So we had this fire...

The Indian Gulch wildfire started almost two weeks ago.  Luckily, we escaped any sort of bad fate, although our neighborhood was on evacuation alert for 5 days.  Being on standby for evacuation is certainly unpleasant, and the days were stressful.

A neighbor wrote a great blog on the whole thing here:  http://blog.ericdaugherty.com/2011/03/golden-fire-summary.html   I don't have anything to add to what he wrote on the specifics.

He took some great photos, as did another neighbor Jeff Warner.  Jeff Day 1, Jeff Day 2, Jeff Day 3.  (These are worth a look!)

I even took a few myself, which ended up on KDVR.com (Fox 31)'s website.

The fire, at closest point, was probably a half a mile from our neighborhood.

So, what do you take?  What is important?  What do you mind never seeing again?

These are good questions, and probably worthwhile for everyone to ask themselves once in a while.  I never did prior to this.   Obviously your important papers, birth certificate, passport, and insurance documents are no brainers.  Grabbing the Brunner One Fun Thing was my first thought.  Honestly, even before documents.

As I unpacked, I realized I still have no idea.  I took what I thought best, but in all likelihood was some items of poor choice.   I grabbed four footballs.  (!)  Admittedly, one of them means a lot to me as it was a gift from the Packers.  I grabbed some autographed baseballs and some baseball cards.  We grabbed some photo albums, and obviously two portable hard drives full of photos and tax documents.  I grabbed a few books that were important to me.  The goal is to try to forget anything that is irreplaceable.

Well, that would be myself and Sarah and the dogs primarily.  How does it work if the evacuation notice goes out when we are at work and the dogs are home?   The answer isn't entirely satisfactory, and I should say the answer(s) don't completely match when you ask the Sheriff vs the Fire Department vs the incident management team.   Truthfully, I almost would have rather been evacuated for sure, so as to avoid the stress of wondering about returning home.  I suppose we could have evacuated ourselves.  These are a few of the lessons we learned which are worth sharing:
1) Get a bank safety deposit box
2) Find a safe spot for the pets, possibly for the duration
3) Find a safe spot for the big items
4) Scan important documents
5) A big safe isn't a bad idea
6) Time to replace the roof!

A few of these I'd already taken care of.  It is also worth thanking everyone that reached out to us during this.

I hope we are done with natural disasters for awhile.  Or any kind, actually.