I can still hear its roar.
Like an enormous wave that can't wait to consume everything in its path.
Last year there was a fire in South Lake Tahoe. Before this I knew of fires, knew that California had an extremely high danger for fires, knew of a few big fires in the past few years, even knew of one person whose house was burnt down in San Diego. But before last year I never KNEW fire.
Cale and I were at the grocery store and on our way home saw a small billow of smoke a few miles in the distance. Thats not good we thought as we didnt see any fire trucks or here sirens. Maybe we should check it out. We drove a few miles to a neighborhood directly on opposite side of the mountain ridge we live beneath. We didnt see any flames and went home to get rea
dy for work. On the way to work we figured we should check it out one more time. Just to make sure. What I saw that day is something I will never forget and something I hope none of you will ever understand.There were flames everywhere. This was a FOREST FIRE, think about that for a minute, not a brush fire or a desert fire but a freakin forest fire! Now the forest I live in is made up of hundreds of thousands of 80-100 feet tall trees and the "canopy" was on fire. What this means is that 80-100 feet above our heads there was a blanket of fire in the tree tops soooo hottt and spreading soooo fast that it could not be slowed or stopped. It invoked an immediate feeling of panic, distress and TERROR.
Below the canopy was chaos. Everywhere you looked houses were on fire. Hot branches and embers were raining down everywhere. It all happened so fast that no one knew what was going on. Even the law enforcement was in awe. There were officers parked on the side of the road just w
atching in horror and not doing a damn thing. I rolled down my window and yelled "help these people cant you see their lives are burning down in front of them!" They all just stared blankly. It was the people like myself who were just driving by that were trying to help. Everyone was out of their cars running in strangers houses trying to evacuate important belongings or throwing buckets of water on the roof still hoping that there was some way, there had to be some way, that their house would be spared. That their house wouldnt burn down like their next door neighbors....ALL THE HOUSES BURNED DOWN. Every last one of them. All of those people I saw that day, the ones I tried to help and the ones I didnt lost EVERYTHING. Everything they owned, collected, cherished even hated. They lost it all in a matter of 15minutes. Each of them spent the first 10 trying to spray down their houses, in denial of what was actually happening and the last 5 frantically grabbing what they could and getting the hell out of there. What would you grab in 5 minutes. Your pictures, heirlooms, important documents, jewelery, pets, children, medication....5 minutes thats all they had.Two things stand out to me most from that day and still haunt me. The first is a man yelling at the same officers I did that his roof was on fire, it was on fire and no one was helping. He was all alone with a hose, soo alone with that hose....and the officers looked on, they had alr
eady cut their loses, but they werent their loses to cut. They should have helped, done something. Even if the end result was the same at least they couldnt be blamed for trying.The second was a family upon realizing what was happening. A little boy runs down the street after his dog, the father runs after the boy saying we have to leave the dog, he ran into the forest we have to go NOW! (which was true, there came a point when everyone just HAD TO GO, pets or no pets, leave or die) Meanwhile the mother is standing outside her house hysterical, "what are we going to do, what are we going to do" she kept repeating "this is our house, this is our life, what are we going to do" while her 16 year old daughter was trying to pull her back, "its ok mom, its going to be ok, get in the car we have to go now...we HAVE TO GO, MOM GET IN THE CAR, its going to be ok" but its not ok. That girl kept her composure but woke up the next day homeless and without everything she loved, just like her mother.
Now everything is gone, they have no where to live, their lives are changed forever and people like me left feeling guilty, why wasnt it my stuff not theirs, I only rent, I dont have anything important, why am I so helpless.
The days that followed werent much better. hundreds of houses were burning the wind was howling and the fire was out of control. In the coming days it spread up the mountain and down the other side towards my house. For three days we waited....waited for what we knew was coming. waited for what we had already seen. Waited and felt guilty, guilty that we had time to pack, time to take inventory, time to cram our cars full of all the stuff we wanted to save. Waited and were ashamed, ashamed to be driving around town in cars packed so full of 23 years worth of belongings that no one could have any passengers, ashamed that those people from North Upper Truckee didnt have anything to show for the past 10-20-50 years of their lives. No baby pictures, no wedding pictures, no pictures of their own children, so souvenirs from the far off lands they had once visited and to which they would never return...nothing. We were staying in hotels and at friends houses and were even more guilty and ashamed each morning when we drove back to the neighborhood and our houses were still standing. On the second night we didnt even leave. We took turns sleeping in shifts on the living room floor because for some reason it just felt better, felt right. The town shut down. No one was enjoying themselves and the ones that were made me want to scream. The damn tourists going "this sucks why is it so smoky? I heard there is a fire or something" Open you eyes people, its less that five miles from anywhere you are in town. If you are on a hill you can see the flames in the distance.
We fought till the last moment. We sprayed our roofs down like everyone else, we breathed through wet t-shirts tied around our faces like masks. When the fire was lapping at our neighbors back porch we broke into his house found his keys and dog and drove his car and packed trailer the hell out of there. When it threatened our other neighbors house we grabbed our snow shovels and started digging dirt and trying to cover up the spot fires in the meadow behind their house. We watched as their back fence broke do
wn. Watched as their family collapsed in tears at the realization there was nothing to be done. That after all that waiting we just had to leave. We ran back in our houses until the cops were knocking on our door dragging us out threatening to arrest us if we didnt get in our cars and leave. So we all left. Everyone congregated at the bottom of the hill and watched, and still waited. Our landlord was crying everyone was crying. We went to our friends house and hiked up there hill from which we could see the seen the mountain of flames we only assumed had probably burned our house down. We watched the local channel which kept us "up to date" for hours all we saw was Gardner Mountain under siege, with a picture of our house as we had left it. What a tease. was it still there, how could they still be showing that. It showed us leaving, the firemen moving in and then a still shot of our house, on repeat for hours.The next morning we woke up (if anyone actually slept im not sure) and wonder
ed was it still there, was there anyway they were still there, only one way to find out. We drove "home" and drove around all the cones and barriers advising us not to enter. We drove straight to our house and were greeted by all our neighbors still crying in front of our houses that were still standing. There were fire trucks parked in everyones driveways, we all had our personal crews. The wind had shifted in the night, blowing the fire along the line of backyards that bordered the forest. Back fences and yards were burnt but all the houses on my street prevailed. We no longer have the luscious green meadow or trees that were hundreds of years old and will take hundreds of years to be replaced, but we had houses. We had belongings. I remember being so happy and so sad all at the same time. Relieved that it was over for me. Though while the fire still raged for a few more days I wouldnt have to wait for it to eat me anymore.
We owe our livelihood to these firemen, these guys and hundreds of others were posted outside our hoses for days staying up all night. The coffee and food we brought them can never express our gratitude. THANK YOU!I still start to cry when I think about that first day. Think about that man and that family and think about their loss. I find a little comfort in how fortunate my neighbors many of which had lived on the block for 20+ years. But still i feel sadness, anguish for those who were not so lucky for those no one could help.
Today Yosemite is on fire. At 5:45 this morning Cale woke up out of a dead sleep and smelled it. A smell not everyone is terrified of, a smell that most associate as campfire or roasting marshmallows, a smell that most would disregard. Cale smelled it and jumped out of bed so fast I thought our house was already burning down. He ran outside, ran back inside, turned on the tv, turned on the internet and searched for the fire that we knew must be just around the corner. Half asleep I started making a list in my head...OK: Cat, hard drive, computer, passports, jewelery, teddy bear, scrapbooks, my boat from Italy, Cale's Grandfathers knife collection, my parents expensive paintings. That would be my five minute list. Forget everything else, thats what I need. Luckily I didnt have to run around frantically actually trying to grab these things in five minutes but damn we went from dead sleep to panic and then flight mode in about 15 seconds flat. I could see it vividly, how it would play out. How sad it was that I was actually prepared for a disaster like this, like standing in the doorway during an earthquake, if there is another forest fire we will all know what to do.
