On Sunday afternoon Rylan had a birthday party in Cashmere.
On the way home, I noticed some smoke coming from the Monitor area and I actually pulled over on Easy Street in the Mormon church parking lot and took a picture. We were back home about 4.
About 8:45 I stepped outside to water my flowers and saw this from our front porch.
And pretty much knew that this was not good.
(Presley's looking through the binoculars).
We believe the flames to the right is the first house on fire.
We were watching TV and an emergency alert system came over letting Wenatchee residents know that their evacuation location would be Eastmont High School.
I texted Amy, Samee, Dad, and Mom this picture and told them I'd let them know if this escalated more into our area.
On Monday morning I woke up to get Presley ready for the second week of her acting camp and I had two voicemails from Mom and Papa Berries and a text from Tona making sure we were okay.
At this point I didn't know what had happened closer into town, but from our front window, things looked clear... the hills were black as far to the left as I could tell where it burned but there were no visible flames.
I opened up the computer and saw we had made the front news story on google.
I read the story and realized that 28 houses were confirmed burned down.
And saw this picture attached to the article. ..
I quickly realized that the flames we had witnessed the night before turned into something major.
So I decided to go for a drive to see if I could tell how far the fire spread.
The development (Broadview) behind Wal-Mart was unaccessible. There was a police officer checking licenses and you could only go through if you lived in that neighborhood.
I saw camera news crews on streets.
About noon I got a call saying that downtown was shutting down and to come pick up Presley and I guess at that point I started to actually get a little scared.
We do subscribe to the local Wenatchee World paper but they never publish on Mondays so I felt like I was way out of the loop about what had happened the last 12-15 hours.
(Embers had started a packaging shed on fire and that shed housed a tank of ammonia that was now leaking which is why she had to be picked up).
Blue Bird Packing Shed on fire
Photo credit: Wenatchee World
I made a quick stop by Old Navy to get 4th of July shirts but that area had been evacuated too.
Tuesday's newspaper had this picture on the front page.
I knew that houses in Broadview had burned, but I didn't realize it was the exact street where we trick or treat each year.
Logan knows of at least one of his classmates who lived in one of these burnt homes.
On Wednesday, all fireworks were banned for both counties. It's been odd to drive around town and see their little white tents sealed off and not busy.
There's been some really great stories in the newspaper about our valley coming together but the destruction (even seen only in pictures) is unimaginable.
