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.
The Santiago Fire was growing, and in theory, we were in danger. My wife was panicking, but I knew everything would be fine. It smelled pretty smoky in the air, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary when there was a big fire. This was an annual thing. But on the news, it kept getting worse and worse. My wife was freaking out and I worked at home for a day, just in case something happened (it wouldn’t, though, duh!), and kept the news on in the background.
I think my first sense of concern is when the news was broadcasting from a shopping center about a half-mile from Benjamin’s school and there were pretty bright flames in the near background. We got an automated call from the school district letting us know that classes were being dismissed for the rest of the week (on a Monday afternoon) and we needed to pick up the kids.
I considered that to be a nuisance, because Tiff wanted to head three miles away to my in-laws’ house temporarily. We weren’t being evacuated from our home, but I’ll admit it — the air quality was pretty bad and the fire was within a few miles, so it probably wasn’t a terrible idea.
I left to go pick up Jack because he went to a different school that had a different special ed program and on the way I could see lots and lots of black smoke coming from the direction of the hills. My concern was growing at this point. Things seemed different. It wasn’t business as usual on the streets. People looked like they were trying to get out of town. Shopping centers were dead. It wasn’t the same.
I got home and Tiff was frantically packing things up. The wedding pictures, my iMac, baby pictures. I wasn’t in a crazy urgent hurry to get out of the house — it’s not like there were flames I could hit by throwing a baseball. But they were getting closer and it was probably a good idea to leave.
We packed suitcases for the kids, she overpacked and jammed her Suburban full of way too many replaceable items, and we went to her folks’ house at around 2 p.m. It was an afternoon full of commotion. We were getting situated with kids who were 6, 4 and two weeks shy of 2, plus a couple of dogs, a computer I needed to set up for work and probably a few other things we needed for our temporary routine. I was getting a lot of emails and texts from people wanting to know how things were going, because word was getting around to friends, family and co-workers that we were leaving our house for safety reasons.
I was still viewing this as a nuisance, but Tiff was in a state of panic. She knew we were going to lose our house! Yeah, right. We were watching the newscasts and could tell things weren’t going great. The fire was spreading and it was getting closer to our house. One of the LA channels was broadcasting live on the scene from the street directly behind our house. That’s not a good sign!
We noticed at about 7 p.m. that we had left Ava’s suitcase back at the house and Tiff sent me up to get it. This would also be a good chance for me to survey the situation. When I got there, there was actually traffic on our small residential street because nosey people from all over wanted to come and get a great view, and our street and the street behind it is where the great view was.
About 150 yards behind our house, there’s a hill that’s maybe 400 feet high, like a really small mountain. There was a a line of fire going across the top of it and I thought, “hmmm, this isn’t particularly good.” I went in the house to get a closer look and watched the fire move all the way down the hill in less than 20 minutes. It was moving FAST.
I’d seen photos of fires and video of fires, but I’d never seen fire like that, up close and personal. Flames were shooting up a good 25 feet in the air. Aside from the street and the houses, everything was in flames. It was so surreal, words can’t describe it. There was no way human beings could stop that fire. Tiff called me up and asked what I thought. I told her we were going to lose our house. There was no way it would be there in the morning. I could hear the flames and they were bright, bright orange.
I walked around the house, looking in each room for items I might want to take, and there really wasn’t much of anything. I flashed to the scene in the movie Titanic where the old couple lays in the bed, holding hands, knowing the ship is going down. I knew the house was going down. There were toys on the floor in the playroom. Clothes in the closet. I walked around, looking in the home, thinking of memories in each room.
Each of our kids started walking there. We’d brought two of them home from the hospital there. We’d spent 5 1/2 years there, countless birthday parties and family gatherings and good times and bad. And I knew it was going to be a pile of ashes in the morning.
Tiff was freaking out and wanted me to get out of there. Friends were texting me and asking if they could help and telling me they were praying for me. I told Tiff we needed to think about what neighborhood we wanted to move to that would be best for Jack.
It was raining fire (not ash — fire) in the front yard. That’s a terrible sign when the fire is behind the house. Orange flicks were hitting my arms. There were a few neighbors out front and it almost seemed like we were saying goodbye, because when our houses burned down and we had to pick up the pieces, surely we’d all head in different directions.
Police officers were driving up and down the street, telling us we were being evacuated. I knew we weren’t going back. I had a sad, empty feeling. I knew we were going to be starting over the next morning. I didn’t know how or where or what we had to do, but I knew our life was going to be a mess.
I said goodbye to the house, then went back down to my in-laws, watching the hellish flames in my rear-view mirror. I watched the news that night, sat around feeling numb and eventually went to sleep. I drove up in the morning to check out the neighborhood, and I was as shocked as I’d ever been to see the house still standing. The fire was still everywhere, but the house made it through. I couldn’t believe it. I was certain there was no way the house was going to stand, but I wasn’t feeling any sense of excitement. It was quiet, like a ghost town. It was still going to be a disaster we’d have to fight our way through afterwards.
The inside of the house was covered in ash and it smelled terribly, like we’d been burning tires in the fireplace for a month non-stop. The air quality was terrible and it was still raining ash. The flames were still covering about 50 percent of that hill behind the house.
But those prayers were answered and the house made it through. I learned after the fact that firefighters don’t always just try to put out a fire. They try to save homes and people, fighting off the blaze at the edge. In this case, they knew they weren’t going to put out the fire, but they fought to save homes and they did an amazing job.
We weren’t allowed back in for maybe 2-3 days and I think we stayed out for four days. And we had a major cleanup job when we got back! But we got to go back, which was critical.
So now, when I see these fires in my new home state that aren’t close but aren’t too far away, I can definitely relate. It’s a horribly scary situation that nobody should have to go through. I just hope and pray that these firefighters stay healthy out there and they’re able to get them under control before anybody else loses their home. Rain would be nice, too!
We’re more-or-less out of harm’s way. The two biggest fires (Waldo Canyon, High Park) are both at least an hour or so away and the closest fire that has any kind of size (Flagstaff Fire) is a good 10 miles away and fairly under control. There’s a pretty large open area less than 1/10 of a mile from my current house that would be in bad shape if a lightning strike started a blaze. But for now, we’re OK.
So as close as these fires are, they’re not going to hit our home. But they sure do hit close to home.
Beth says
This is really scary and I could not even imagine being in your shoes. My sister’s in-laws live in the Springs and were evacuated two nights ago, we are hoping their house is still standing and know that their best friends house is now gone. So incredibly heart breaking. Stay safe