Have you ever woken up and said to yourself, “I wonder what it would be like if there was a freeway just right through the depths of fiery, burning Hades”?
Wonder no more (warning, some adult, but highly warranted, language):
Of course, what you are seeing is, as you probably imagined, not a legitimate Greek underworld, but the next closest thing: the interior of a forest fire.
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Dubbed the Valley fire, this forest fire has been spreading across 62,000 acres of Northern California, including the small rural community of Anderson Springs, where the videographer’s family lives. As of September 14th, the fires were considered to only be 10% contained.
According to the LA Times, there has only been one reported fatality, where a call to the Sheriff’s office requested assistance for a woman who was unable to leave her residence. By the time officers reached the home less than 20 minutes later, it was already engulfed in flames. The woman’s remains were found after the fire subsided.
The man who posted video commented on it later, saying that they had waited far too long to get out of there.
“We are the last house at the very back of the Springs, down in a gulch,” he wrote. “There was no smoke or ash coming our way, and there were no sirens or air support nearby, so we honestly didn’t know how close (the fire) was.”
He speculated that firefighters probably did not have enough resources to deploy to the community.
“In retrospect, we should have gone out for a drive to find out what was going on,” he wrote, “but we were a little preoccupied with packing.”
According to the description on the GoFundMe campaign that the family started to raise funds to rebuild after the fire has gone, there is only one road out of Anderson Springs, and by the time they decided to leave, it led directly through the fire.
In retrospect, with scenes like the home and car burning in the driveway:
The community’s gate looming out of the smoke as if to say “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”:
The house clearly gutted by the flames:
And an entire hillside turned into a scene from Dante’s The Inferno:
We’re surprised that he only swore once in that video.
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News Source: LA Times, GoFundMe
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