Fire!!

It's over now but that was about tooooo much excitement for me. Ron was finally taking some time to relax between drying and raking coffee. He was looking towards the ocean for whales when smoke arose from the fields below. He yelled at me that he was taking the Gator down for a look. When he phoned me back we decided a 911 call to the fire department was next. There are houses down there but you enter from another road about 1/4 mile down and I was having a hard time explaining to dispatch how to get there so I met the fire truck at the corner and directed them. Meanwhile Ron was cutting the water line to the irrigation to get buckets down there. A few pickers were around and they help tote water. Another neighbor helped the fire trucks navigate to the location as Ron said it was right behind a new house built there a few years ago and could be imminent danger to them.

Endless water is availble if you can get to it and that's when the helicopter arrived. The first fire truck was running short on water and a second had arrived so it looked pretty well under control but with many hot spots. The helicopter headed towards the ocean dipped an extremely large vessel in the ocean and headed back. With a sploosh it opened and dropped it's load over the first hot spot. After several trips our air fire force had the job done.

I'm sure I'll read about the theories in the paper tomorrow. We have some ideas but will hold our speculation until after the investigation. The fire didn't start on our property but near it. We lost 60 coffee trees or so but feel it could have been a lot worse if Ron had not taken a break to look for those whales. And NO (don't anyone ask) that is not how we usually get roasted coffee!