Leave It To Mel Travel » Mel and Steve

Snow!

admin — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 14:17:37 +0000

We have awoken to our first snowfall (at lake level, anyhow) of the year. Only 1/2″, but it is still the earliest snowfall either of us have experienced in South Lake Tahoe. The first September snowfall either of us has seen. There are now only two months of the year I have not experienced snowfall here: July and August. But the old timers have seen that as well, I am told.

Angora Fire – 5:00 pm PDT

admin — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 00:14:45 +0000

Seems like it is all over in our neighborhood – the normal sounds are returning. Doug across the street is running his saw installing new facia boards on his house, the dogs are barking, kids running around.

We’re not going to unpack just yet, but we are confident the neighborhood is safe. After a windy day there is little smoke. It seemed that if the fire was going to kick up it would have done so today, and it didn’t.

Thanks for all you good thoughts, everyone!

Angora Fire – 7:00 am PDT

admin — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:03:51 +0000

Containment now reported at 55%. So much for what I heard yesterday.

The forecast is for high winds today, 20 – 30 mph with higher winds on passes and over ridgetops. That is bad. I guess it is too much to ask for them to hold off a second day in a row.

This morning is dead calm – typical here. I hear an occasional helicopter flying, but things are pretty quiet. There is some smoke lingering around, and continues to smell outside.

The biggest sensation right now seems to be all the television crews racing around with their big transmission trucks – hordes of them trying to scoop one another. But there is not really that much news, a good thing!

The incident commander says he expects containment on Tuesday, July 3. The forecast high winds are worrisome, and the fire remains volatile. Its frustrating, but all we can do is wait and see.

Across highway 89 from us to the south, towards the fire, lies the Gardner Mountain neighborhood. (The media refer to it as “Tallac Village”, a place nobody here has ever heard of to my knowledge – must have come from a county assessor’s map or something.) On Tuesday it was subject to a mandatory evacutaion when the fire jumped the line there – the cause of all our excitement. Yesterday folks were allowed to go back. Neighbors who have been over there report that the fire burned the forest right up to the houses, but none of the houses have burned. That must have been a very desparate time over there.

One home caught fire on our side of the highway, on Anita supposedly, victim of falling, fiery debris. That fire was extinguished.

We are fine – had a nice anniversary dinner last night.

Angora Fire – 5:45 pm PDT

admin — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:46:07 +0000

We ran for some errands and got a view of the fire from enough distance to see that there is only light, white-colored smoke coming from it and not very much at that. The wind is blowing, but not gusting particularly, and the helicopters are still flying. I assume they are putting out hot spots within the line.

I read online (somewhere) that the incident commander stated that if all goes well through tonight they expect 100% containment. Amazing what 2000 firefighters can accomplish in a short time.

Anyhow, we are feeling much better, with tomorrow still another day with high winds forecast.

Our restaurant, Evans, was featured in the local paper in a photo with the owner and others on the roof hosing it down yesterday afternoon. Tonight we have a 7:00 reservation. Life goes on!

We’re fine and feeling better…

Angora Fire – 3:30 pm PDT

admin — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:39:34 +0000

The winds have not come up all that strong this afternoon – at least yet! The forecast gusts up to 40mph aren’t here. It is blowing 10 – 20 mph I understand.

I hear helicopters flying now, which is good, I guess. Ironically, they cannot fly without some wind to clear the smoke away so they can see.

Compared to this time yesterday we are golden. I can smell smoke, but really do not see any billows from here.

California Governor Schwarzenegger toured town this afternoon. He wondered aloud about the safety of visiting for the Fourth of July holiday. Not what local merchants want to hear! The incident commander Rich Hawkins replied that he thought it would be okay.

I am going to hose down the roof again and wait. All we can do now…

Angora Fire – 8:00 am PDT

admin — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:54:38 +0000

Monitoring the nearby forest fire on our anniversary was not how I had evnisioned our day today. Yesterday was exciting (see previous posts). We slept at home last night and are fine. We slept well, mostly from exhaustion…

This morning the smoke is hanging low in the trees and the wind is dead calm. Looking up we can see blue sky. The consensus is that the morning will be good with the fire fighters (some 2000 of them!) able to do their work in containing the fire.

More worrisome is the afternoon when the winds are forecast to pick up to 20+ mph. The man in charge of the fire stated yesterday that once the winds reach 40mph there is little fire fighters can do.

The hot spot near us is to the northwest. The winds are forecast to be from the W or WSW. That pushes the fire away from (or at least no nearer to) us. Hopefully that is what will happen. In the path of the fire are Camp Richardson and the old 1920′s estates on the lakefront. It would be very sad if the fire made it all the way to the lakeshore, but at least it would stop there…

Mel and I had a tough afternoon and evening with emotions pouring through us and lots to do. We have grown to love one another in this house. The prospect of losing it brings tears to our eyes, tears I have as I write this.

I feel confident that the fire will miss us here in this neighborhood and that we will be able to stay today. We have a good bottle of champagne and Kim at the Cork and More who made our fabulous cake is making another for us to share today (not as large as a year ago). Dinner at Evans is probably out since it is within the evacuation area just down the street!

-Steve

Happy Anniversary to us!

admin — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:42:48 +0000

Today is our first wedding anniversary. I still smile with joy remembering our wedding. Thanks again to all who made the journey and shared our day:

Angora Fire Update

admin — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 01:59:38 +0000

This morning we went to the evacuation centers offering our help, dropping off toiletries and such we had laying around. We registered with the red cross as a host home – we can take some pets along with their owners here and thought that would be valuable. We then went to the east shore (Nevada Beach) to retrieve our mighty hound Ras. We knew we were okay.

Well. When we returned and approached our neighborhood around 2:00 pm we were alarmed. Lots of smoke. We began to think more about ourselves. We printed out an evacuation list and followed its instructions: turn on all indoor lights, remove inflammable window coverings, place lawn furniture into the garage, unlock all doors, turn off the gas, etc.

The situation was very different from this morning – way different from being able to offer shelter to others!

I was up on our cedar shake roof hosing it down trying to keep it moist. At one point I realized I could feel the heat from the fire and the red glow on the underside of the nearby smoke billows was exciting. We had already gathered the essentials – passports, records, valuables, stuff like that. I filled some trash cans with water, and continued to hose down the roof with two hoses hooked up to our hose bibs.

Helicopters were flying overhead – the kind that drop water. I could see them so nearby it was amazing – just down the street at tree-top level. The fire was reported to have jumped the highway (highway 89) that had been separating us from the fire. Smoke was billowing really nearby as we prepared to leave.

I called my sister Sally and asked for advice on things to grab, not being particularly lucid as I raced around – Mel is the cooler head around here! The phone rang and we answered it a bit gruffly as we raced to get stuff into the truck.

As we prepared to leave we heard about more and more mandatory evacuations from nearby neighborhoods. But the conditions really began to look better. We hooked up our trailer (need a place to stay after all!) and waited to see what would happen.

We and the neighbors kept looking around and gauging the situation. We learned that the traffic leaving our area was bumper to bumper, just a parking lot, and leaving home to sit in traffic 400 yards away just did not seem necessary. Some people left, but we are hanging around still as of this post. We have learned that we can leave but that it is difficult or impossible to return. The conditions are much better than earlier this afternoon. We intend to stay as long as we think it is safe and/or until we receive a mandatory evacuation order.

What happened today is that the wind came up and the fire just jumped up like crazy. I am hearing on the tv news now that two fire fighters became trapped and had to resort to deploying their fire tent in a meadow as far from timber as they could get and hunker down. They are fine.

Unfortunately the weather report is not good – strong winds for the next four days.

We saw our friend Doug today – he lost his home utterly. He is staying with our friends Kurt and Maryellen. The agencies are here in a big way, and things are getting handled okay, but lots of loss and grief here.

As I read over this I want to assure you that we are not doing anything stupid – we can get out of here in a heartbeat and will do so if it comes to that.

Posting tired with a churning stomach…

-Steve

Fire!

admin — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:40:06 +0000

We live in South Lake Tahoe, CA, where a large and devastating fire erupted on Sunday. Over 200 homes have been destroyed and more than 1000 people have been evacuated. We are not among them. We are fine, and our house is fine.

That said, we have several friends who are now without homes. One man, Jim Patterson, lost his wife to breast cancer two months ago and Sunday got out of their house with their five pets but not with her ashes. He now says that Lenore’s ashes ‘will be part of the new foundation when I rebuild.’

We just got back last night at midnight, and today we need to fireproof our own place to the extent we can. This means rake pine needles off of our roof – a cedar shake one! – connect our garden hoses to our spigots, deploy a ladder to our roof, leave a light on in every room and the doors unlocked, etc. Also we want to do some basic preparation for evacuation – critical documents, photos and other items.

Then we need to track down some friends who are now not answering their land lines and see what they need.

A tragedy. Gotta go!

-Steve