The Fire

On the night that fire ravaged Santa Rosa, Popie and I were staying at an airport hotel, preparing to leave for Italy the next day. Sleepless, Popie looked at her phone at about 3:00 a.m. Our neighbors were trying to reach us. They had banged on our door and got no response. They wanted us to know that Santa Rosa was burning and they were preparing to evacuate our neighborhood.

We didn’t sleep after that.

We were torn: we hated to cancel our long-planned trip, but at the same time all our thoughts were on home. It was difficult to get a clear picture of the risks, though our neighbors were great about giving updates. Most of them evacuated but a few stayed on. We decided that if our house was still standing when our flight boarded, we would get on it. If our house burned, we would cancel.

We boarded. Our house didn’t burn. We had an extraordinary two weeks in Tuscany, enjoying food, wine, art and history, but always with a corner of our minds on the events in Santa Rosa. Our house survived, but it was a near thing. If the winds had not suddenly died at about 4:00 in the morning the whole town would have gone up in flames, it seems clear now. Our house, less than a mile from the front and a short block from oak grasslands, was certainly highly vulnerable. With uncontrolled fires still burning all over the county, and predictions of more wind, we felt uncertainty all that week, and so did our friends and neighbors.

We were spared, but many of our friends were not. Fifty-one families from our church lost their homes.

We came home to join that. Some impressions:

–Everybody has a story to tell and they want to tell it. Going to church or walking the neighborhood is an invitation to long conversations about people’s experience of that night, about those of family or friends or neighbors, or even about experiences we read in the newspaper. Suddenly we have discovered our kinship with each other. We share a community.

— The scope of the destruction is stunning, especially Coffey Park, which is a suburban tract across a six-lane freeway from the brunt of the fire, and miles from any woodlands. Something like a thousand homes burned in that one dense neighborhood.

–More stunning is how absolute the loss is. When homes are destroyed by fire, flood, tornado or earthquake, there’s usually something left. But these homes are simply gone. Their burned-out cars and washer-dryers are the most prominent structures. Whole neighborhoods look like Hiroshima.

In the past week, the weather has turned, and rain has soaked us. There will be no more fires this season. Though people are still very much in shock, our attention has turned to the long road ahead. How do you rebuild? We had a terrible housing shortage before the fires. Where do all these people live? If they can’t find a place to live, they will surely leave. How would we live without the hundreds of doctors who lost homes? Without the teachers, fire fighters, county staff? Nobody has answers. Rebuilding those homes will take years. It’s unclear how we cope in the meantime.