I didn't take any photos while we were evacuating but this is likely what the hill behind our house looked like last night. We evacuated Sunday around 10pm with smoke and ashes blowing directly down our street and the hill behind our house ablaze in our rear view mirrors. We went to Lisa's house expecting to turn on the TV and see our home burned to the ground. Fortunately, there were no homes lost in this fire. When we returned home on Monday, the hill behind us was burned to within 20 feet of the street. That put our house about 100 feet from the fire BUT the eucalyptus trees behind us were much closer to the flames, as were the many very dry pine trees between us and the street. There were signs that firefighters had sprayed our yard with water, or at least the water they sprayed on the fire blew back toward our house. There was quite a few water marks around our yard which we are very grateful for. The media was very disappointing in their coverage of this event. As we sat watching our TV being told the fire was at least 5 miles from us, it was actually moving right towards us, jumping the tollroad and coming down the hill right behind us. The Tustin schools were also very confused by the media because they didn't bother to close the school that Martha works at that was right in the middle of the fire zone with all the major road around it being closed by police and firefighters. The local school 2 blocks from our home didn't even know that the community around it had been evacuated. Funny thing...today's OC Register states that there were no manditory evacuations. I guess they need to talk to the fire and police who came through our street with sirens and loudspeakers instructing us to "leave immediately". We consider ourselves very fortunate and are glad to be home cleaning up a messy yard instead of picking through the charred remains of our home.
