At work on Thursday afternoon, I heard a few coworkers talking about a fire across Utah Lake. I went to see where it was at, as the direct line to our home was across the river and then over the mountain. Going to the Window, it appeared the fire was on the northern point of the mountain separating Eagle Mountain’s city center, and the west side of Utah lake and its surrounding communities. It was relatively small and only putting out a small amount of smoke. I figured it wasn’t that bad, and would be under control shortly.
However, driving home, it became more apparent as to how widespread the fire had become, and how close it was to our house. On a typical day home, I drive on Pioneer Crossing, through Saratoga Springs, then onto a back road into the Ranches, passing the Silver Lake community. However, due to the smoke, I felt it would be better to take a more roundabout path home. I drove through the main Ranches entrance instead, then joined up to the road I take home. In the distance, to the south, I saw the mountain the fire was on. It was directly south of the way I was driving. As the road curved, the mountain was still right there, belching out smoke and even close enough to see the flames. Helicopters were constantly flying overhead, dropping water down on the hot spots.
Continuing the drive home, into our secluded little valley, the fire was actually right to the east of the road and our homes. I couldn’t help but stare at it during the drive, shocked at how much it was spreading and consuming everything. It was up on the mountain right above the end of our street (I’m glad we’re a bit more inland than that area). I got home, which had a perfect eastward view of the active part of the fire, and called the kids outside to watch it. It was only about a mile and a half away from our house, though up the mountain a ways, so the chances of spreading down didn’t seem likely.
It remained a consistent point of topic in our home and neighbourhood, as many people were out on the street watching it, just like us. It felt weird; surreal and fascinating, but not really frightening (to me, at least), to have a massive fire raging so close to our house, yet we just stayed in the comfort of our home, assuming and expecting great people to be out there, working to prevent it from spreading to critical areas. We learned that there’s an explosives factory less than a mile from part of where the fire raged (I assume, on the other end of the mountain). They were putting extra effort into preventing the fire from getting there.
On Thursday afternoon, it was decently spreading and we saw helicopters working to dump water on it. Thursday night, it was even greater, and in the middle of the night, I saw a number of vehicles driving up towards the fire zone.
By Friday morning, it had spread even more, and the helicopters were back, along with some fire planes.
A large number of houses north of here had been evacuated, and we didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger. However, on Friday as the fire kept spreading on our mountain, I wondered what it would be like to lose our house and all our possessions. Strangely, after losing the hard drive and coming to the reality of not having much of that content anymore, I felt like it wouldn’t really matter if we did lose the contents of our house, as long as our family was safe. I know, yes, it would be difficult to overcome it, but we would do it. Fortunately, we didn’t have to evacuate, and the wonderful heroes fighting fires did a great job of keeping it from spreading down to our homes.