Met the neighbors…

Posted on February 24, 2008
Filed Under General |

Funny how it takes a crisis to meet the neighbors.

Mark stepped out on our back deck to smoke a cigarette this morning and runs back in the house. Expletive, expletive, “GET DRESSED RIGHT NOW”!!!!

I look out the kitchen window to see 50 acres of farm & dead grass on fire across the street and the one neighbor guy hauling ass to get his fertilizer & pesticide vehicles off his property. He was parking them in our back yard at about 45 mph to a violent stop and running back to get the next one. There was 5 houses and a 1 1/2 lane country road between the fire and our property.

I threw my clothes on in about 10 seconds flat. By the time I started sprinting a hundred yards and across the street Mark was already there with our 100 feet of hose and attachments. I helped Mark attach the hose to the neighbors house and hit the water as he was running out to the closest flame. I then started pulling latch-key kids out of houses and getting them out by the road where it was safe.

I took 5 seconds to notice the neighbor guy who was previously moving farm vehicles now has his bobcat out and is “stomping” out the flames with the bucket. Mark is dousing flames as fast as he can with the hose at full blast. I pointed Mark to the flames approaching one of the houses back decks. The fire department now shows up and starts on the far side of the fire, which was farther than yelling distance away from us. The police show up and stand around dumbfounded.

I heard a hellacious screaming… I turned and saw a dog two houses down that’s locked in a shed with a fence gate for a door. The grass flames were 10 feet from the shed. I take off, run around the fence (5 foot high with barbed wire), and unlatched the gate. The other neighbor who made it to us by then went with me. He puts the dog on a leash that he happened to grab from one of the kids enroute. The 80 pound dog takes him for a ride, he lets go of the leash and falls face first into the ashes. That dog wanted the hell out of there. I chase down the dog through smoldering grass and grab his leash and lead him around and tie him up to a fence post in the next door neighbors front yard. By the time I went back to see what was going on, the dog shed was on fire. I then go back to helping Mark by collecting hoses from all the neighbors yards, putting them together and helping Mark move the hose over fences to get everyone’s yards put out, hit hot spots, and wet the area along the fence to stop the field fire from coming back.

By now, a 9 year old called his mom home and after we got the majority of the yard fires out, Mark handed the hose to her. She continued spraying her backyard where Mark just saved her house via deck; her yard was the worst of all of them and still on fire. Mark and I run back to the house that had the pig trough. We fill up the water trough with water and 2-man carry it over to an 8 foot long spot that was growing towards the houses and 1-2-3 heeve-ho the water on to the flames.

The kids grandfather shows up, I put him on babysitting duty for the 10+ kids out of these 5 houses. Just then the dog owner gets home and is screaming holy hell. I run over to her and bring her dog. Her daughter who was running to check the shed falls on her knees when she sees me with the dog. I talked to her mom for a few minutes then headed back.

After about 2 hours of intense cardio and getting covered in soot, things settled down in the neighborhood. We left our hoses with the woman spraying. Mark and I headed home and took some luke-cool showers and planned to do not a damn thing for the rest of the day.

The cause, according to the police, was a lawnmower hit a rock and sparked the grass fire on the far side of the field. The fire department continued for another 3 hours on the far end because a bunch of hay bales had gone up in flame. The neighbor with the bobcat returned our hose after the fire department left and collected his farm equipment from our yard.

So today, we saved a house, a bunch of kids, and a dog. Not too shabby. I’m gonna go have a beer.

~Kate

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