Was this “Armageddon”? The south shore of St. Croix was ablaze!

I heard on the radio Thursday morning, that there was a fire on Lowry Hill Road. That’s a mile or so away and they said it was on the north side of the hill. Far enough away from here and with the wind blowing east to west, there was no chance of it coming toward our house.

A few hours later, I heard sirens and looked out to see a fire truck turning at the intersection of 62 and 624. They were coming our way. As soon as they turned the corner, they stopped with a screech of tires. I saw them back up and head due south, toward the boyscout camp. I didn’t see anything else, so I again a thought, “okay, we’re safe”.

I took a shower to prepare for the arrival of my 2:30 client. It was between 1:30 and 2:00pm. When I got out, I looked out the front door and saw flames to the southeast. Clouds of dark smoke were being blown toward us ahead of the blaze, and the fire was coming this way, too. I started to panic. I was sure someone had called the fire department, so I called Michael. I was waiting for my client and I didn’t want to not watch this fire in case it started coming too close and we needed to soak down the area in front of our house, or help our neighbors do the same.

My client arrived and poo-pooed my anxiety (yeah, it wasn’t HIS house in the way, so why should he care?) and Michael came home a few minutes after I started the session. He thought the fire was close to being out and started feeding dogs or something. Then he heard the crackling of the flames devouring the dry grass and trees right across the main road from our neighbor’s house. He went onto the roof to check it out.

I was massaging my client and could hear more sirens and John Ballard’s helicopter overhead. I was going crazy not being able to see what was going on. After his session ended, I went up on the roof with Michael to watch the firefighters to the west, waiting for the fires to reach the road on that side. One of the guys walked down a little way to the east and started another small fire so it would back-burn and not threaten Cafe Kaleidoscope on the corner.

There were areas across the entire Great Pond area in flames. Huge walls of flames in all directions. Our friend Lisa called to ask what areas were burning. She also told us there had been a fire down in her area by Ha’penny earlier, but it was out now. That’s where they were going when I first heard the sirens and saw the truck stop and turn around.

After a while, we walked down to the main road by our neighbor, Roy’s house. He was outside and came to talk with us. Our other neighbor, Shane came down too. The fire had come right to the edge of the road. If the wind had not shifted, we would have been in big trouble. As it was, the smoke and flames were blown to the southwest, rather than our way, which was the case when I first saw the fires.

It was getting dark when we went back home. The firefighters had it under control and Michael and I felt comfortable enough to go to Luncheria to meet up with the usual Thursday night suspects. We got to meet Cindy’s Dad, Gary, who was visiting St. Croix for the first time. They had just gotten off the Roseway after a sunset sail where a couple of dolphins swam with the boat part of the way. We had a nice dinner with them and Dave and Michelle and Roy and Sue and headed home shortly after 9 pm.

We were surprised and shocked as we rounded the top of Lowry Hill Road to see the fires still blazing down by the boyscout camp. We drove down until there were firetrucks in the way and took pictures of the continuing carnage. We felt for the fire fighters who had had such a long day and it wasn’t over for them yet.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 11:05 am and is filed under Island Buzz, St. Croix, Terry Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.