Fire and Rain

It's been a crazy summer so far in Colorado Springs.  When we came back from our vacation in Oregon the weather was nearly 100 degrees and stayed that way for weeks with no rain, unusual for Colorado Springs summer.  As we drove back into town we passed a few wildfires but Colorado Springs was all clear.  About a week later the Waldo Canyon fire started, just outside of Colorado Springs.  Here is our first view of it from our window on Saturday June 23rd.  We didn't know what was going on at this point.

 On that same Saturday - the first views of the fire.

These pictures aren't very good but these were taken a few days later on June 26 when the fire came down the front side of the mountains into Colorado Springs and burned over 300 homes.  You can't see anything really - my pictures aren't great, but it looked like lava flowing down the mountain.  Real scary.  This was on the west side of Colorado Springs (up by the mountains and on the west side of interstate 25).  We live on the east side of 25 about 7 or 8 miles from the homes that got burned.

 June 26

More of June 26

The weather conditions were really bad for nearly two weeks.  Hot, dry and windy.

Then we finally got some rain and cooler temps.

On July 6 we got some rain...some good rain.  Here are the kids checking it out.  The firefighters made a lot of headway on the fire containment once the weather changed.  

 Then on Sunday, July 8 we got more rain.  A downpour of epic proportions and some hail to make up for the dry weather we had so far.  Unfortunately it rained so hard water started pouring from one of our window wells into our basement guest room.

Here is the wet carpet area (under the table there too) after we moved all the boxes and things away.

Luckily this happened on the day before Scott had to leave for his deployment training - he had to go in the basement a lot to get his gear together that day.  He had been down in the basement earlier in the day and all was well.  When he went down after all the rain he noticed the wet carpet.  If it had been another day I don't know how long it would have been til I went down there and noticed the flooding.  We don't go down in that room much.

Here you can see some sand on the inside of the window well

 So we moved all the boxes off the very wet carpet.  Some stuff was damaged, but it seems like nothing too crucial so far.  Scott dug out the window well on the outside which had filled with sand causing water to come in at the window, so hopefully we won't have that problem again...although I'll be watching it every time it rains.  We used towels and wet vac to get up a lot of water but the carpet is still wet.

 One of the wet boxes after we moved it.

 Scott vacuuming the wet carpet.  It was amazing how much water came up in that vacuum.

 Boxes and storage stuff I moved into the hallway.

The next morning we took Scott to the airport super early so we've be battling the wet carpet on our own for a while.  The kids helped me sop up more water with towels and we started running a fan in there.  The smallish fan we had seemed to be doing nothing so Monday I went to Walmart and bought two big cheap box fans.  I also vacuumed some more with the wet vac and sopped up the carpet with more towels.  After running the big fans for about 24 hours (by Tuesday afternoon) I started to notice the carpet getting drier and smelling less.  I'm hoping this means we can save the carpet and it won't be ruined.   In any case, we are happy for the rain (the fire is now 100% contained) and happy that we noticed the flooding sooner rather than later.  If I didn't notice the flooding til Monday morning after Scott was gone or later in the week and found everything wet and moldy down there I think I would have been pretty discouraged.  Now I think we have a fighting chance of getting things back to normal.  We'll see how it goes.