Famous For A Day

Our nice, quiet, little town of Herriman got its 15 minutes of fame this week. Sunday evening we all began to notice smoke coming from the back of the mountains that are just south of our home. Doug decided we should take a field trip to see what it was all about. We had heard the helicopters from Camp Williams were filling up huge buckets in our "lake" and then dumping the water on the fire so we went about 3 blocks from our home to check it out. Allie was quite unimpressed with this outing. She had already had her bath. It was noisy, windy and no place for princess pajamas.

The boys, on the other hand, thought this was better than watching SpongeBob or college football. They would have stayed here all night if we had let them. Oh yeah, and if the fire hadn't burned right up to the shoreline. Kyle thought this was the perfect place to show off his Spiderman pajamas. I was once again forced to admit that I let my kids wear/do all kinds of things I swore I never would.

The vibe in Herriman Sunday night was similar to a block party or Halloween. None of us thought there was any real danger. We were just enjoying the end of summer on a peaceful Sunday night, watching nature pleasantly burn at least a quarter of a mile away.

This is the beautiful view from our "lake". It's really just a man-made pool of greenish water that I have never put a toe in, nor do I plan on doing so. Doug calls it "the beach". Whatever.

Kyle got pretty freaked out when that helicopter came down right in front of us to get another scoop of water. This was actually really cool. I've never seen anything like this before. As the helicopter came down we were sprayed with water and that's when Kyle started to bail out.

Doug and Chase were elated that we were close enough to actually get wet. Allie was still disgusted with the whole thing. She just held her neck the entire time and looked at us with mild disapproval. I could just hear her saying, "You guys are so immature."

Doesn't that bucket look tiny? It didn't seem very efficient to me. You know, with all of my years of firefighting experience . . .

We finally decided we should head home, but then we heard the fire was headed to "The Cove", a beautiful neighborhood here in Herriman. Doug really wanted to go see what was happening and as we pulled away from "the lake" we saw the flames come over the mountain. We had been telling ourselves that the fire was still quite aways behind the mountain, but apparently not. This is not a huge mountain and we felt pretty close to the fire at this point. Kinda freaky for me. Doug was thrilled to see flames.

After touring Herriman for a little while we came to the sick realization that this was REAL. People were packing cars and grabbing valuables. The traffic was ridiculous. And the fire just kept coming. The winds were about 50 mph that night and the fire was completely unpredictable. I tried explaining to Chase that the wind was actually a blessing to us because it blew the fire away from our home and neighborhood. This is what he wanted to know. If it was a blessing for us, what was it called for the people in the Cove? I didn't know how to answer that. A curse? A punishment? Obviously not. How do you explain something like this to an 8 year old? Hey, look out the window! Those flames must be 30 feet tall!!

At this point I started to get pretty nervous, along with Kyle and Chase. Still no noise and very little movement from Allie.

I had to force Doug to take us home. When we got there every family on our street was outside. Garage doors were open. Both cars were getting packed and every single person was on their cell phone. Our neighbor ran over and asked us when/where we were going. Us: "I don't know, do we have to leave?" Her: "Maybe not this minute, but eventually. You guys, look at that (pointing to the mountain). It's coming sooner or later". Oh crap.

Okay, I'm officially freaking out now. But a little excited, too. I mean, obviously no one was going to school or work on Monday. Woohoo! Bonus 3-day weekend!! Natural disaster, illness, I don't care, as long as it gets me out of my routine.

So we swiftly packed. Mostly me and Chase. Doug got out the camcorder and videotaped everything. The entire house, garage, yard, etc. We managed to get everything that mattered. I really, really felt good about what we had in our cars. If I had been driving away from my home for the last time I would have had the things that mattered. That felt good.

Did I mention that during this hour of packing Kyle cried the whole time? He was sobbing, choking, gagging, beside himself crying. It was like a scene from a movie when a person has to be slapped to snap out of it. Doug would have done it if I hadn't stopped him. The only thing that calmed him down was letting him pack his entire room. We actually packed his globe - not a cute little sno-globe. An actual globe. It just wasn't worth the fight. And he packed an entire bag of trophies. His reasoning: "without my trophies, I'm not a winner." That brought a smile and a tear so I let him do it. Needless to say, he spent a lot of time unpacking on Monday.

The kids and I left about 10:00 that night and went to stay with Brittany's in-laws. They were so gracious and kind to take in "Herriman Fire Refugees". That's not a joke - the entire Salt Lake Valley was calling us that. Some of our friends even got a free dinner at Olive Garden for being refugees.

Doug finally got to where we were staying at about 2:00 a.m. that night. That's when I finally felt comfortable that our house was going to be okay. Doug had been working the neighborhood all night. He popped some popcorn, grabbed a Diet Squirt and parked it on his lawn chair to watch the show. He said the husbands talked all night and walked as close the fire as the authorities would allow. He was positively aglow. For days after he would use phrases like, "the mouth of the beast", "hot spots", "mandatory evacuation zone" and he would field questions as if he were the actual Fire Chief. That crazy look in his eye is gone now and he's slowly becoming my husband again, but for a few days he was Captain Carley to me.

Our once quiet town has had its day in the spotlight. People across the entire West coast now know who we are and the number one question we're hearing is this: Why would you build a house out there? People, people, people. Cheap land and big houses, of course! Have you no sense?!

Our streets are now populated with vehicles that look like this:

We also have temporary housing for 400+ firefighters:

And now whenever anybody asks me how close we were to the fire I purse my lips and shake my head and say, "Too close". "Yes, we were evacuated". "Yes, we left our home with only our most precious memorabilia". "Oh yes, it was terrifying".

And oh yes, I will milk it. For just one day we got to be honorary fire chiefs, refugees, public relation specialists, and emergency preparedness models. We banded together as a community*. We were victims; humble, guarding our children and homes, benevolent and brave. This may be my only chance to be famous for a day. I'm taking it!



*That part is actually totally true. Our community response was second to none and it felt pretty cool to be a part of it.

A few more pictures:

It literally looked like all of Herriman was going to burn. After we left our home we looked back and this is what we saw. Chilling.


This is one of the homes that burned down. This poor family left with nothing but the clothes on their back. The mother was sobbing on TV saying how she has nothing; no baby pictures, no wedding album, nothing. Heartbreaking.

In case you were wondering, this is the "mouth of the beast" that I mentioned before. Or you can call it the whale's smile if you're talking to Doug. He'll know exactly what you're referring to.



**For your own information, this is being referred to as the Machine Gun Fire. I think that makes it sound like a terrorist started it, but actually it was Camp Williams' fault. They were doing maching gun drills and they were firing in the face of a red flag warning, meaning the National Weather Service had labeled that day as a "high burn day". Someone at Camp Williams forgot to pass that info along to everybody else. They have apologized and taken full responsibility, which is nice, but it's not getting that woman's pictures back. And now we all get to pay taxes for the firefighter's efforts AND for Camp Williams to step in and "pay" for everything.**