Colorado Fires

Having lived in Florida for many years I weathered my share of hurricanes and witnessed first hand the devasting destruction of how powerful weather can be but never in my experience have I seen something as frightening as what we witnessed here in my city yesterday.  Last Saturday morning as the girls and I left the gym I looked out over the parking lot where there is usually a magnificant view of the mountains and saw a large black plume of smoke.  We listened to the radio and discovered that the canyon just behind this ridge was on fire and for three days we stayed tuned to the news praying for rain and for fire fighters to keep the fire from crossing the ridge into neighborhoods on the west side of our City.  The fire fighting seemed to be going well until yesterday when weather conditions provided the perfect opportunity for this fire to cross the ridge and as I left my neighborhood to pick Joshua up from summer school this is what I saw.......

Within, a few hours this was the scene as the fire invaded a neighborhood where Mike and I had seriously considered moving when we were searching for homes in preparation for our move.  In fact the street of the home we looked at was mentioned in news casts and we are certain that it probably was destroyed.  The fire was so powerful that fire fighters were forced to retreat while over 32,000 residents were evacuated within a very short time.  Although we live on the other side of town and far from any danger we still found ourselves scared and in shock as to how quickly one could lose everything  as well as how uncontrollable fire can be.  We awoke in the middle of the night with the smell of smoke in our home even though our windows were shut tight and air conditioning having run all night long knowing just across the highway from our home an entire community was going up in smoke.

We currently have no news as to how many homes have been lost and the weather conditions are favorable for spreading today so we are praying for a mighty God to reach down from Heaven and heal our land.

A shot from the AirForceAcademy Chapel which is about 5 miles west of our home with smoke plumes billowing behind.