A Hot time last night

People's stupidity never ceases to amaze me. We have not had any rain in over a month, needless to say add this to the gusty winds we've been experiencing for a while the ground is DRY!! There's been a burn ban forever. Welllllllllllllllll, yesterday, someone on this huge ranch decided to have a "controlled burn" that unfortunately became an "uncontrolled burn". It started spreading in the afternoon and by nightfall it was completely out of control. Now we live in a mountainous area... is that a word?? Lots of hills and valleys and it's very remote. Unfortunately, this is one of the disadvantages of living in the woods. Anyway, this fire got down in a valley, called "Dark Corners" because it's so remote (it was often used by rustlers to hide their illgotten cattle). The fire trucks were unable to get to the fire. So not only was there a burn ban but there was also an expected cold front coming in with gusts of wind from the north, big gusts!!!
Our house sits on the side of the mountain and we're covered in trees, so our visibility is limited to the north, we were unable to see any of this going on. A neighbor called last night, he lives on top of the mountain and he was warning us it was headed towards us. My husband left to go up the mountain to get a better idea what was going on and left me with a final shot "You better start thinking about evacuating".
Now that's a heartwrenching thing to have to think about. What do you take? Of course my first thought was, what's irreplaceable?? All I could think of was pictures, pictures of my Dad as he was growing up and during the war, pictures of my children growing up. My computers would be first on the list along with the pictures... then I just kept thinking of more and more things I'd want to take with me.
Luckily, the wind was blowing the fire southeast, while we were more directly south, luckily this area is sparsely populated so there were only a few homes that could be in danger.
So last night at 11:30, I stood at my kitchen window with the binoculars watching the orange glow behind my house. It was behind a hill so we couldn't see the flames, just the glow. You could see as the wind gusted the flames got higher because the glow got brighter. It was really scary but we were able to tell by about midnight that the fire was going to go east of us and it looked like we were safe. Of course that doesn't keep you from waking up every little bit to make sure the sky is still dark and not bright orange outside your bedroom window.
This morning there was just a faint glow before the sun came up. Now that the sun's up, you really can't see anything but lots of smoke. We see fires all the time out here, usually way in the distance. We've had several that came this direction but never got too close to us. A couple years before we built our house, there was a major fire out here, that burned thousands of acres, we came up to check on our property at the time and at one point there was fire on both sides of the road, I made my husband turn around and get us out of there, it was freaky. There were like three major fires going at that time. There was another one closer to the house we were living in at the time and at night you could see the fires in the distance, flames and all.
People just don't realize I guess how fast this dry grass can burn. We've been fortunate as we've never lost anything to a fire, but we get a scare every now and then, and it's a most unpleasant feeling. My heart goes out to anyone that has been less fortunate in these cases.
Have a great day, I think I'll go count my blessings.