May 25th -- Bosque Fire -- Too Close for Comfort

May 25, 2022

5ish? Gloria was putting some dishes in the sink, and yelped. I came running in from the other room, and she pointed at the huge, greasy gray plume of smoke straight out the kitchen window. Ominously close.

Our first thought was a house on fire, so Gloria walked down the street to see what she could see. That's when she decided it was probably in the Bosque.  

6:30 I texted Trina and Laurel "Smoke from the Bosque near us.  Eek!"  

Trina: "Oh fuck!" "Stepped outside and we can see it. Hear helicopters." 

Me: "The main plume we can see from our kitchen window.  Things are sooooooo dry.  There go our fire engines."  Very unnerving: for at least the first hour, we could not find any information about it online for on tv--nothing?!  It was very windy--about 20-25mph straight for us.  

 

Trina and Laurel eventually walked over to the nature center, and could see it looking back N and W (marching towards us).

Trina - 7:45 "We heard it's on both sides of the river now. :("

Me: 8:00 - "It feels like it is headed straight at us.  I got out our pet carriers and emergency cash, etc."

Trina: "Good call. Pack a Go Bag if you don't have one already.  We just heard it is spreading east."

I am a deer in the headlights.  I grab my stack of laptops and external hard drives.  Cash.  Our passports.  Get the pet carriers out and keep nervously trying to plan who goes where and how we get dogs, cats and hens into our two cars.  And when would you know to grab them and start packing up?  We nervously listened for updates.  Yes, it was on our side of the river.  Exactly where?  And what are the chances it could jump Rio Grande (roughly four lanes of asphalt if it was happening where we thought it was).  We had the tv on using our rabbit ears, watched for updates and waited.  >We were lucky.  The wind died down as it got dark (8:45?).  Apparently there were helicopters making bucket drops on the flames...  flying. up river, scooping up water and ferrying it back down.

Me: 9:25 "Phew really happy the evacuation has been lifted and the winds have subsided. That was frightening."

Trina: "Seriously!"

Me: May need to get one more crate.  It was going to be a tight fit for the chickens.