Local property owner reacts to Cascade evacuation notice

Idaho News 6 spoke with one Meridian local about Sunday's evacuation notice in Cascade and what they do to prevent their mountain property from being burned down.

• Sunday an evacuation notice was released alerting several near the Boulder fire.
• Boonen owns a cabin near Cascade that has seen major fires in the past.
• To protect their property they have a lot of gravel and dirt surrounding the cabin as well as a metal roof.

( Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)

Quite often when large fires break out near residential areas, those towns are alerted and many times evacuated. I'm your neighborhood reporter Alexander Huddleston and I spoke with one local who was notified that the community their family’s property was near was in evacuation protocol.

Fires all across the Pacific Northwest have been burning for weeks Boulder fire near Cascade burned enough to force authorities to alert folks that they will need to evacuate.

"That fire has been burning for a while now. We thought they had it contained, so we weren't too concerned. We were a little surprised when we got the evacuation notice," said property owner Gay Boonen.

Boonen and her husband built a cabin up in Cascade about 7 years ago. Over the weekend Bonnen posted on Facebook about getting the new notice. However, this isn't the first time she has seen this.

Boonen explained, "It was more emotional two years ago because it was so much closer. My husband had left up there on a Thursday morning and it was barely at the top of the mountain. West mountain. By that evening it had come clear down and they began evacuations."

Boonen said that luckily there were no properties damaged during that evacuation, however, the flames did creep up as close as 300 feet to one of their neighbors.

"They brought in different crews and hotshots and so forth, the firefighters were amazing," added Boonen.

Boonen showed me pictures of the Four Corners fire and the many tents set up for the firefighters to rest between shifts.

"It was very eerie after the last fire because it was so quiet. the wildlife had gone away, you don't hear birds chirping, and we didn't have deer for a long time," continued the property owner.

With having this experience and these memories, I asked Boonen about what her family does to help prevent the fire from reaching their property.

Boonen finished, "You definitely want to clear the area around you, so you don't have the dry weeds and grass right next to your place. We have a gravel driveway, we have grass, so we keep it away from the forest so to speak."

That evacuation notice for Boonen’s community has been lifted since its announcement Sunday, and folks are now able to reach their properties.