New state, same natural disaster.
I thought I escaped wildfires when I moved out to Colorado with my family in March from Southern California. It seemed like there were catastrophic fires every year there. Sometimes, they’d get close enough that we’d have ash falling on our car. In 1993, I remember seeing the Laguna Fire creep over the mountains from where I went to school in Mission Viejo.
I never worried. I trusted firefighters. I just “knew” that everything would be fine. All that changed with the Santiago Fire in 2007. In hindsight, the fires that hit Southern California in 2007 are a blur. I know the worst was down in the San Diego area. I know there was the Santiago Fire up by us. I don’t remember if there were any others. I’ll never forget our experience, though.
It started as a fairly standard fire. That sounds bad, but in California, you get used to things like fires and earthquakes. There’s smoke in the sky. There’s news broadcasts. Everybody panics … well, except for me. I never worried about anything. [Read more…]
