Fire!

Okay, so last Wednesday was definitely an interesting night around here.  We had been having severe thunderstorms all afternoon with pretty intense lightning.  As a matter of fact, I had been observing some frightening lightning bolts outside my sliding glass doors right up to dinner time and our electricity had popped off a couple of times already when Jackson left to go to town.  He backed out of our garage then came quickly back inside the house to say, "That little building under the radio tower is on fire!"   What??  We ran to our back door to look and sure enough, this is what we saw.

It was also making a terribly loud and high pitched whining noise that definitely sounded like electrical equipment in a major malfunction.  I called 911 to report the fire then called Daddy and Mama.  Daddy called the radio station to let them know their little building was on fire and then we waited.  It didn't take long for our volunteer fire department to arrive (pretty impressive!) but they were stuck waiting for the radio station guy to come unlock the padlocked gate at the main road.  Pretty soon I saw Daddy's car drive down to the fire truck on the main road and wondered what he was doing.  It turns out that the poor radio station fella was flooded in at his house and couldn't get out due to water covering his road.  (It really HAD been quite a storm!)  He had called Daddy and asked him to let the fire fighters know they would have to use bolt-cutters to get into the field as well as the gate around the building.  By this time the smoke was so thick that we were having a hard time seeing our neighbors house.  

Once the gate was open the fire truck tried to come up the road to the building.  But, the condition of the road was so bad and they couldn't cross a gully.  They ended up bringing their trucks and equipment into our neighbors drive so they could run their hoses across the field to the building.  Keep in mind that these poor fellas were out in continuing cold rain and wind and mud this whole time.  

The fire fighters worked for several hours getting the fire under control.  It does appear that lightning struck the radio tower then traveled down the tower and caught the little building on fire.  We have long believe that tower acts as a great lightning rod!  Thankful it hit the tower and not any of the houses out here!  And thankful the fire fighters were all safe, as well.  They did a great job in not so great conditions.  We definitely appreciate their efforts.  

smoke is clearing at this point...

You can begin to see through the smoke finally.  Lots of activity out here on the hill!  

The next day we were sitting down to watch a DVD for school when the power in the whole house shut off.  What??  Again, we looked out toward the tower and saw the electric company guys out there.  Marvin went over to visit with them and they said someone was to have called us about the power going off.  Oh well.  Not a big deal.  Again, they were the ones having the difficulty.  The field was so muddy from all the storms and the water that they got stuck.  Our neighbor, Butch, came down in his big tractor and pulled their truck to the location they needed so they could work on the power pole.  Miserable working conditions again.  I have to hand it to all the people who were involved in working on this incident.  They were all super helpful and friendly and efficient - even in the worst of conditions.