Drinking coffee at around 5 a.m., Adam Guyton was looking east from his Harris North house and awaiting the sunrise when he saw a glow in the Boise Foothills.
But it was too early to be the sun.
Igniting sometime in the middle of the night, the Valley Fire started in the hills north of Lucky Peak Lake and quickly torched wide swaths of grassland, tearing west toward some of the newest neighborhoods in Southeast Boise, including Guyton’s. By midafternoon, the blaze had grown to 4,000 acres, threatening neighborhoods and leading to different levels of evacuation preparedness notices.
“As the sun came up, we could see the flames cresting over the Foothills,” Guyton told the Idaho Statesman.
Neighbors started texting each other, wondering what to do. Guyton said he called in the fire to authorities, turned his sprinklers on and waited.
Later that morning, Boise police officers arrived on his street, which borders the Boise River Wildlife Management Area. At around noon, police told residents over a loudspeaker to evacuate, Guyton said.