The L.A. Fires

So far, here in San Diego County, we’ve remained largely unscathed by the hot, pummeling winds scattering deadly wildfires throughout the City of Los Angeles. The videos are heartbreaking . Gray, soot-filled clouds blowing down the normally sun-drenched coast, leaving the stores and homes — those that remain standing — caked with black ash. One friend’s home has burned to the ground while mass evacuation orders have sent others fleeing for safety. Others have survived with their homes untouched by flames, but the power lines feeding their communities have burnt down and they’re looking at at least three weeks without power. Finding a vacant hotel room in L.A. County is going to be a tall order in the coming days and weeks.

In 2007, I was living in San Diego’s UTC area when I first came face-to-face with the proposition of evacuating. Wildfires starting in North County had picked up steam and on October 21, three sprawling, deadly maelstroms had gathered force and began laying waste to over three hundred thousand acres of San Diego County. These fires represented just a handful of the thirty fires raging across Southern California, including Los Angeles and Riverside counties.

As evacuation orders sounded throughout east county, my company blasted an email to the troops: they were opening their massive office complex that night for any employees and their families who had no place to go. I gathered a bunch of blankets and pillows and whatever else I could find and drove over to the offices, where the parking lot was eerily full. Inside, the cafeteria floor had been cleared and scores of families were camped out across the room. There were dogs, children and in one case, two very bewildered elderly parents from India.

Across the state, shelters popped up everywhere. San Diego County ended up dealing with the biggest of the thirty fires that week and Qualcomm stadium, where the Chargers played, was hastily repurposed as an emergency shelter for 12,000 wayward souls.

The next day, October 22, work was canceled and I spent the hours furtively scrolling news updates online. When an exhausted newscaster reported that one of the larger fires was driving inexorably south, five miles up the road from me, I packed my car.

The danger was not then, nor did it ever become imminent. But my neighbors and I could not have known that and so we followed the directions on the news and packed our worldly possessions into our vehicles, ready to peel out on a minute’s notice. I recall walking around the backyard, breathing in hot ash that the naked eye could not see. My dogs coughed as soon as I let them out and they hustled back into the house after taking care of their business. In photos I took with my Canon, the flash captured white ash hanging in the nighttime sky, like puffy snowflakes, although standing there squinting, the sooty flakes were invisible.

In my car I packed dog bowls, a case of water, dog food and blankets. I filled my backpack with passports, checkbooks, some watches and miscellaneous jewelry, along with a laptop, chargers and two shoeboxes of photos. I packed a suitcase with some t-shirts, jeans, socks, etc. and finally, a guitar. I didn’t dawdle too much on which guitar to take — I grabbed my Taylor 410 because acoustic guitars are more portable.

But the fires never drew closer. By morning, the heroic legions of San Diego’s firefighting corps had tamed the fiery onslaught, and by the 23rd, the evacuations a few miles north of me were lifted. On November 6, the fire department declared victory over the worst of it— over two weeks after the fires started. In the San Diego fires alone, 7 civilians died and scores of firefighters were injured.

We stayed indoors for the next few days - it was warm outside but you couldn’t open the windows without buckets of ash pouring in. Cars looked like they were covered in a thick blanket of dirty show and the air hung heavy. Slowly, we slowly resumed normal day-to-day operations. The uncertainty and anxiety took a toll on everybody — we were jumpy and exhausted. And we were the safe ones! We didn’t lose a thing, other than some sleep, unlike so many of the communities surrounding us.

I can’t imagine what the poor people in L.A. are going through right now.