| the precious things |
[May. 16th, 2008|05:47 pm] |
Yesterday I was puttering through the last 10 years of my life that I had exploded all over my old room in my parent's house. It was a very windy day, and I could see clouds of allergens being whipped off the pine trees, so it was best to stay inside and avoid the sneezes. The unpacked boxes left me with tiny stepping stones of carpet along which I could jump in and out of bed and across to the door.
Then my mother called, a little panicky, and asked if I had heard anything about a fire on a road very close to our house. I hadn't, so I walked out into the yard. Sure enough, a column of white smoke as wide as the house was drifting from the ridgeline a half mile away, with the wind carrying the smoke directly over my head. Within five minutes I could smell the fire, bits of ash were starting to drop, and the sunlight had turned a sickly yellow. My dad and I put some shovels and a pickax into the car and went to see if there was brush to clear. We were turned around by the sheriff a mile from home. He told us to go back and prepare for evacuation. So we went home, turned on the sprinklers, and started to get the precious things together.
Living in California means dealing with earthquakes and wildfires, and when you live in the Sierras there tend to be more fires than quakes.
It's an interesting exercise to pick out all the things that are important to you and put them in a car to drive away from your home. It's also surprisingly easy. Within 20 minutes I had collected a document box, my computer with all our photos from the last two years abroad, family pictures and albums, my mother's wedding dress, and a couple changes of clothes. The parakeet was waiting calmly to be moved. After you've collected the important things, there is a whole lot left over that really doesn't matter that much in an emergency.
The local news was reporting on our fire, another California fire, and the California Supreme Court decision to strike down the gay marriage ban. When they got tired of that, they switched back to Days of Our Lives. In the meantime, my sister and I were thinking of other things we wanted to save: recipe boxes, the address book, mementos from our childhood, a box of my great grandmother's silverware, my parent's wedding china, jewelry boxes, favorite books and knicknacks that we have had as long as we can remember.
Evacuation calls got to some houses down our road, but thankfully the ground crews and helicopters got the blaze under control by mid afternoon. My parents are lucky to live just three miles from a large reservoir where the water-drop helicopters can fill their buckets. Evacuations were lifted before they reached us.
Three houses burned down along with 30 acres of forest. My heart goes out to those families, and I am thankful it didn't make it to our home.
My friends, play boy/girl scout for a moment and think about what you would need to be prepared for an emergency, and also please consider putting together an earthquake survival kit if you don't already have one. A plastic trash can in your garage or storage unit works well, and you can find lists online of what to put inside. |
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