Austin area wildfires

Our beloved home-city is being ravaged by wildfires as I type this. They started this weekend and have already burned miles of farmland, parkland and residential properties as well as some businesses. From Bastrop (in the south east) to Leander (in the north west), our friends and family were put on evacuation notice over Labor Day weekend.

I started receiving text messages and emails about whether or not our house in Pflugerville was safe. There was a fire in the neighborhood next to ours, and they were taking water from our lake to extinguish the fire. Our house was mildy in danger, but the hardworking firefighters contained it in a matter of two hours.

Here's a picture of the biggest fire in the area of Bastrop (credit to Deanna Roy who took this picture). That's Austin in the foreground.



My brother posted this only an hour before he was told they might have to evacuate their house in Leander. There was a fire across Crystal Falls Road (where their neighborhood begins) that was consuming the local Lowes. Their house lost power, and they began to gather everything that was essential and irreplaceable and throw it in their cars. My brother posted several times how surreal it was that he was having to make that decision; what to take, what to leave. He was surprised at how little he couldn't live without. How basically everything besides his wife, his kids (dogs), and his self could be easily replaced.

Thankfully, my brother didn't have to evacuate (yet) and are safe (for now). There are many that did have to evacuate...that lost everything. EVERY. THING. Here's a link to how you can help those in need:

Here's a link on how to get updates from your county (in the local Austin area counties including Bastrop, Travis, Blanco, Burnet, Caldwell, Fayete, Hays, Lee, Llano and Williamson. They'll send you a text message alerting you when to evacuate.

I read somewhere that there are already over 1200 homes that were lost to wildfires in the area as of November, and over 600 of them were lost just in the last couple of days. Keep Texas in your thoughts.