Fire

The wildfire I saw on the bus was just the beginning. By the time I got back from the trip there were dozens, and two weeks later there were thousands in the state. The week before July 4th a fire started in the hills above my house, and less than a week after that thousands of people had been evacuated. We're on the other side of the freeway, thank God, so we were never in any danger, but the sky was brown and it rained ash for days. On the 4th our asphalt parking lot was white with it.

I've been shadowing my endocrinologist, spending an afternoon or so a week following him around while he sees patients and does paperwork. He's a pleasant 40-something year old guy with a wife and two small children. He lives in the hills. On the afternoon of the 3rd, when I visited, he was worrying about his house, which at that point wasn't even under a warning. I woke up the morning of the 4th to discover he'd been evacuated in the night.

I spent the 4th of July in training classes at the local Red Cross. The next night I spent working at the shelter.

At that point there were only about 20 people still staying there. The sundowner winds had died down, and what had been a scarily-uncontrolled fire 48 hours before had turned into a much tamer beast. I played solitaire for most of the night. That Monday I went back, and halfway through the day we closed the shelter down.