Survived Another 4th
Woman in the Middle | July 6, 2017Whew! It was a a 4th of July for the ages, but not because of anything I did. Blame the fireworks and thank the firefighters!
I don’t know what happens in your neck of the woods, but around here people spend all kinds of money on professional grade illegal fireworks and shoot them off all over the place. It began at 10:30 in the morning with the ones that just make noise and went until after 1 am. It was even more insane this year than last year, and last year was pretty amazing, and not in a good way.When you have that many fireworks being set off the next thing that will inevitably happen is something will get set on fire.
We had a couple of friends over for the 4th. We hopped in the pool about 3:30. A few minutes later we looked over to the east and saw a great plume of black smoke rising up. We knew it must have been a house fire, due to the location and the color of the smoke. Sure enough, we later found out a house burned about a mile from our house. It was a total loss, apparently.
Just as the firefighters began getting that one under control and the smoke began to dissipate, a helicopter with a long tube dangling from it flew by. That caused much speculation as to whether or not it was a firefighting helicopter. When it flew by again, we could clearly see on the bottom of the helicopter the words “Cal Fire” which is our state firefighting agency. We realized we had light colored smoke over to the west. That means a brush fire. Good grief!
As I have mentioned before, we live sandwiched between a golf course and some hills. Up in the hills the golf course has a small reservoir which has something to do with the golf course. We could see that Cal Fire helicopter going down and hovering just above that reservoir, allowing the hose danging below it to dip into the water, fill its tanks back up, and then take off to go dump the water on the brush fire which was very close by.
At this point, authorities are trying to figure out what caused these and many other fires spread out all over our county. Hum, the bets are on that the brush fire, at least, was caused by fireworks. Time will tell.
Neither fire was near our home. Whew! We went on with barbecuing and such, but I really feel for the people who where impacted by these and other fires. Why must people buy illegal fireworks? That is a question for the ages as well.
I don’t know what it is about fireworks that excites people. Animals and small kids are traumatized in addition to the fire threat. How it all turns out well.
I strongly dislike firecrackers and non-professional fireworks. The other night, in the middle of all of those loud pops and whistle sounds, there was a huge boom and a bright light. I was sitting in my den ( that has no windows) and I saw the flash of light and thought surely something had exploded – a transformer or something. No, it was the POLICEMAN that lives across the street, shooting fireworks with his kids…. and, yes, they are illegal in our city!
Great, just great!