Friday, January 30, 2009

Today was a frightening day. We were having a great time. I took Nate on another kayak ride then back on the seedoo today. All appeared to be just fine. We all were hanging out by the beach. Apparently Walter's seedoo was not working right and they needed to bring it up on shore to work on it. They had a rope to pull it up on shore and Carlos, Sylvia and Walter were working on untying it. As we sat there relaxing and watching what was going on, we all suddenly heard popping and snapping. Sylvia ran up to see what it was and I turned to see the huge oak true on fire! Wow, how on earth? I grabbed all the kids as they were all frightened and everyone else grabbed buckets and such to try and put the fire out. We could see everyone running back and forth from the lake grabbing water. Nate kept asking if it was Halloween and Clemente kept asking if there were Indians on the island that started the fire. Sabine came back and said it looked like they had it under control. I asked if I could take some photos but Sabine told me that the situation was tense and they may not appreciate me taking photos. I decided to go ahead and do it anyway and turned out no one even noticed I was taking the photographs. Not only did they hose the tree with water but they used the fire extinguishers they had that later on they found out expired in 2002 and still worked. After it appeared to be under control and safe, we took the kids back up to the house. They were frightened. As they walked by the tree they just stayed close and did not even want to look at it. The fire department came while we were at the house and they cut some of the tree down. Carlos came back to the house and told us that the fire department could not determine why it caught on fire and said it could have been on of three things. It's been unusually warm and the tree spontaneously combusted was one theory. Another was that someone came on the island and set it on fire. And the last theory was that it was a cigarette. I guess we will never know but glad it happened when we were all there. Imagine if it happened while we were sleeping? They took turns keeping an eye out on the tree during the night to make sure it did not flare up again. Everyone worked in shifts. Fire - not fun!