When I am totally involved in a project, I can't hear what people say to me, I forget to eat, I forget what day it is and I keep odd hours. I am utterly absorbed and oblivious to the world. And it was this level of absorption that lead me to entirely miss what was happening in California until the day before yesterday. So yeah, I'm feeling super guilty about this. Savannah, I wish I'd known sooner. Anybody out there lurking in California, that's my explanation. Stay safe. Hug your family.
A news report intruded during a documentary I was watching and it was like getting hit with cold water. Everything went by the ways. I pulled up every report and video I could find. I got ahold of Ms. Savannah. I was, and am, horrified.
What's going on isn't ordinary. It's almost apocalyptic.
The only fire I've ever been in the middle of happened years ago when we were riding through Eastern Washington in August. We had gone way inland toward the east, and there had been lightning storms in the night, so as the morning wore on, soon all the hills around us were showing areas of fire. You could see it get bigger and creep down slopes and across fields like a black stain. Sometimes it would just go out. Sometimes you'd be looking at a patch of grass and suddenly it would just go up without warning. A fire would spring up on one side of the highway and leap to the other, like it was chasing us. The way it moves over the land doesn't make sense, and it moves terrifyingly fast. We'd come out from under the smoke and ride for five miles, blue sky, yellow fields, no wind, and suddenly there'd be a blast of furnace hot wind at your back, and long orange claws would come reaching across the grass on either side of the highway, the sky would turn smoky orange, and suddenly embers are falling, they're landing on you, they're landing in the road ahead. The fire that we'd been trying to outrun all morning long jumped in front of us, and we were doing well over 70mph at the time. All we could do was speed up and hope that someone or something wasn't blocking the road. That's just a little bit of what a wildfire is like in dry country.
What I'm describing wasn't even a match lit against what's going on in Los Angeles.
I can't believe what I'm seeing come out of California. Most of those houses have not just burned, they've been incinerated. This is a huge firestorm with 100mph gusts pushing it. Houses and trees are vaporizing. And the worst thing, the most heartless and disgusting thing in all of this horror is how the insurance companies are cancelling policies.
I'll just leave this here. Yes I will.
Speaking of disgusting things, Paris Hilton went online (aka used a natural disaster to put herself in the public eye) saying that she was 'Heartbroken beyond words' that her beachfront house had been destroyed - which I assume has no more importance to her financially than losing a fake eyelash in the toilet. The very last people who need to be involved in this discourse are the wealthy. You lost your car collection? You lost your mansion? You had choices. Lots of choices. Way more than the thousands of families living around you did. Have the grace to shut up.
Here's a good overview of the situation on the ground from the Guardian US:
There are links to relief efforts included in the article. I don't know how well The Guardian vets things like that; I would do my research, but if you want to help, it's a good place to start.
