It's so bad that I hate to leave the place, not that I could do much if a fire came through. I can understand why people are so reluctant to evacuate.
We had our first fires here the weekend after Thanksgiving. They were on all the networks. The first ones were about two miles north of us. Luckily the wind was out of the south, so they went away from us. The high winds apparently damaged electric lines, a transformer popped, and the fire was off and running.
Day before yesterday a fire jumped the highway west of Duncan. They evacuated at least one neighborhood. The fire never got into the homes. I think one backyard storage building burned because the roof caught on fire from sparks. But several houses nearer the highway burned completely up. One house was sort of a landmark and they ran a story about it in the paper. The people grabbed their car keys and ran. But they both had the same set of keys, so they wound up with one car and the clothes on their back.
We drove down to Ringgold, TX the day after that fire. Man, it's bad there. The post office burned, but the school is still there. I wonder if they'll rebuild the post office? Some of the older people are saying they won't rebuild. They had evacuated the entire town of Nocona, but I didn't hear that it burned.
Our weather people are saying we'll have less than normal rainfall through March. They don't say what will happen after then, but that's a pretty dry part of the year in normal years.
It's a terrible situation and I understand New Mexico is having problems with fires, too? I didn't know East Texas was dry. But at least people are still eating beef.
