Yesterday Sandy and I started working to lay out the house on the hillside using stakes and string. I had started the process earlier in the week, but realized after a few corners were set that I had forgotten to account for the slope of the hill when measuring uphill distances. So I bought some 2X2s, cut them to 2- or 3-foot lengths and sawed points on one end using my miter saw - four cuts per board to get a good point. I also got some third-rate fence boards to cut and use as batter boards.
We had set about three of the twelve lines for outside walls when Sandy said, "Oh my God!" I turned around to see a wall of flames coming up the south side of the hill on the south side of the dam. Flames were 10 to 20 feet high and stretched from the county road on the east at least 50 yards onto our property.
My first thought was that it would burn right around the dam and right into the woods to our backs. At about the same time we realized that the fire trucks we heard a minute before were now coming down the county road to our property. (More about how the fire started and who called the fire department later after I get one more picture to help tell the story.)
The first truck on the scene was a pumper with over 1000 gallons of water on board. It stopped at the culvert that had just been put in place a few days ago. I took the hose and started running it up the hill toward the dam. A second fireman caught up with me and took the hose, calling for the pressure to be turned on. He started wetting down the hillsides east and north of the pond. By this time the fire was burning northward across the small dam.
The fire was halted on these two hillsides, and stopped just about halfway across the dam, though I don't know what stopped it.
While this was going on the fire turned its sights on the hillside to the west and started climbing. I saw all the green on a few red cedars all but disappear as the fire passed under them. The concern now was that it would get to our woods to the northwest or, worse, go over the hill to the west and take on the neighbor's outbuildings.
By now the fire department had help from another township, and there were three small trucks on the property that could climb right up the hillsides. Two were pick-up trucks and one was a smaller four-wheel drive that was fitted for brushfires with a large water tank on the back. That small truck was able to run all over the hillside with hardly any regard for the direction it was going and the contour of the hill. The pickup stayed mostly along the top of the hill.
After about 30 minutes, the fire was under control with just small puffs of white smoke spotted here and there. The firemen took the backpack tanks to them as they left the property, and within an hour from start to finish, it was all over.
The hillsides are black today as the pictures show. But there are bright sides to all of this.
o All of the multi-flora rose bushes are very visible, as are the grape vines. This will allow us to cut many many more of them in the next few days than we would have been able to even find with all the dried grass hiding them.
o We can easy see all of the little dips and bumps that were invisible when covered with grasses and shrubs. There are lots of small places we can change the contour a bit to help encourage water to sink into the hillside rather than run down it.
o The hillsides should be beautiful when the grass and wildflowers start growing. It will be green on a black background instead of green mixed with last year's dead brown grass.
o The fire never got to our two stands of persimmon trees. I learned that for a low-wind brush fire, the narrow trails I had mowed on the hillsides served as fire stops.
Here're the pictures so far. I'll post more soon. The gray areas in the burned sections are piles of ash.
This is the view from the apartment. You can see the far hillside that was burned.
This picture and the next are taken from approximately where the house will be. The old fallen tree will be removed.
I would like to have "stitched" them together, but the service doesn't seem to be working.
This and the next three are a view over the pond, from left to right, facing south.
Contrast these pictures with the snow scene at the top of the page.
Notice how the fire just quit before it came all the way across the dam.
Sandy is cutting vines and rosebushes among the trees that are getting started on the hillside. This area had been mowed every so often prior to our purchasing the property.
This is one of the red cedars that sort of just disappeared as the fire passed.
You can see the tracks of the fire departments little vehicle. Everywhere it went it flattened the ash and exposed the dried grass at the surface that didn't burn.
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And here is the same doorway from the inside.
The windows above the bedroom door allow light into the bedroom from the clerestory windows (which are visible in their lower left corners). The door visible through the closet is the pocket door of the bathroom. Drywall hasn't been hung yet on the wall between the closet and the bathroom and the wall on the inside of the bathroom door.
In the back left are a few water iris that were planted earlier from the same source.
Since it's not too hard to see during the daytime, it would be easy prey for birds, so I didn't disturb it until that evening. It had moved less than an inch all day.
