Firestorm 2007

Part One of Two

“Hey Spencer… Spencer wake up.” A nervous Glen Carlin urged from beside the blonde’s bedside. The girl gave an annoyed groan as she squinted at the red letters of her clock, frowning as the numbers 1:32 AM came into focus.

“Go back to bed Glen, there’s no fires.” She spoke, rolling onto her stomach and pressing her face into her pillow. This had to be the fourth time he’d woken her up this evening on suspicion of flames, and it was getting old.

“Spencer! I’m serious this time, look out your window.” The boy continued, pushing her shoulder. She attempted to ignore him, but once that failed she eventually sat up in bed and pulled the blinds back from her windowpane.

The girl briefly scanned the hillside, not really looking too hard, just enough to appease her brother, “…I don’t see anything.”

“Are you blind? Over there!” He urged, pointing to the crest of one of the many surrounding hills. They lived in the north county of San Diego, in a little rural area near Lake Hodges, and were thus surrounded by several small mountains.

Spencer looked harder, her eyes widening when she realized that this time her brother was right. The glow of flames and billowing orange smoke could be seen emerging over the top of one of the closer mountains. “Get mom and dad, we need to get the horses out.”

The boy nodded and scurried off, and Spencer stared out the window for a moment longer, the disbelief overwhelming. But, in emergencies there really is very little time to stop and gawk, and soon she was loading all of the items that her father had pre-packed (no surprise there) into their truck.

It was a new moon that night, and it was pitch black outside as Spencer treaded carefully down to the barn. The winds howled as they whipped through the trees at speeds upwards of 80mph. The only way she could truly describe it was that it felt like the world was ending. The smoke burned her eyes and nostrils, and her heart pounded with enough adrenaline to kill a small animal. They had to get out of here.

Their three horses were quick to get in the trailer, sensing the danger of the situation at hand. And eventually, in what seemed like hours but was honestly only minutes, the Carlin family was on the road and barreling towards safety.