Sunday, August 3, 2008

Papa - The Firefighter

If you ask the kids where Papa is you get the following answer: "Papa out of town at work. He help the firefighters."

It's so cute how excited they are about Papa helping the firefighters. At the same time, Boopy told Papa on the phone last night to "Come home soon, Papa". Well, today we got to satisfy a bit of both their request and excitement. Papa had today off as his 24 hour shift ended at 6am this morning. We took advantage of this and drove up to Mariposa to see him. While there isn't much to do in this tiny mountain town, we did have a nice lunch together and walked around the few shops that were open on a Sunday afternoon. Papa also drove us out to the area he's been working. Wow. Sad and yet impressive. Sad to see the damage the fire did, but impressive to see how fast the firefighters have put it out and how well they managed to save quite a few homes.
I was a bad picture person and didn't manage to get a single one of us together or the area he is "living". I was a bit distracted though with just spending time with him considering we haven't seen Papa in nearly two weeks, so I figure that's a valid excuse. Besides Papa has taken plenty of pictures of the base camp areas as well as the crews out working. We did find out that since the fire is completely contained they are pulling a lot of help out of the area. Quite a few fire crews are already on the way out and left today. Papa's crew will demobilize tomorrow and either be sent to another fire somewhere in CA or perhaps sent home. While the extra money is extremely helpful right now, we wouldn't mind him home either. Right now it's wait and see, one day at a time.
The pictures below are some of the damage areas.
You can actually see where a fire line was created with a bulldozer. Look at the light brown area. Excuse the dot in the sky, I obviously have something I need to clean off my lens.

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