Esperanza Fire October 26th, 2006

***Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the brave fire-fighters who lost their lives saving the lives of others***

We were pulled off of the road about 1/2 a mile away from the blaze in Banning, California. After taking a few pictures, we arrived in the Palm Springs area later this same night.

This blaze had started burning at approximately 2:00 am the early morning before we got here. As we were coming from the mountains down into the San Bernardino Valley, we could see the huge cloud of what we found out later, was smoke. We did not actually reach this area until about 2 hours later! Amazingly enough, while we were closest too it, we never had any bother from the smoke. The high winds were keeping the smoke from settling low in the valley. I have never been this close to a forest fire, and was in awe of it's enormous power. We watched the flames change with the direction of the wind, and were shocked at how fast it covered sooo much ground!

As of November 1st, The Esperanza fire was 100% contained and had burned 40,200 acres. Not an unusually large fire, but took in it's wrath 4 brave firefighters, 34 homes and 20 out buildings.