I have lived in California the majority of my life except
for the four years we spent living in Ohio for my dad to get his MBA. I was born in California and raised
here. I’ve seen fires burning up in the
hills in the distance from my childhood home in Fairfield many times as a kid
and never thought much of it. It was
always the norm each Summer/Fall. Mother
nature would come through and do a “little clean up”. Before we knew it, the fires were out. It would be a distant memory after just a few
days.
If the fire was near Lake Berryessa, we’d all wonder if my
aunt’s and uncle’s place at “Bourbon Point” (Wragg Canyon/South Shore Resort,
now Pleasure Cove) would still be there the following season for water-skiing,
boating and family fun with cousins and relatives. It always survived unscathed. I personally spent many a day there from the
early 1970s to my last visit in 1998.
The Bureau of Reclamation reclaimed the land around the lake telling
people to pretty much "get out", except for day use. Now, there’s not much to burn in the way of
structures around that lake. There could
be a revival of resorts someday.
Now, my first involvement in seeing the results of a
destructive firestorm was when I started working for a large national insurance
company. They’d always say that
California had its challenges with fire for sure. This was absolutely evidenced as each year passed. Some years had few fires and other years had
destructive firestorms that would wipe out whole communities and also all of
that collected surplus insurance premium from years gone by. For that company, yes, the premium mattered
but so did their customers and, really, more so on the customer side. I will never forget the customer service
philosophy as a good corporate citizen and still carry the imprint of that with
me. It is people that matter and you
need to have insurance. That does happen
to involve money which is not everyone’s favorite topic.
With each firestorm, came hundreds of homes lost by
customers, real people who lost everything in most cases. I can recall reviewing photos for hundreds of
homes. It really hits home when you can
see the before (when the house was first purchased or re-reviewed, and lovingly
furnished with people’s belongings that show life is there) and the after. The aftermath of a fire is a gutting
feeling. You see debris on a slab or concrete
walled perimeter that’s about 2 feet high if you are lucky (that’s the
foundation by the way) and a fireplace chimney sticking up solo in the air with
no building for it to hug.
Most people don’t have basements in California but homes
built into a hillside slope are not uncommon.
Unique, one of a kind homes, crop up in there, too. A house called “The Wing” comes to mind. It no longer exists and was never
rebuilt. It burned down and the owners
walked away (with their lives) and never attempted to put it back. They couldn’t bring themselves to
rebuild. It was lost in a firestorm and
exists in memory. Don’t worry, they have
a home elsewhere now and were good with the decision to not rebuild in the
“middle of nowhere California on a hill with a view.”
Watching the fires these past weeks made me want to turn away
from social media and the television.
When I heard the fire had entered the urban area of Santa Rosa causing
total losses of homes to an entire neighborhood, I took notice. Everything I’ve ever learned about brush fire
hazard went out the door. A fire had
burned into an urban area that I would not consider the “Wildland Urban
Interface” or WUI. The WUI, to me, was
always those housing developments on hillside slopes with native vegetation (or
not so native Eucalyptus trees) and other flammable underbrush encroaching on
open space. I never dreamed of it
burning over a highway and into urban, flat, concrete, asphalt, and with urban landscaped
neighborhoods who have .15 acre, if lucky, as their property. It’s surreal.
But, my memory bank is full of information and I could
recall the “wind driven fire”, “embers in the wind”, and wind gusts that drove
a fire in a place like San Bernardino County years ago. It was a memory that I’d almost forgotten
about. This time in Santa Rosa, it all
seems worse, much worse. The Tubbs Fire
(Santa Rosa/Sonoma County) seems to have topped all fires in
ferociousness. The Atlas fire complex was not much better.
I could not turn away from watching the fires (on the news and online) as I found out
about people I knew impacted and some close calls. My mom was one of them. A close call in an urban grid of streets,
houses, asphalt, concrete, and flat as a pancake neighborhood in
Fairfield. That describes how her house
is situated pretty well. There’s
sidewalks, a fire hydrant on the corner and it comes with the paid fire
department’s station about a mile way.
It is urban suburbia in California that’s been there for over 30 years. The other side of Fairfield where I grew up
has been there much longer. A week and half ago, I
could hardly believe it. My mom’s home
was under advisory level to evacuate. In
other words, get packing a bag and be ready to leave. What?! It all seemed ridiculous to think
about.
Now that the fires are very much under control,
I’ve relaxed some and so has my mom.
While material items should not be the most important thing in your
life, a home is a bit different. Where
you lay your head at night matters. People
need consistency and comfort. Fire
completely takes people out of being comfortable and, in some cases, takes it
all away. It is stressful for sure.
As the years pass, I can’t help but wonder if it will just
get worse. My husband said that one fire
was burning toward Middletown, California. My
rather callus response to that was that it had already burned last year. How would it burn there again? It could.
At this point, I don’t have anything magnanimous or
benevolent to say. The firefighters and
first responders are real people who definitely deserve our gratitude. There have been many acts of kindness. I don’t want to be the naysayer in all of
this calling out that I told you so or this is going to happen again. By the way, it will happen again but I don’t
have a crystal ball to tell me where and when.
There were a few shocking revelations (and not so shocking) for me this go around as I was just watching it unfold online.
Global warming – yes. People
encroaching on the wildlands – yes. Lack
of good communication – yes. Lack of
defensible space – probably. That list
can go on and on. This type of situation
can change the world or we can go back to complacency. I just don’t know but I do know that I’ll be
staying put in California for now.
