Holy Merde, What Was That?

Today we took the day off to enjoy some down time in-as-much as the forecast called for heavy rain, thunderstorms, and possible flash flooding.  No fun being on hiking and 4 X 4 trails in a downpour.  We figured the forecasters managed to get it wrong again when the day dawned sunny and warm…well, warm for Vallecito.  We took a three mile walk up to the national forest campground and back to get the blood flowing.

After lunch we settled in with reasonably good books and were planning to waste the day away.  The rain began around 3:00 p.m., gentle at first and then a genuine gully washer, or as we call them in Texas, a frog strangler.  The rain continued for a time and the thunder and lightning increased significantly.  Around 3:30 we decided to preheat the oven for an early dinner when not 30 yards away, lightning struck a huge (40-50 ft. tall) Ponderosa pine tree.  We have never been so close to a strike before.  The ball of fire was huge and the noise so loud it reminded us of canon fire.  Almost instantaneously, debris began raining down on our motorhome.  Our first reaction was that we were the ones struck by lightning.  Fortunately for us, it struck the tree described above.  That tree promptly fell on a small trailer.  Oh, merde, we thought, there are people in that trailer…older than us people.

In spite of the rain and the risk of additional lightning, we grabbed raincoats and ran to the trailer to see if they were okay.  I crawled under the downed awning and found a window and yelled to see if everyone was okay.  It turned out that they were unharmed, but the tree had pinned their door closed so that they couldn’t get out.  The wife said that she could smell smoke and thought the trailer was on fire.  I told her I would check by walking around the trailer.  All I found was a burned electrical cord that had been out for their outdoor lighting…that was probably what she smelled; that or burned ozone from the lightning strike.  Interestingly, the lightning didn’t burn the tree at all—just turned it into firewood.  Just after I determined that they were okay, employees and other people from the park began to arrive,  and we determined that we needed a chainsaw and the park’s tractor to help remove the tree so the couple could get out of their trailer; it was way too big to move by hand.

The chainsaw and tractor arrived pretty quickly.  Work commenced and we had the tree removed in pretty short order.  Once extracted from the trailer, Susan took the wife to our rig where it was warm, dry, and safe from falling debris.  Within an hour and a half their entire site had been cleaned up and all of the tree branches, etc., were hauled off.  Park employees also picked up all of the debris (think kindling) from all of the nearby sites, including our own.  The only damage was to the trailer’s awning; it literally absorbed almost all of the weight of the tree.  Of course, it was ravaged beyond salvage, but probably saved the trailer itself from serious damage--as in being crushed like an empty beer can.   Susan and I are going to apply for Colorado’s official rescue ticket so we can do this legitimately.