History in the Making

All of you know by now that our city is in on the edge of a devastating wildfire that began last Saturday around noon.  It has been horrifying to watch this natural disaster continue to grow in size day by day, and get closer and closer to the neighborhoods in our city.  Below is a picture Ema took on Monday while driving home from town. 

Here was the scene yesterday when we headed to Monument on Tuesday to get a few more supplies for repairing our barn.  It was such an eerie feeling to see such dark smoke, as this is a sign that the fire is burning new fuels.  My gut said that with the wind shifts the fire must have grown quite a bit.

On the drive home we heard that mandatory evacuations were now underway for the majority of the neighborhoods east of Garden of the Gods and west of Interstate 25.  Over 32,000 people were now evacuated from their homes--including many friends and co-workers.  Many homes in the Mountain Shadows neighborhood were on fire and the Flying W Ranch had been lost.

By the evening the smoke had filtered all the way over our home and several miles east of us.  While working on the barn the ash was beginning to fall from the sky.  At one point we looked to the west and could look directly at the sun as the smoke was covering it.  What an eerie feeling to be able to look directly at the sun and not have to turn away.

Please keep the community of Colorado Springs in your prayers as we endure this fire.  And know that while we have very little control over this natural disaster we can come together and help each other out.

Sometimes witnessing history in the making can be very devastating.