Clay Springs Fire

Back on June 27th, we had a pretty scary experience. I had taken the kids to the Resevoir in Delta for a picnic and to go swimming for the afternoon. We were having a great time. I noticed a huge smoke cloud way out in the distance and pointed it out to Railey. I wondered where the fire was. Within just a few minutes I got a call on my cell phone from the emergency dispatch at the sheriff's office. It was a recording telling me there was a fire by Oak City and that we needed to be prepared in case it got worse and possibly had to evacuate. I got the kids out of the water and we headed home. We got almost to Oak City and you could see the fire and how big it was. We watched the planes and helicopters dumping fire retardant and water and couldn't believe how huge the fire was. We got home a few minutes later and my phone rang again saying we were having mandatory evacuations and that we needed to leave Oak City. We hurried and packed a few important items and paper documents and few favorites items. The kids were hysterical. They were so scared. The whole town was just black smoke. We got in our cars and headed out of town. We went to the stake center in Delta where the Red Cross was there and took care of everyone until we knew what was going to happen. We ended up staying in a motel in Delta for the night. The next day we were allowed to return home. As we drove into town it was unbelievable how black everything was. No homes were lost, which is truly a miracle. There are many that should have burned. Power lines were burned down. It looked so desolate and it still does. There were news crews all over and fire people everywhere. Two of our neighbors are firefighters here in Oak City and were badly burned. They are doing very well now and are recovering well. For a couple weeks our little town was quite crazy. The fire ended up burning over a 100,000 acres. Oak City has since been preparing for floods. Our entire mountain is burned and we are not allowed to even drive up there anymore. Its sad. But we are very grateful for the protection that was with us. These picture were taken from our house.