Although it is mostly under control, the areas in and surrounding Fort Davis are still having to deal with what they are calling the Rock House Fire. Apparently a house caught fire on Saturday, and due to the extremely dry weather conditions (humidity levels were in the single digits!) and high wind speeds, the fire spread from Marfa to Fort Davis. I thought these pictures really showed just how huge an area this fire burned. Although it looks just as terrible, if not worse on the ground, I think these images provide a good visual of how far the fire spread. (I copied both these pictures from facebook)
The main part of town is what is unburned in the center of the photo. A little northeast of that area is all Fort Davis State Park, which you can see was also burned some.
This is a more zoomed out view of the whole area.
The fire here in Alpine was contained by Sunday afternoon I believe, so it no longer seems to be a threat. I did hear some rumors that the Alpine fire started because of someone throwing their cigarette butt on the ground - real smart! Apparently they were in town for some kind of rodeo - type event?? Not really sure if that is what it was, but whatever the event was, this person was supposedly not from Alpine... so I've heard...
Someone posted a pretty detailed video on facebook of the aftermath of the fires in Fort Davis, including some animals that didn't survive. If I could post on here I would, but they already have it blocked from youtube - not sure why. Anyway, figured I'd give you all this little update. It gets pretty smokey here in Alpine depending on the direction the wind is blowing. I also heard there is a pretty good sized fire in Mexico about 50 miles south of the Big Bend area, so I guess they are getting smoked out too. Hopefully we get some rain soon! I know you're all getting plenty of rain up north - send some down this way!!
I promise my next post will be less depressing :)
Thanks for reading!
Laura
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