We had a big fire here on the other side of the river today pretty much straight across from where I look out. The damn railroad once again started up a fire which in the typical Gorge wind spread like a wild fire up the hill very quickly. Several homes burnt down so far and the thing's still smoldering even tonight even though it's cold and damp.

I have a wireless Internet connection and my receiver is on that hill just on the other side. Sure enough Internet connectivity went down sometime in the early after noon and just came back up. Not sure EXACTLY where the receiver is on the other side but hopefully higher. For a while there (earlier than this picture though) there was a solid wall of smoke so much so the mountain was completely obscured. I wonder if the smoke itself was actually responsible for the outage or - probably more likely - electricity being turned off over there.

It reminds me once again how much I depend on Internet Connectivity in my day to day work especially when I'm heads down development mode as I have been for the last couple of days (preparing for my ASP.NET Connection Session - grrr). Maybe it's not such a bad idea to install a local copy of MSDN at some point <g>. Of course, for me with the West Wind Web Connection the phone goes down too since I use VOIP, so it gets awfully quiet quickly. I was fretting the thought of the little receiver shack over there burning down and my IP connectivity with it...

I shouldn't complain though - the fire affected lots of people. The area over there that looks densely forested is actually reasonably inhabited and just about anywhere in town people were talking about folks being affected and knowing somebody who's property is in trouble or helping out. Small community...

About 10 years back I used to live right by the river (on the Oregon side) immediately in front of the train tracks. My roomate and I lived in a house that had river access, but the train tracks literally delineated the end of the property line, some 30 yards from the house. The trains literally were running through our living room - er, front yard.

 I can attest to the railroad causing nasty fires that literally explode.

On that day 10 years ago I remember sitting in my office in the back of the house and hearing funny crackling noises. I looked outside and saw a few flames on the other side of the tracks, looked like a tiny localized fire just after a train had gone through. I went called the 911 and the fire department which took maybe 2 minutes. When I came back the ENTIRE hillside on the other side of the tracks was completely on fire with EVERYTHING on fire including tarred wire posts and 50 foot plus pine trees. It was an absolute miracle the flames did not jump the tracks and completely burned down the entire hill. I don't think I would have made it out if the flames had crossed the tracks actually the fire was moving that fast.

A couple of days later the fire department came by and asked some rather peculiar questions of me and my roomate. What were you doing when the fire started. I noticed that some dickhead with a tie and weasel shirt on was standing behind prompting the fire marshall to push for questions. It turns out this was some representative of the railroad trying to see if they could pin the fire on anything but the rail road. Yeah, must be a bunch of windsurf scumbags smoking pot and starting a fire throwing out spliffs while stoned, uh huh... Ok, so they didn't quite say that but from the questions the implications were pretty clear... nothing ever came of it though.

So, I feel for those people over there - fire can ruin quickly. I'm just thankful I got lucky on that day 10 years ago...