If most people are like me, then they must be feeling almost numb. I do not live in Paradise, but, like all of us in the low Sierra mountains, I feel their loss in the people I know who lost homes or even family. I feel it in the nearness of the tragedy. I recognize the streets; the schools; the quirky landmarks and the parks.
California is experiencing something new. We are experiencing wildfires that take everything. Everything--in horrifying magnitude. Californians can't remember a time more than a decade or so past that we saw whole towns wiped off the map. Now, in these past 13 months, and more sparsely spaced, events before that time, we are coping with wildfire losses that knock us out at the knees.
The deadliest fire in California history is raging even as I write this. Already, there are 6700+ structures burned, and 29 confirmed fatalities. The acres ravaged stands at over 110,000, with only a small percentage of the fire contained, and heavy dry winds predicted for the coming 24 hours.
Yes, we are a fairly dry state, and we've experienced drought through many cycles of weather. Yet, as a look at the list of devastating fires through our history, I really have to admit to myself that there is a heavily weighted majority in the past 24 months.
And, not to focus on statistics, I take it to a personal level. We live on the upper edge of a canyon. We love the location. We experience updrafts from the canyon floor almost daily all year long. The beauty and singular proximity of our home means so much to us. Yet, in these times when the loss of life is so near and so palpable we can feel the pain of it in our hearts, we hope; we wonder... How have we been so lucky to avoid these horrible events ourselves?
Perhaps I worry too much. I went to my mom's today and asked her to talk me through what she would do if she awoke in the middle of the night and had to flee. We ran through scenarios. I asked her how she would handle things and I reminded her that she has a back gate and she is only one block over from a busier road and a place where people would be. And a fire station is right there on that block behind her.
We talked about whether she could get her little senior dog to go with her, and how she would have to keep her moving if she didn't walk fast enough. We talked about how to decide whether or not to take her car, or leave on foot, and why those choices might make sense. This is my conversation with my 88 year-old mother. I'm having it because, even though we live 7 minutes and one mile away, I recognize that the fact that we are on a canyon; that we are in a town with beautiful, mature, diverse trees that are a big part of why we love this town, those trees could be fuel. They could present a wall of fire that would keep me from reaching my mom if the worst things happened.
Then, I talk to my husband. We talk about what we would have to grab, given no time. We talk about what, if there were minutes, we would try to get after we took the most important things: our pets. And, the most critical things to our survival, those life documents that most of us can recite.
Contemplating such an eventuality is almost too difficult a thought to entertain. I force myself, because our neighbors 66 miles to the north were just confronted with this dire choice, and in many cases, there was no choosing. Being prepared might be everything.
But, it's not at all about me. I scroll through thousands of media posts and news clips, and I'm unable to focus on other things on this day--the day of the fire's beginning, because the terror is all-consuming. Because I keep hoping it cannot be this bad; it can't get worse. Yet, it does. The fire becomes a monster we don't yet have the means to stop. It swallows unsuspecting towns and homes and humans and forest.
Our neighbors will not be alone in this devastation. We will be there to help, but what I know is that help is good. It is. But help is only help. It is not salvation. It is not the rewinding of the clock to change the course of events. Those who were forced through the meat grinder of this tragedy will emerge reshaped, and, emergence is not even promised.
None of us is unscathed. It's like when we watched the twin towers come down. The awareness of the loss and the harm washing over us. We are having pieces of our own sense of space and safety torn away. Certainly not anything like being there, and yet, still, we have lost our feelings of safe space; of sureness in our homes. Or, we have, at least, lost a bit of that.
I would never compare my experience of watching this devastation to the actual reality of losing a home or family to it. But, many of us feel your losses; you people of Paradise and other areas devastated in recent years and months. We take them to heart, and we grieve along side you.
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