As you may or may not have heard, my hometown (well, the town I lived in for over twenty years, & the town where I did most of my radio) of Austin is very close to a gigantic fire that's burning just thirty or so miles to the east of it. The city of Bastrop has basically been evacuated & much of the lovely Bastrop State Park has burned down.
Here's a terrifying video of some of the fire & how fast is spreads:
This site has maps of the fire & information about it. Two people have died. 38,000 acres have burned. 550 "structures" (I'm assuming that is some kind of weird euphemism for "homes) have been destroyed.
Friends in Austin - all of whom are safe, thankfully - report that the air smells like smoke, & that in some places there have been ashes coming from the sky. & of course there's this famous picture of the Austin skyline & the smoke to the east.
It's all terrifying, & all the more strange since it's been cold & rainy in Lexington the past week. I am very grateful for social media, which has allowed me to keep tabs on people without being a worry-wart & a buttinsky. Mostly I'm glad people I know are safe, as I am sad for the folks who had to be evacuated & who lost their homes. I take no pleasure in noting that most of them probably supported Rick Perry for governor, even as he cut funding for fire departments by 75%.
It's a Texas thing. You wouldn't understand.
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