Before I start things off, I want to clarify this is NOT an April Fools prank! This actually happened, and I took plenty of videos and pictures of the event.

As a kid, you are shown the damage fires can cause at school, from fire drills to watching videos about them. So I've always been wary of possible house fires. However, I never thought of the possibility of wild fires burning down my house. With regular house fires, you usually have a window of time to prevent the fire from spreading with a fire extinguisher, but with wild fires, YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OF THAT. The most you can do is follow some steps to mitigated the damage, or something like that, grab any pets you have hoping they don't run off, drive away, and pray to whatever god or religion you're part of the fire doesn't reach your house. Extra points if you have a water sprinkler!

Other than that, you're at the mercy of mother nature.

Now, I already stress about tornadoes hitting my house every year, so adding wild fires to that list doesn't help much. Yesterday, a wildfire was heading dangerously towards our house. At the time, I was just working on art stuff and the weather part of my taskbar said "possible fire" which I didn't take too seriously. Then my mom comes in and tells me we might have to leave later and that's when it got serious. We didn't leave for too long. We returned to the house and drove out a bit trying to see where the smoke was heading. I couldn't find any live streams from the helicopter constantly flying over us. All I could see was big balls of smoke filling the sky, almost like a storm.

Once we went back to the house a second time, we stayed outside the house, kept an eye on the smoke. Fire trucks came in, and some bulldozers. And from what my sisters said there was a storm chaser on facebook streaming it live and they saw me. Kinda cool. The fires were getting dangerously close, but most of the neighbors next to us stayed outside their houses just keeping an eye on things. They were pretty calm about it too. So I just went back in the house to do the things listed on wildfires. Close all the doors, turn off the ventilation, shut off the lights, the usual. During all this, I called my sisters in a group call and Rebel picked some food on the way home. The fire continued east from us and thankfully was far behind from the house. With that said, there were people who still lost their homes.

Here's a picture from a few houses away.

After everything had died down, I could still smell the sent of burning and I still do a bit. With the way I described this, I probably sound like an idiot who's only concerned about my house. I don't know if that makes me psychotic or what but I don't blame you. As a child I didn't fully understand the "It's okay, you can replace your belongings" thing, because that sounded like they would replace all your stuff for free. Including stuff that's NOT replaceable somehow. Now I know it's just insurance, but that doesn't change the fact that they don't cover everything. The fact is, unless your house is made of stone or some flame resistant material, you're going to lose access to some old games or movies you use to own. But yeah, those things aren't as important as your life.

Now I'm just thinking about my life in general. I couldn't sleep last night because I was told the fires could creep back. Meanwhile everyone is getting ready for April fools and I'm just trying to regain lost sleep. I hope everyone else is having a good time. Just know everything is fine where I'm at.