About 5:30 Sunday evening (May 24th), Tim's fire radio went off with someone calling to say that they could see smoke at Bear Creek. For those that have been up here, this is the creek right next to our house - the one we play in all the time!Tim being at work (isn't that always the way...), Hunter, Grandma Lynne and I headed out the door to Bear Creek to see what was up. SMOKE and lots of it - and it was up the trail on Mount Lorne.
We reported in on the radio that it definitely was a fire and our local volunteer firemen started to role. Because of the location, the Wildland Fire Department were also called and they arrived awfully quick. This was the beginning of 3 hours of non-stop excitement - something along the lines of heaven for a certain 5 year old that is highly enamoured with emergency vehicles and workers.
Over the next 3 hours we got to see:* spotter helicopter
* "Bird Dog" spotter plane
* 2 small water bombers
* 1 very large (2400 litre) water bomber
* Helicopter with water basket
* Same helicopter picking up workers and materials
* lots and lots of firetrucks
Look closely in the photo above and you can see the red fire retardent that this BIG bomber dropped on the fire...At one point things got a little too close for comfort (ashes were falling on our neighbour Judy's house) so we called Tim to come home in case we needed to make a quick evacuation.
They deemed the fire "man made" however don't have a specific cause. The Wildland Firefighters were up there for a full 48 hours (they set up camp and everything) to manage flare ups and ground burning. Hunter got to stay home from school on Monday and he and Tim spent the day checking out the fire activities and watching a helicopter ferry things back and forth all day.
Here is Hunter surrounded by ashes...
Hunter did not let the fire radio out of his hand the entire day!
