I am supposed to be writing about my distaste for being scared. I am supposed to be writing about how I don’t like being chased through corn mazes by actors with chainsaws or jumping out of my seat at some zombie hand reaching out of the darkness. It’s simple, you see. There are enough frightening things in real life, real monsters that lurk behind the facade of “bad things don’t happen here”, that I don’t feel the need to seek out fake frights.
Two days ago I asked my husband to take out the Halloween decorations before he left for his weeklong business trip to the Bay Area. That Sunday, as I sat at work, some calls started coming in about a wildfire in the area, and people asked if were we boarding pets. I drove home that night, not particularly worried- until I rounded a corner and saw orange flames in the distance.
And so it began, these last two days. It has been positively surreal here in San Diego- as of today 370,000 homes- HOMES, the number of people is much higher- have been evacuated. A huge swath of the county is without a place to stay, surrounded on all sides by flames with nowhere to go and no prediction of whether or not they will have a home in the next few days. People who live in the coastal areas, historically protected from the inland brush by miles of homes, all of a sudden faced with the real possibility of themselves being homeless. Life as we know it is at a standstill, as thousands of evacuees sit on a cot in the open air Qualcomm stadium, trying not to breathe in too much ash and hoping for news that is all too slow in coming.
By nothing more than random luck I am still in my home. I am surrounded by fires. Yesterday I watched the governor’s entourage drive by on their way to a press conference down the street. My husband cancelled his trip. The vast majority of the group accompanying him has been evacuated, and some of them have already lost their homes. Last night, I went to bed nervous but feeling secure. At 3 am I woke up to an odd orange glow emanating from the blinds and saw outside my bedroom window the site of a mountain range on fire. Miles of flames bisecting the black horizon, heading my way at an alarming rate. And as I sat there gnawing on my fist, asking myself honestly what I might need to take and what I would need to leave behind if the reverse 911 call came, I knew real, sinking fear. Who needs a haunted house when you have this? The news is saying, “No one is safe.” “Be ready to go any second.” “You have to help yourself, don’t wait for us to come get you, we are stretched very thin.”
The winds have been kind to me, though thousands of others can’t say the same. And while I feel relief, it’s tempered by the fact that the wind that shifted away from me in the morning hours is now blowing that wall of fire in the direction of someone else’s home. All of the things I had planned for the week- the Halloween carnivals, the shopping trips- all on hold. Do I need to even bother making cupcakes for the preschool carnival? Will the preschool even be standing? Life turns on a dime, and as I shiver in the shadow of other peoples’ lives falling apart a mere whisper away, all I can do is look, and wonder.
ETA: I wrote this on Tuesday afternoon, but it is now evening. The winds have turned again, and the orange flames that slept today have returned to glare at me this evening. The northern border of the current evacuation area is one street away. I’m placing my suitcase by the door, hitting the post button here, and going back to staring out the window. My thoughts are with all of you dealing with the firestorms, and those with friends and family in the affected areas. I don’t know that haunted houses will scare me much anymore after this.
-jesvet
My thoughts and prayers are with you…