Safe, but a little shaken and stirred

I'm sorry to say I don't have energy to tell more of the story, but the short version is that there were brushfires in Lehigh Acres this weekend, the worst ever. We were about 3 miles from the closest edge and had no damage whatsoever. Here are pictures we took as we drove around town on Saturday and Sunday. As of Monday morning 80% of the fires are out.

I came home from shopping on Saturday afternoon around 4:30 p.m. As I got closer to Lehigh I saw a huge cloud of smoke rising from the center of town. Here is the shot from our driveway. Brad and I decided to go get a better look.


We went about three miles east and stopped just short of the canal by Sunshine Boulevard. The smoke was thick and we saw flames across the street. If you look just below and to the left of the flagpole you can see some flames. But there were more fires, as was evident by the much larger cloud of smoke. We decided to head east to get to the other side of the fire.


As we headed east we came upon a restaurant that backs up to a canal. We saw active smoke behind the restaurant and checked it out. Behind the restaurant was about 50 feet of dry grass (we've been in a drought), then a 15 foot deep canal about 30 feet wide, then more grass, then a forest area. The trees in the forest were burning, and then the fire came forward toward us. The grass across the canal caught fire.


As the grass burned out the bushes behind became on fire and flared up. This is the view from the front seat of the car.


Shortly after, the fire jumped the canal and began burning the grass on our side. Within a few minutes the cops came and shooed us out of the parking lot.

I'll tell more later-- here are the rest of my pics for now.