Pictures of The Angora Fire.. Lake Tahoe 6/24/07

[madeintahoe]

I meant to post this last week..so im a bit late..so sorry The Angora Fire was 100% contained on July 2nd...which im sure you all have heard that info.
Sunday the 1st we took a hike up to Twin Peaks to finally get a good look at the burn area...I was nervous and part of me was afraid of what we would see..but it was driving me crazy I needed to see how the forest looked!

I know there have been many forest fires all over..but I guess when it is in your home town & the forest that has burned is where you have hiked before..it hits you more! My 1st glimpse of the whole burn area..my heart just dropped and I felt sick. What once was a beautiful green forest slope , is pretty much gone...looking through binocs it looks like thousands of toothpicks and ashes.
The fire went all the way up to the Angora Ridge Road and pretty much followed the ridgeline over towards Gardner Mountain....it's so strange to see where this fire started and then to see the direction where it burned and ended up at. I must say it was pretty devastating to see.
We kinda just sat on a boulder looking at it like it was not real...and saying to each other how lucky we are to still have our home..if the winds had been blowing in another direction this fire could have easily reached our little neighborhood area..we really could see that because of looking at where it started and where our home is.
They were still getting water out of our little Lake Baron by our house to dump on some hot spots..there were a few smoky areas we did noticed.

I went to see our friend Pat...at his property where his home burnt from this fire....All there is, is a standing chimney and piles of ash of all his belongings all gone! He had told me..he was outside on his deck and noticed the smoke the day of the fire...he drove about 10 minutes away to get a better look at where it was at...he said okay thats a distance..but noticed a tree exploding and thought he better get back to his home...he got back, fire department told him he may have to evacuate and to be ready to go...he started gathering stuff..right after that they came telling everyone to get out...he told me from the time he saw the fire and the time he was told to evacuate was only about 45 minutes...said the fire was burning so hot and spreading so fast he knew he would loose his home. To hear about other fires and to see the pictures on TV only..is totally different then seeing it with your own eyes in real and what a fire can do....I was standing right in an area where the fire had burned and already life returned with the ants all over the ground and I even heard the birds singing..amazing what mother nature can do!

I took a few pictures of the fire from when we 1st saw the plume at our house & that evening the flames we saw from our deck..to looking at it from Twin peaks & at our friends house. The ones I took from twin peaks...are really hard to see just how bad the burn area is. Thank you everyone for your past post on Shawns original post about this fire..I thought I would do this new one for the pictures
If anyone is interested is seeing them my album is here
http://news.webshots.com/album/559750555tTfnFJ?start=0