Evacuated

So we have been watching the fire since it started.  We have progressed over the last few days through a lot of stuff to watch:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Monday:

Tuesday:
By Tuesday, we were feeling pretty confident.  The firemen had held the line on the south side of Garden of the Gods to keep it out of the residences there that have had fire licking at them since day one.  They had also held it at I-24 and managed to keep it from going across.  They evacuated all the homes west of us the first day and were letting them come back in for a short time Tuesday to check on their homes.  They were supposed to be able to do that all day.  At 11 o'clock, the wind came up and things started to change very rapidly.  They told all those people to get out and they wouldn't be allowed up in their homes anymore.  About noon, they issued pre-evacuation orders for all the homes north of the original group.  I had been watching the smoke all day from the window.  It was extremely thick over the house and we weren't able to have windows open or anything. About 3:30. it looked like this:

And then I left to go to an appointment at 4:30 and it looked like this:

I came around the corner of our street and saw this:

We started packing up not long after that and got the call to evacuate about 6 o'clock.  It is kind of surreal to be packing your car and have the police come down the street with the bullhorns telling you to leave.  The fire trucks were pulling in as we left.  This has affected most of our ward and the pictures of the hill on fire were taken from our church parking lot. 

Wednesday:
We are safe with my parents.  The news this morning is that there are roughly 32,000 evacuees and the entire west side of the city has been evacuated all the way up to the Air Force Academy. The fire grew from roughly 5500 acres to 16,000 acres.  The fire came into Queens Canyon north of Glen Eyrie and Garden of the Gods and has been running north of those areas, so that is good at least.  We do not know how far down the hill the fire came toward us, but they did say that it did not jump Centennial, which is 2 blocks west of us.  We also don't know when we might be allowed back in our home.  All that can be seen of that side of the city is a huge cloud of smoke and the fire is still actively burning.