The fire in San Antonio came right to my door step. Here's the email I sent to co-workers describing the event.
The first picture was taken while standing in front of my garage at 1:41pm,
right before I decided it was time to go. I told my girlfriend we needed to
get out immediately...she insisted I let her finish her food first. She was
later thankful I made her leave the food behind. We grabbed a few things and
I hooked up the boat as fast as I possibly could. My neighbors saw me
getting the boat out and were making fun of me as if I was overreacting, I
was amazed that I was the only one who decided to evacuate at that time. I
pulled the boat down the street and my girlfriend drove me back in her car
to get my motorcycle. It took about 10 minutes to get back to my apartment
complex. By this time everyone was trying to evacuate causing a traffic jam
in the complex so I had to get out of the car and run back to the apartment
for my bike. The fire was 20ft in front of my apartment, there was hot ash
flying everywhere, the transformers on the power lines were exploding, and
the smoke made it impossible to see beyond a few feet. The power went out
forcing me to manually open the garage. Fortunately my finicky motorcycle
started right away and I was able to ride out of the smoke fairly quickly.
My girlfriend put a few people in her car who were trying to escape the
thick smoke. Our hair was covered in ash, and everyone was coughing. I also
saw the same neighbors who were making fun of me running towards the complex
exit in a sheer panic. In other great acts of stupidity, there were on
lookers on Stone Oak pkwy who decided to stop in the road to gawk and take
pictures. These on lookers blocked the vehicles jammed up trying to get
out of the apartment complex. I had to get off my motorcycle and yell at
them to get them to move and allow the vehicles in the complex to get out.
The other pictures were taken this morning (all in front of my apt). My
whole apartment smells like smoke now. I spoke with a fireman this morning
who said if the fire crew would have gotten there 2 minutes later, some or
all of the apartments would have burned up. The firemen did a phenomenal job
at containing the fire, which I'm very thankful for. Hats off to them.
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