Speaker 1: So I was thinking about this is as in bed
Speaker 1: last night, as it took me many hours to get
Speaker 1: to sleep, all the adrenaline going from having my house
Speaker 1: almost burned down, and I was thinking about how the
Speaker 1: good things in life generally occur fairly slowly and uh
Speaker 1: and and happen in a planned fashion. They unfold that way,
Speaker 1: and getting married, having kids, all those kind of things
Speaker 1: that the impactful good things happened, vacations or whatever they are.
Speaker 1: You see them coming, you plan for him. It's arigned
Speaker 1: in that direction. Finally you get there. The really awful
Speaker 1: things that happened in your life seemed to come out
Speaker 1: of the blue and are often over in a couple
Speaker 1: of seconds or minutes, and you spend the rest of
Speaker 1: your life thing and what the hell was that? Or
Speaker 1: I should have done this or whatever, and it you know,
Speaker 1: horrifying accidents, crimes, all that sort of stuff. They unfold
Speaker 1: so quickly. And we had that happened with a fire
Speaker 1: on our property yesterday. We live on twenty acres and
Speaker 1: we live in a part of the country where it's
Speaker 1: you know, incredible dry grass. We have basically the same
Speaker 1: landscape as they did up in Paradise. California where you're
Speaker 1: You heard about that town getting wiped out last year
Speaker 1: and all those people dying, and um, and everybody's very
Speaker 1: careful about it, and there are rules to follow and
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff. But you know, you just
Speaker 1: always assume it's gonna happen to somebody else. And we
Speaker 1: don't know how this started. Um, still haven't figured that
Speaker 1: out yet. But I'm laying in bed with Henry, my
Speaker 1: youngest God, getting him to sleep. It's about seven thirty,
Speaker 1: coming off a medical procedure the last couple of days.
Speaker 1: He's on a lot of medicine. I'm hanging out with him,
Speaker 1: and my son Sam comes in the room and starts
Speaker 1: waving his arms and I said, ship, why I didn't
Speaker 1: know what he when he needed? You know, the dog
Speaker 1: is Pete on the floor or whatever. He's like waves
Speaker 1: And I get up, get up quietly as Henry is
Speaker 1: about to go to sleep and come out and he said,
Speaker 1: the fields on fire? Said the what the fields on fire?
Speaker 1: So I go out the door and I see over
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of smoke over there on the
Speaker 1: on the on the front of our field. Um. And uh,
Speaker 1: but but you know, looking manage bullish, not good because
Speaker 1: you know, I've heard about how these things can spread
Speaker 1: and whatnot, and it's windy, and you know this is
Speaker 1: gonna be a crisis, and uh, and I start jogging
Speaker 1: toward it, kind of thinking, okay, what am I going
Speaker 1: to do about this? Exactly? And I'm thinking about where
Speaker 1: a hose bibbs and where hoses and what can I
Speaker 1: turn on and off? And how big a deal is this? Exactly?
Speaker 1: Another and I said, have you called the fire department?
Speaker 1: And and Laura's on the phone right then, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: on nine one right night. I've called the fire department
Speaker 1: and sort of say okay. So I'm thinking, okay, I
Speaker 1: need to and I start jogging over. Well, I could
Speaker 1: get a hose. I turned. I remember I turned. I
Speaker 1: think I said I could get that hose in that
Speaker 1: hose and hook come together, maybe it would reach part.
Speaker 1: And then when I turned back around, it's ten times
Speaker 1: as big as it was twenty seconds ago. In that
Speaker 1: amount of time, it was okay, this is full on.
Speaker 1: Oh okay. So then I'm I realized, okay, the fire
Speaker 1: department is going to be coming, and I'm thinking they
Speaker 1: gotta get in some gates. And I jump in my
Speaker 1: truck and I'm going down. I'm gonna open up gates
Speaker 1: so they can get in the property somehow because they
Speaker 1: wouldn't know where to drive in. And uh. And by
Speaker 1: the time I get in my truck and I come
Speaker 1: on the driveway, it's twice as big as it was
Speaker 1: a minute ago. And it's just so much smoke everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it's so hard to see and even have any
Speaker 1: idea what's going on and how big the fire isn't
Speaker 1: when I get around to the front of the property,
Speaker 1: I get on the other side of the wind, I
Speaker 1: can see how big it is and it's it is.
Speaker 1: It is quite a large fire. Um it probably covers
Speaker 1: a quarter of an acre at that point. And um uh.
Speaker 1: I get around and the fire people start arriving, Thank God.
Speaker 1: And I mean, this made all the difference in the world.
Speaker 1: If I lived a couple of miles down the road,
Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't have a home. I live a couple
Speaker 1: of golf shots away from a volunteer fire department, and
Speaker 1: they got over there with trucks pretty damn fast. And
Speaker 1: they are really good at what they do, so it
Speaker 1: must be one of those volunteer places that staffed. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I didn't I didn't nail down how that
Speaker 1: even worked, because usually they usually they blow a whistle.
Speaker 1: We hear the whistle all the time, and people come
Speaker 1: driving in who are part of the volunteer fire apartment
Speaker 1: and they go do their thing. I don't know if
Speaker 1: there are people already there, or if they got that
Speaker 1: there that fast. I don't have the idea. I know
Speaker 1: one guy is a neighbor of ours, um that I
Speaker 1: had never met before. He later said to my wife,
Speaker 1: he said, yeah, My wife said, I think it's the
Speaker 1: place that's got the goats. We gotta get over there.
Speaker 1: They got a lot of goats. Um But Laura had
Speaker 1: run around and opened the gates for all the animals,
Speaker 1: and um Uh was gathering up stuff. And I went
Speaker 1: over and started to trying to deal with the fire
Speaker 1: a little bit. But but and it was moving so fast.
Speaker 1: It was so loud, that was one thing I had.
Speaker 1: It was surprising to me. It was just crushingly loud,
Speaker 1: like you couldn't yell and be heard the fire. It
Speaker 1: was just a and it moved so fast across the
Speaker 1: field and got to this line of trees we've got
Speaker 1: along our really long driveway and these green, well watered
Speaker 1: trees just turned into bombs, just flame bombs. It's just
Speaker 1: it was just it was like, how is this even happening?
Speaker 1: And I thought, Laura's got to get out of here.
Speaker 1: I ran back toward the house and realized she already gone.
Speaker 1: She had the kids and the dogs and a goat
Speaker 1: in my suv and had already driven down the driveway.
Speaker 1: I found out later through smoking flames because the flames
Speaker 1: are going across our driveway and uh, and got out
Speaker 1: of there, and the kids are screaming and they were
Speaker 1: afraid I was gonna die because they didn't know where
Speaker 1: I was. But there was one point where I had
Speaker 1: I had gotten a long hose over and I was
Speaker 1: spraying on the field and the trees that were on fire,
Speaker 1: trying to keep it across our driveway because I just
Speaker 1: felt if it crosses our long driveway, it's we're We're doomed,
Speaker 1: which turns out the fire department said, yeah, if it
Speaker 1: had gotten across your driveway, I think it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: stopped until it got to road. I'm not gonna give
Speaker 1: the name, Like three properties down and a mile down,
Speaker 1: he's I don't think we'd have stopped it until it
Speaker 1: got down there if it had crossed your driveway. And
Speaker 1: I'm standing out there at the hose and I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to get closer and closer, and it's hot, I mean,
Speaker 1: the flames are hot, and I can't breathe. And once
Speaker 1: the winds turned and I got covered with smoke and
Speaker 1: I kind of put my head down and I'm holding
Speaker 1: the hose, and then I realized I can't breathe anymore
Speaker 1: and I gotta get out, and I didn't know which
Speaker 1: direction was out. Then I'm kind of stumbling around and
Speaker 1: everything like that, and it's just black and I looked
Speaker 1: down at my shoes are part of my tennis shoes
Speaker 1: are melted, and I'm trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: get out of here. And then I just to stumble
Speaker 1: far enough into and I'm coughing, and I got the
Speaker 1: hose and everything like that. Well then this fire chief
Speaker 1: vehicle comes comes flying down the driveway. He just comes
Speaker 1: out of the smoke, which I later realized that was
Speaker 1: probably the scariest thing that happened the whole night, the
Speaker 1: most danger we had, because my wife drove blind down
Speaker 1: the driveway in the smoke, and the fire chief told me,
Speaker 1: he said, I just took a he just I took
Speaker 1: he said, I took a flyer. I didn't know how
Speaker 1: long your driveway was. Were was on the other side,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't see anything. If they had at the
Speaker 1: same time been going thirty five minur and hit head on,
Speaker 1: that would have been that That was the biggest That
Speaker 1: was the biggest opportunity for for disaster right there, I mean,
Speaker 1: and and it was three minutes apart, maybe at most.
Speaker 1: I don't even know how long any of this took.
Speaker 1: I think the whole thing lasted fifteen minutes, but it
Speaker 1: seemed like a lifetime. But when I was in that
Speaker 1: smoke with the hose, I had I've only had that
Speaker 1: feeling a couple of times in my life where I
Speaker 1: thought this might be it, this might be it, this
Speaker 1: might actually be And I know that's what people think
Speaker 1: before they die. If you've ever read The Perfect Storm,
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of people that survived drowning. Some
Speaker 1: of them die and come back to life, and Jesus
Speaker 1: like and uh and or think they're gonna die. And
Speaker 1: that is what people think before they're gonna die. Wow,
Speaker 1: this might actually be it? And then it is it.
Speaker 1: People you know died That's what they were thinking before
Speaker 1: they died. Anyway, I was thinking, this might actually be it,
Speaker 1: This might actually be it. And then and then and
Speaker 1: then when I got out of the smoke and was
Speaker 1: able to to get enough air to breathe, and I
Speaker 1: thought this might act. We might actually lose our place here.
Speaker 1: This might actually happen here. Um uh and and and
Speaker 1: you know, and I was kind of at first, I
Speaker 1: had a bit of a feeling of what do I grab?
Speaker 1: What have I gotten? That? It's just there's no time
Speaker 1: and what the hell difference doesn't make anyway? Um, But
Speaker 1: I got the hose on the trees and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and I feel like with the hose, I will tell you,
Speaker 1: if you ever one of these situations, a hose does
Speaker 1: a lot more good than I thought it would. I
Speaker 1: was thinking, is this ridiculous? Is this gonna do any
Speaker 1: good against this roaring fire? And it's just a regular
Speaker 1: garden hose. It actually was making a dent, I could tell.
Speaker 1: So it's worth it if you if you're ever in
Speaker 1: that situation, it would have catching on fire. But no,
Speaker 1: it's not worth dying over, but if you can safely
Speaker 1: do that. But I think I kept it from spreading
Speaker 1: that direction. And then the fire cruise with their big
Speaker 1: trucks and tankers were coming from the other way, and
Speaker 1: eventually they got on top of it and and and
Speaker 1: got it out, and it kept popping up various places,
Speaker 1: and we'd run around with hoses and try to put
Speaker 1: it out. And I don't know how many vehicles there
Speaker 1: were total total there at the end, eight ten vehicles,
Speaker 1: thirty people, something like that. How much you burned total,
Speaker 1: these folks, It was two acres, which you know, if
Speaker 1: I heard on the news about fire, two acres, that's nothing.
Speaker 1: Two acres. And the thing is it's on fire at once. Yes,
Speaker 1: two acres on fire at once is a lot of
Speaker 1: flame and a lot of heat and a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of smoke. Laura showed me a picture she took from
Speaker 1: the fire station of our house, and I thought, holy cow,
Speaker 1: that's what it looked like while I was inside it,
Speaker 1: and it was, you know, it's just if it had
Speaker 1: been a windier day. And I told the fired guy,
Speaker 1: I said, I think if we had gotten at this
Speaker 1: ten minutes later, it had been over he said, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: ten minutes later, there would have been no stopping it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just amazing stuff like that that happens in your life. Well,
Speaker 1: growing exponentially, like you're describing, ten minutes is forever. I
Speaker 1: was talking to the fire guy later. I said, I
Speaker 1: do broadcasting for a living. I said, if there's anything
Speaker 1: I could do where like I go give speeches to
Speaker 1: homeowners or something like that, and explained to him like
Speaker 1: I thought, I knew how fast fire moved, and know
Speaker 1: what a big deal you have no idea. It goes
Speaker 1: from it's a little fire over there in a corner too,
Speaker 1: you can't control it in a blink of an eye,
Speaker 1: and then it's you're gonna lose everything you've got in
Speaker 1: ten minutes. Yeah, it's just it's amazing. And it was
Speaker 1: a windy night, but nothing compared to the kind of
Speaker 1: wind we often have. And there's another lucky thing. If
Speaker 1: it had been one of those really windy nights, no
Speaker 1: stopping it, no no freaking chance. And there were goats
Speaker 1: running around, dogs running around, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: we're gonna do. I've got to ask you. Laura grabbed
Speaker 1: the one goat, did the other goats resent that are
Speaker 1: there going to be goat morale problems? Is the one
Speaker 1: goat gonna be looked down upon by the other goats? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it was one of those. Here comes
Speaker 1: the king of the goats, they'll say, is the one goat.
Speaker 1: She didn't even know. She didn't even know what she
Speaker 1: was doing at the time, just like throwing stuff in
Speaker 1: the car. They saw a living thing and grabbed they
Speaker 1: couldn't get ahold of the dogs. Dogs were running a
Speaker 1: like crazy, and Sam tackled one of the pugs and
Speaker 1: and they got and got it in the vehicle and
Speaker 1: they're all screaming and crying. And I'm glad she took
Speaker 1: the initiative to drive out when she did, because it
Speaker 1: it it got so much worse so fast. I ran
Speaker 1: back to the house and say, you've got to go now,
Speaker 1: but she was already gone. Thank god. Um, I'll be damned.
Speaker 1: That's something I can't imagine. I can't imagine what it
Speaker 1: looks like if it if it gets bigger than that,
Speaker 1: because it was. It was hellish, just hellish. It took
Speaker 1: me so long to calm down from that. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine near Mrs are so I've almost had motorcycle rex
Speaker 1: before where I had to pull over and sit down
Speaker 1: on the curb for a while to like gather myself
Speaker 1: before I could drive on. And this was like one
Speaker 1: of those. Well, and you went to sleep in the
Speaker 1: very place where you know the craziness had happened, right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so yeah, that's man. You sleep with one
Speaker 1: eye open, and both years I did, I had the
Speaker 1: shades open, and I kept waking up looking out the
Speaker 1: window to see if it started back up again. And
Speaker 1: oh god, it was something. It was absolutely freaking crazy.
Speaker 1: Those volunteer firefighters though they were, they were good at
Speaker 1: what they did. And thank God for him. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if I send him a fruit, booquet or
Speaker 1: gift cards. I don't know what you're supposed to do
Speaker 1: in that situation, but holy cow, without them might have
Speaker 1: been doomed with I mean, without a doubt. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's noble work man, it's your firefighters. Oh yeah, yeah, Wow,
Speaker 1: Well glad everybody's all right? How still standing? Huh yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And uh we I got a more that burnt to nothing.
Speaker 1: We had a but some boxes for ups had delivered,
Speaker 1: some big boxes full of stuff. Laura is not sure
Speaker 1: what was in him. She's gonna have to check the
Speaker 1: tracking wherever they're just gone. There's no evidence that they
Speaker 1: ever existed. And I had a more parked over there,
Speaker 1: like a string more. It's like a six hundred dollar
Speaker 1: more or something like that, and it's just some of
Speaker 1: the frame is there because those fires get so hot
Speaker 1: this metal and it's metal. They get so hot when
Speaker 1: the wind's bowing, and it's just it's just gone. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm gonna make a claim on the
Speaker 1: insurance or even try. I don't I don't know. I
Speaker 1: haven't figured any of this out yet, right uh Like,
Speaker 1: Like I kept telling the kids as we were going
Speaker 1: to bed and try trying to calm down. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody's fine. Everybody's fine, and that's that's fine. We buy
Speaker 1: we get new stuff. If everything disappeared and burned down,
Speaker 1: we'd get new stuff. Yeah, it'd take a while, but
Speaker 1: everything the important things. Everybody's fine. Next family lecture on
Speaker 1: fire safety, they'll have attentive listeners. Feel like yeah, no kid, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: I don't know what. You have a giant tanker truck
Speaker 1: parked on your property. It's excellent advice that might be
Speaker 1: if you could afford it, good lord anyway, or just
Speaker 1: live on rock. Nothing would rock. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know how long it'll take me to calm down
Speaker 1: from this. Like my heart, I feel like it's still
Speaker 1: my heart rate is still elevated from it. I did
Speaker 1: so much running around a man at my age and
Speaker 1: poor shape, running from here to there and getting another
Speaker 1: hose and trying to get it together and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and I just I'm covered and smoken, my shoes are hot,
Speaker 1: and he's, oh, it's freaking crazy. It's good you didn't
Speaker 1: have a heart attack. Don't don't bother with a stress
Speaker 1: test at the cardiologist. There's no need for one.