference yet. I hope they get that one contained. I know my mom lives in Amarillo, and they’ve been praying they dont have any problems.