Prayers & Best Wishes for Mark Robinson

[Irish Legend]

As some of you may have heard, we are having a lot of fires in and around Austin. Mark & his wife had to evacuate their home yesterday. Just thought I'd request some prayers and best wishes that his home (and cars) make it through. Lots of people lost everything.

Thanks,

[Mrmerlin]

I hope that your all safe as well as your property

[pete3799]

Here's hoping it spares the Robinson residence.

[Wrentham636]

Best of luck Mark.

[dragonflyjones]

My prayers go out to Mark and his family also!!!!

[baby shark]

May God bless and protect you and your family Mark in Jesus name, Amen.

[tmpusfugit]

Recent update on the "other list" Mark is reporting his house is OK, so far..... fire remains out of control.....

[EIPtuningR32]

dude, really? man that sucks.... be careful Mark!

[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

[MPDano]

Good to hear Brotha.

[Irish Legend]

Are you keeping the opossum?

[Fredfox]

Originally Posted by Irish Legend

Are you keeping the opossum?

He is in Texas, that means free dinner.

[tmpusfugit]

Originally Posted by Fredfox

He is in Texas, that means free dinner.

Hey, don't confuse Louisana crusine with Texas road kill....my Cajun friends will take exception....

[MarkRobinson]

I tossed him over the fence at about 2:20am: I figured he was wide awake & could fine his way home.

[mx22]

Glad to hear you and your cars are fine!

[MarkRobinson]

Thanks again; you know nearly 1 week later it really feels like I ran through a whole silly exercise (the whole evacuation & such). It's just so easy to dismiss surrounding fires & their threat. Wierd.