Caveat: Alaska Burning

The neighbor’s house burned down last night. It’s still smoldering, at 6 AM.
It was scary. A bit after midnight, Dean (the neighbor, not the same Dean as recently mentioned who is Arthur’s friend) knocks on our door and says, “Call 911, my house is on fire.” The next 5 hours are a blur. Here is a picture of the house, at about 1 AM:

This house was here before Arthur moved here – it’s one of the oldest houses on all of the Port Saint Nicholas Road.
We put our hoses on and tried to prevent the fire from burning into the trees west of the house – because our house (where Arthur and I are) is only 50 feet away, through some trees, to the west. And the trees closest to Dean’s house were burning. Here’s a picture from Arthur’s dock, at around 3 AM, looking back toward shore. You can see how close Dean’s house is to ours. That speck of light in the dark on the right side of the photo is someone with a flashlight at the eastern wall of Arthur’s house.

The power was out for a while, because Dean’s house’s electrical connection shorted out the system, as it burned. APT (the power company) actually got here before the fire department, and were working on fixing the situation. A fire truck came from the Craig Volunteer Fire Department, but they only had 800 gallons in their tank – they sprayed down at the trees and when the power came back on we resumed spraying with our garden hoses. I estimate we used about 2500 gallons from Arthur’s 3000 gallon cistern. Fortunately, we have a well, now, and the cistern is now re-filling.
As of dawn, we seemed to have suppressed the spread of the fire. It’s just there smoldering now. Here it is at 6 AM.

What a very intense night. My friends Mark and Amy, still here, were helpful throughout the night. I think they will now have a very amazing memory of their visit here.
We had some panic when it was spreading into the trees, because it seemed like nothing could stop it from catching our house, as the power was out. At around 2 AM, we evacuated our house, got out our computers and important documents, drove vehicles over to the western lot. That was pretty scary.