There had been a few more lightning strikes in the general vicinity of Fall’s Corner and all with very little rain, hitting mostly wilderness with lots of dead timber for fuel. By two PM we heard two hundred and fifty acres had burned, and you could smell the smoke in the yard. By three, it was close to four hundred acres and you could see it, a gray fog wisping through the trees and over the lake, filling the air with a choking thickness, making it hard to breathe. By three-thirty, even though the house was closed tight you could still smell it inside, and by four we climbed to the roof, seeing flames for the first time, the sky above it a sickly orange. By the time we climbed down, Uncle Jinks, a longtime volunteer fireman, was pulling into the yard. “Twelve hundred acres, so far,” he said, stepping out of his truck. “They’ve managed to contain it at Fall’s Corner, but six houses caught damage outside of Sheffield Township, most of them with no firebreaks.” “How about the ones with firebreaks?”
