Most summers in Southern Alberta bring a few nice days and then a storm rolls in. Most summers since we have been here, we only have to water our lawn a few times each summer because we get enough rain showers throughout the summer. Not this summer. We had a pretty wet spring. Then it did not rain from July 11 to September 14. Everything got so dry. Our pasture was very sad to look at. There were lots of fires all over. We had smoke in the air a lot.
Then the Kenow Fire started in British Columbia in the forest that connects to Waterton National Park. It kept spreading and eventually Waterton was evacuated. We were praying and praying for rain.
On Monday, September 11 the sky was dark and eerie. We got in bed and were almost asleep. At 10:30 pm Hanna came in to our room and said that the fire was to the Waterton golf course. Right then Ryan Olsen called Austin and told us to post on Leavitt Community facebook page to be on alert for evacuation because the fire was roaring and spreading quickly and had cross the highway.
We stayed up until 1:30 am watching for updates, filling up the truck with gas, talking through an evacuation plan, watching an endless trail of emergency vehicles heading towards Waterton, and lots of cars heading into town of people who had been evacuated.
Once the fire got out of the trees onto the plains, they were able to mostly stop it, especially from coming west towards us. Almost two days after the fire went through Waterton, it finally rained.
I had taken pictures of our house earlier in the week because it is one of the first steps of being prepared for an evacuation - in case anything happened to your house you could document to the insurance what you have in your house.
Here are some pictures I took from Facebook of the smoke and fire.
On the last day of summer, I took these girls to Waterton to ride our bikes from the stables to the townsite. The stables burned down. So here is a before and after picture.
