Last night on the way to church, I opened my sunroof and quickly closed it...the air smelled smoggy and awful. Yuck!
On the way home from service it quickly became clear, even with all the car windows rolled up, that the smell was not smog, but SMOKE. "Something is on fire," I said.
I stopped at Taco Cabana for dinner. When I opened my car window to order, I thought I'd choke...and big ashes were falling from the sky. "Something BIG is on fire!" I said to the woman at the drive-thru. "Really?" she said, peering out of her window onto the world." "Really," I said. "Either that, or it's a volcano."
And boy, was I right the first time:
See the lake in the county just above Fort Worth and Dallas? That's Lake Lewisville, and I live about 5 miles west of its northwest tip. We had 35 mile per hour winds all evening, due west. Very scary.
Two people died in this fire. Two towns were destroyed. From the WFAA-TV blog:
Behind me, you are looking at the charred remains of a community center. Yesterday, it was thriving. Today, nothing but charred remains, after wildfires swept through, reducing it to rubble. Even today, Montague County is still burning. Everywhere you look, another hotspot reigniting. In Montague, the fires turned deadly for former News 8 reporter Matt Quinn and his wife Cathy. They were unable to escape alive. Cathy's son Chris did get out, only in time to watch the family truck explode. Today, he remains hospitalized, suffering from burns. Back in Stoneburg, they are still measuring the toll these fires have taken. Despite all the losses, close knit communities are coming together, vowing to help one another out of this mess. On this Good Friday, they choose to see hope on the horizon.
- Cynthia Vega reporting from Stoneburg
