Debris Removal, Day Two

Today has been defined by chaos on the roads, next door and even in our own back yard. They are digging a trench down the middle of one lane of then two lane road we take to get into town in order to improve the sewer or the water. We discovered too late to turn around that traffic is one way at a time with a flag person. Not only did that person cut off the traffic in my direction right in front of me but when he told me it was my turn I almost got hit by something that looked very like the machine in the picture. The tank treads on these things were almost as tall as my car!

They are still working on the lot next door. I need to find out what that piece of equipment is called, for it is ubiquitous! It can dig, lift, spin 180ºon its axis and is in the process here of loading the large boulders into dump trucks. I was able to get this picture because one dump truck had just moved off down the driveway with much groaning of metal and overworked brakes, and the next one is waiting at the bottom to toil up the hill to take its place. The fellow in the blue suit is the 'water administrator' and spends the day with a hose in his hand!  There was a lull in the action and there were five or six people sitting in the shade waiting....

There was plenty of action here too. Gustavo and Pedro were leveling the trenches between the slabs of cement in our patio so they can replace the loose round river stones with pavers. It's turned into a much bigger job than we envisioned, but the combination of Spike tearing around after his ball dislodging loose stones everywhere and John limping around on crutches was not a good one....

I went down to the mail box this afternoon and met Dorie , the neighbor whose lot is being cleared. She was the last person to call us to make sure we had gotten the order to evacuate immediately. He last words to me were, 'I have to go. I can see the flames coming down the hill...'She has bought a house in nearby Windsor and says it is far from the hills a
on a level lot and she feels 'safe' there. She doesn't plan to sell this lot right away but says her son might be interested in it. I didn't even know she had a son....

Never a dull moment right now....