Week In Review: Jesusita Fire

A huge part of our week was spent in front of the television watching 24 hour coverage of: the Jesusita Fire, (this picture courtesy of MSNBC)

and praying....
Click HERE for a slide show.

The Governor of CA officially declared Fire Season open and within an hour a fire broke out on a small hiking path near the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens. A press release was issued at 1:45 pm saying that no structures were damaged. As this press release was being given, helicopters showed aerial pictures of the area. A newscaster interrupted to ask if he was seeing what he thought he was seeing--4 structures had just exploded into flames, we moved to another helicopter view to see the same thing. For days the fire was fought and fought with no containment. People were evacuated. Evacuation warnings were made. There was no time to go through and count the damaged structures....We were finally told that "dozens of structures had been lost or damaged" Things would seem "OK" and then a little after nightfall, winds would pick up, temperatures would stay between 80and 90 degrees and structures would literally explode. This went on for days...The official statement now is that the fire scorched 8,733 acres and as many as 80 homes. Approximately 30,000 people were evacuated.

This lady evacuated her house near the fire to stay with us....
It was a nice visit. We sorted socks
(where do they all come from and why are there no matches?)
We snuck away and "did" school. We performed a science experiment
and similated bark paintings.
We came home and baked a pie
from the canning that we did HERE back in August...when my dear friend was so smart to can pie filling
We stayed up late and watched movies and drank tea and ate doughnuts.....
My friend returned home to prepare for work, and Mothers Day came.