The terror cannot be understated, watching a fire rapidly approach my neighborhood and home of decades, places that nurtured my life and marriage. It’s one thing to watch coverage on television, barely able to take it in, the word ‘incomprehensible’ often coming to mind.
But when plumes of smoke were rising over my neighbors’ homes, changing colors from billowing white to glowing orange to toxic black as they came ever closer, one’s brain freezes. At least my brain shut down as I faced making a run for it and leaving just about everything I cherished behind. Get the dogs, get the cats, get whatever portable valuables you can remember. Don’t forget leashes or underwear or necessities, although that last category never quite formed in my mind. I basically lived in sweats while I was evacuated for just under two weeks. I often slept in them as well.
But after my displacement, short in comparison to so many others’, I was again fortunate to have a home to come home to when so many others had lost everything. The Pacific Palisades, a neighboring community to mine which had stood for over 100 years, had been razed in hours. And in that destructive fire, besides the people who have lost everything, there are also many whose homes suffered smoke and soot damages that will keep them displaced for months and months and months.
It was and is quite literally incomprehensible. And that’s before I see the devastation with my own eyes.
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