A day of devastation...

What do you grab when you have minutes to grab an entire lifetime of memories...we were faced with that question on Saturday morning...With the smell of smoke in the air, Mike and I decideed to take a little ride around the community we live in...much to our amazement the outskirts of the houses were on fire...in minutes the fire was roaring through the community with burning embers and catching trees on fire, leading to clay tile roofs and peoples homes...We werent gone 10 minutes when we received a call from our son saying the house on the corner of us (3 houses down) was on fire!
We FLEW back to our house, grabbed our babies, the dog, and the bird and secured them in the car...Our 9 year old banging on the windows crying and telling us to hurry and get out..We ran back in got a day of clothes, the loan documents for our home, the cell phone chargers and left immediatly when the fireman came up to me and said you need to leave NOW...
Mike came back after getting myself and the kids out to grab a few more things that we of course thought of after the fact, and thank god he did, the palm tree in our backyard had caught fire and the neighbor acorss the street, her slope in her yard was on fire..Mike got both of them out and then stayed to keep our eaves and trees wet..Now learning that the police were telling him to get out or he would be arrested!
The kids and I watched outside our neighborhood with all of our neighbors as our community burned...We have friends that have lost everything, we have friends that have lost just bedrooms, we lost nothing thank god other than some sleep...I feel so blessed and know that my guardian angel was watching over us...My thoughts and prayers go out to the people in my community who have lost so much, tonight we hold a meeting to find out what we can do....
Here are a few pictures of what we have been dealing with...