Hectic Weeks

Well, starting on October 12th, I went on a hunting trip to Wyoming. I went with Bryce Poulson and his brother Paul. Bryce served his mission in Wyoming and Montana. He met the Taylors in Ten Sleep, WY. (Ten Sleep got its name from the Indians because it is ten sleeps from Buffalo to the east and ten sleeps from Worland to the west.) We came home with 4 deer and no elk. We had tags for 6 deer and 1 elk. Will post video of the elk later. Got home 10:30 on Saturday night the 20th of Oct. Got up the next morning and went to work at the fire dept. (North County Fire Protection District in Fallbrook, CA) Around 12:19 pm received a dispatch to the Harris Fire in Potrero, next to the Mexican border in the south of San Diego County. Fought fire and protected structures until Tuesday night, when we got to go to the fire camp to sleep (finally). In the meantime, a fire broke out (Rice Fire) in Fallbrook. Jodi was returning from Arizona from a visit with Laura Myers with Mary Morrison, Debbie Spackman and Betsy Shirkey. When she got home, there was an evacuation order for the whole town of Fallbrook. She was frantic and was able to contact me for directions

as to what to do. Phone service in Potrero is Lousy!!

She evacuated to Gavin and Launa's house in Temecula. Later she went to her sister Teddie's house, also in Temecula. She wasn't able to get back into town until Friday. Meanwhile, I was at the Harris Fire until 10:30 pm Saturday. All went well for us, but we had five members of our ward lose their homes.

It was difficult for me to be on another fire while the area around the fire station where I work was burning. Fallbrook lost 206 homes. Between 800 and 1000 were saved by many colleagues. Firefighters from throughout the western states were on the fires in San Diego County. On the Harris Fire, we had firefighters from Washington State (Seattle, Snohomish, Moses Lake), Oregon, Idaho, Nevada(Reno), and Arizona(Pine Top). We still have firefighters from Montana in Fallbrook taking care of hot spots.

Things have gotten back to normal, pretty much. We are helping many in the community that need assistance. The church has provided cleaning kits, chain saws, rakes, shovels and many more things for the clean-up of the community. Many volunteers are assisting those in need. Between 400 to 500 volunteers went out on Oct 26th to clean and another 100 to 200 went out on Saturday, Nov 3rd.