Gray Fire

 The Gray Fire started Friday, August 18, 2023 at 12:27pm on Gray road outside of Medical Lake. Jason (who normally works from home) was at his office in Liberty Lake and I was working at Holy Family hospital when the fire started. The boys were home. We received a text from our neighbor (Alex) who took the boys and met Jason at the gas station by the Medical Lake freeway exit. They hung out for a while there and then decided to drive home. It took me 1 1/2+ hours to get home since they had closed down all the roads around Medical Lake. We thought the fire was under control. There were 5 helicopters dumping water on the fire and it seemed like things were improving. Then at 8:00pm the helicopters landed. There were a few planes dropping fire retardant, but the winds really started kicking up. It had been pretty windy all day, 30-45mph winds. By 9:00pm it was apparent that the fire was not under control as we could see flames engulfing houses from our bedroom window. At this point we evacuated and went to our storage unit to get our RV. We had planned on driving it to the Walmart parking lot for the night, but the storage owner actually suggested we stay in the RV at the storage place, which has a secured locked fence, is a safe distance from the fires and is quiet. So... we did that. The boys watched a movie with popcorn while Jason and I frantically tried to get updates on the fire. All of Medical Lake was under  a level 3 evacuation until Monday evening.  We returned Saturday. 10,014 acres were burnt, 185 structures were lost and 1 death. We know several friends that lost everything. Such a horrible tragedy. All the beautiful homes on our favorite lake- Silver Lake (which we were just tubing at a week prior) are gone... mostly gone.  There are a few that survived, but not many.