[MarkRobinson]

Hey guys, wow, I feel special: thanks for the thoughts guys!

We're ok, all in all, we traded a few hundred bucks, a few night's sleep, for a opossum and a lot of ash.

Here's the story in a nutshell:

Sunday afternoon my wife & I were distracted by a discussion while cleaning our home office until the police pounded on the door & told us we had 5 minutes to evacuate due to an out-of-control wildfire already consuming houses in Steiner. Eek. 944 turbo was in the driveway, all others were in the garage, so both cats, all 4 dogs, and us with phones & wallets enter the car as burning pieces of "something" rained down on the house, us. Smoke was already getting very thick & the 20mph winds didn't help.

We were out of the house in 4 minutes or so. Driving out of our street, we noticed that the authorities have already left our block & that the fire was not on the next street over so we took a chance & went back for more items. By then (some 30 seconds later) the power had already been cut & the garage door openers wouldn't work.

Enter through the front door & the house was already ashy & smoky from the dog door: so closed the dog door & locked the back door: grabbed a few misc. clothes & our photo albums: found a video camera & ran around taping as much as I could in the dark, in case we needed it for insurance purposes. Went to the garage & it's pitch black: no lights, disabled openers, no flashlights which could be easily found, so as I thought about how I could get my cars out, we heard a propane tank explosion in the background & that was our clue to get out.

It took about 3 hours to get out of Steiner & into Lakeway for our first night. We had a pet-friendly hotel the 2nd night, & was back in the neighborhood on Day 3, finding that someone had picked our rear lock, gone through the house & stole a couple of laptops and had left on a bunch of lights & the rear hose running (to replenish their water bottles??...who knows). Spent Tuesday cleaning up & thought we *could* catch up on sleep until about 2am when I finally got in bed & heard a hissing. We have a Sleep-number mattress & I thought it had become damaged or so, so I reached under the bed for the remote & grabbed the butt of a opossum that had wandered into our house within the last few days. Luckily he didn't bite me or the dogs, so after another couple of hours I finally settled in for a nice 3-hour nap. :/

Today Im nearing 70% sleep restoration. Cars are ok (though covered in ash & ash in my race car as it has no windows & the car cover was off, but my pristine 928 had an OEM cover on it with the windows up so it escaped all aspects of the fire: yay.

A friend of the family lost his house in Bastrop, but had 3 hours to pack up a van so he got most everything out of sentimental value: so that's good. Crazy summer so far: rain dance anyone???

Mark