Where do you even start a post like this after the week we’ve had… I’m one of the lucky ones. My house is still standing, My neighborhood was still a “ridge” away, but it was way too close for comfort. It all started Sunday evening. It was a beautiful weekend, typical Wine Country weather. Sunday evening the humidity plunged to 10%. The air was so dry everything you touched in the house would pull a static arc off your fingertips. Around 9:30 in the evening the winds started picking up. I started hearing loud banging sounds in the house. It turned out to be the patio furniture blowing around the yard. A huge, wooden umbrella literally flew 30′ in the air and over the fence in the neighbors yard. Aluminum ladders being blown off the wall they were leaning on. This was a very fierce, dry wind blowing from the NE.
We live in a very close knit neighborhood. We’ve had block parties for years especially when all the kids were young. We still all go camping or vacationing together. We have a neighborhood classic rock band “The Relix” that plays most every Friday night. We are “the lucky ones.” We haven’t lost our homes. We all know so many friends and families that have lost everything. We seem to end all conversations with “stay safe.”
We all have a story from that first night, how much time we had, or didn’t have, to pack up mementos and get out; some stories are far more harrowing than others. Our neighbors a mile North of us had mandatory evacuations.
We were on an advisory evacuation, get ready and stand-by. We all talked about at what point should we leave and where to go. We’ve all had friends playing musical houses, because the danger zones kept changing. I had a friend (who lost everything) and her 2 cats and dog over at my house less than 12 hours after the inferno destroyed close to 3000 homes. Thousands (20,000+) evacuees have had to wait days just to get the go ahead to go back to their homes. I fed my friend a home cooked meal and some wine, offered up a warm shower and a place to stay . Another neighbor has a family staying with them that has a harrowing story of being evacuated twice within hours. Evacuated his house in the hills, went to a friends house to stay. It just happened to be the neighborhood that was devastated. They were evacuated a 2nd time with only minutes to spare. They tried to get on HWY 101 and were turned back by a thirty foot wall of flames that was blowing across SIX lanes of HWY 101. people were turning around driving the opposite direction on the highway to escape. Everybody has a story.
The house phone and the cell phone started blowing up around 4:30 AM. Loved ones, neighbors calling, texting. Neighbors started walking door to door to wake peeps up and make sure they were aware of what was going on. The “‘Hood” gathered in the street outside, most of us hadn’t slept a wink. We live 1/4 mile from Sonoma State University, so many of the houses are now rentals with 5+ students staying in them. They were grabbing their blankets and pillows, loading their cars and getting out of Dodge.
It’s surreal to pack a “Go bag”…The “P’s” People, Pets, Prescriptions, Papers, Pictures, Personal needs, and Priceless items. All week long we’ve had this stacked up by the front door, ready to roll. I also had the conversations with my daughters (18 & 22). Pack your to go bag, grab what’s important to you. Where are we/you going? Where are we going to meet? What roads are we taking out of the ‘hood? Do you have gas, etc etc etc. You don’t want to alarm they, but we need to be aware and somewhat prepared. We’ve had our most cherished mementos packed and staged by the front door for days, and our cars backed into our driveways for quick exit should it become necessary.
Some folks had no warnings, others 10 minutes or less to grab and go. The fire/inferno advanced 10 miles in 6 hours, all in the middle of the night. There are reports that it was traveling 234 feet per second in some areas. It blew through subdivisions of 1000’s of homes leaving nothing but cement foundations and chimneys standing in its wake.
We now know what N95 means, which refers to a rating for respirators and surgical masks. The smoke and ash has been VERY unhealthy. My truck and cars are covered in ash, burnt pine needles and bay leaves. There isn’t a bay tree anywhere near the house. They were falling out of the sky from fires miles away.
We have “liked” the Facebook pages of every official City/County page that might bring us news the fastest, because it was a fast and mostly a reliable source to get info to the community. You had to be VERY careful with FB posts from friends or friends of friends. Rumors would start and propagate on FB as fast as the fire spread. I was at work on Wednesday and I walk in from a meeting and about 15 staff are asking me. “Are you going home now?” They are all ready to leave. They tell me a neighboring town is being evacuated. SO we all left to be home and ready. It turned out to be some FB post that went viral through work and it was completely false.
Now our Facebook feed is filled with missing persons, missing and found pets, heartbreaking photos and videos, volunteer efforts, shelters, gofundme links, questions such as “how do I get my mail if my house burned down?” and miscellaneous helpful information.
We all now know what Nixle is and we flinch a little when we see a text message from 888-777. Nixle keeps you up-to-date with relevant information from your local public safety departments & schools. We lived hour-to-hour and didn’t make plans for tomorrow without checking the fire status. You flinch when you hear sirens. The real bad areas East and North of us had the constant sounds of helicopters and fire retardant bombers overhead.
Over 11,000 firefighters from all over California and Western US were working in 24 hour shifts. Some came from the East coast of the US and a strike team from Australia. We see lots of fire/sheriff/military vehicles on the road, from cities far and wide who’ve come to help, and we stay out of the left lane for them. God bless them all.
It’s nice to be back at work, a sense of normalcy and routine back for us. I pray for all the others that won’t be able to have that for a long time.
Stay Safe.
“Heartbreaking” doesn’t even begin to describe the loss that so many thousands of people are experiencing. My sincerest thoughts and prayers go out to every one of them.
“Heartwarming” are the stories of people like you that lend a hand, a home, a meal, a warm shower, whatever you have, to comfort the people less fortunate than yourself.
From myself to you, and all the people affected and devastated by the Sonoma County fires… as you coined it… “Take Care”. ❤️