Almeda Fire 3 - Reality Sets In
Four Days In
We have water and electricity again thanks to an unexpected generator delivery to Home Depot. Andi and I headed to look for a box fan to create a makeshift air filter and upon walking in we found carts with freshly delivered 7500 watt generators delivered. There was also a shelf for box fans…with one crushed up box and unusable box fan…
I started calling back and forth with dad to make sure the generator would work for the farm. While I was busy with this Andi noticed a Home Depot employee with a cart and one box fan. She headed off to check – the lady was bringing a return back and it was the last box fan in the building…and ours! The plan is to use it with some MERV 13 filters to make a usable air filter for our house as we have our heavy duty one at the farm.
A couple hours of setup and wiring into our main harness, and thankfully having an extra 50amp plug around the farm, and we’re in business. The well works and we have fresh water without having to portage it in. We can’t yet run the central system, but we are able to run the air purifier to fight off air quality that has been hovering in the low 400s around the valley.
One of my best buds has a travel generator that he had offered. With that, the box fan, and filters we have breathable air in the house on Elm street. I spend the next ½ day working on setting our house back up. I work, then get listless. I’m half numb and half bored and fully ready for this year to turn around and offer a bit more hope. I get the art back on the walls. I debate about actually going outside and finishing the stain on the fence. I start up the generator and the pole chainsaw and cut the large tree branches from my backyard tree away from my neighbor’s house. I wonder what in the world my neighbors think, or those wandering the streets, at this guy in work grubs struggling and dragging this huge tree limb around the block corner and to my driveway where I can clean and stack it for removal.
…and the fridge…oh goodness the fridge. The regular part is spoiled, though thankfully not slime at this point like some other’s houses closer to the fire zone. The freezer is still ½ frozen and I’m able to load it into our cooler for delivery out of the area.
I pull the trash can around to start to clean out the kitchen. It’s full of all the small construction leavings from that fence that I just finished. Tuesday the fire started, Wednesday is trash day, today I find my trash bin full and have to pull wood and concrete back out so I can fill it with more important stuff. The remnants of our last Costco run, the greens and veggies from Food 4 Less, the further indication that our usual routine of morning smoothies, homemade salads for lunch, and healthy living is for this short time shot completely apart.
When the world has fallen apart around you it’s tough to pull things together for regular meals. 10 hours later you’ll realize you should probably eat something. “Have I gotten enough water? Do I really have to eat?” The appetite goes out the window until later you realize you’re ravenous. Most things don’t have taste yet. The world around is largely ash and it permeates everything. The food, the mood, the hope…especially during the worst moments.
Then you find that piece of dark chocolate, or the kiwi, or the quick homemade meal your friends and family have made while you’re out. It centers, brings the mind back to the moment, helps to bring a small bit of normalcy in a time where things feel anything but.
Things are calming down in the city and the thought of securing the property comes to mind. There’s only so much additional that can be done but I’m still missing good solid locks on the storage shed. Improvisation, a few 3 inch deck screws put in with a specialized bit should help to deter anyone who doesn’t want to make a racket. Here’s hoping…
This way will have to work, for now.
It’s interesting. Trucking around the level 3 evac zone in the pickup is fine, but there’s no official in/out of the area at this point. Dad needs the auger for some work at our neighbor’s place as they recover from half their property being burned. I’m able to load it into the truck, load the cooler, and bring it to the edge of the evac zone. I can get it out to dad, but if I leave myself then I can’t technically come back in without escort, and then it’s to be escorted in and out for a 10-15 minute visit.
A number of other people are walking out after checking on their place. I see a guy that looks familiar behind his mask. I can see he’s looking at me in that, “I think I know you way.” He’s familiar, so I drop my mask and ask if I know him, he says yes, but not sure from where. “Have you been in physical therapy the last couple years?” “Yes, Jeremy!?”
He’s one of my previous patients. I haven’t seen him for a couple years and find out that he lives 3 blocks away. He’s ecstatic, “I haven’t had any pain since I saw you! If anything starts to come back I just go back to the exercises you gave me and am able to fix everything!”
The small things in life can drastically turn your day around. This is one of them.
We can walk around. We can ride our bikes around to check on houses for friends, to view the destruction, to wander half numb and half in tears.
This is hard. There are so many people who have lost everything. We see a few groups combing through the wreckage of their burned life. We see cats wandering, hear a lady utterly distraught as she cannot find hers. It feels strange that there are no dogs. If they were left they’ve moved on.
Frantic leavings: a burned tricycle by the sidewalk, three bears from someone’s front yard, a weight set with the bar warped and melted like you see in the comics, more cars, washer/dryer combinations, and appliances than one could imagine. In sparse patches are areas of green or brown that were left seemingly untouched…not even the extreme heat of the fire scorching through. Was is the wind currents, a stroke of fantastic luck, a spot of heavily watered lawn, retardant or a helicopter fire bucket in just that spot? We’ll never know. All we see is the remnants before us and we try to figure out the story, subconsciously to be mused upon later, while at the moment it’s every effort to hold back the dam of our eyes…or simply let them run, unabashed, as we live through the aftermath of hell that hopefully most will never have to experience. There are so many livelihoods and memories here, demolished in the span of less than 24 hours.
Waiting
Waiting is almost the hardest part. There’s either too much information or not enough. The police escort was up for 2 days before we figured out it was there…and that was by blind luck. We try to figure out where to get information on flare ups, hot spots, openings, evac zones, general timelines on power and water. People celebrate on Facebook when water is initially restored. The mayor of Talent is on the Talent news page routinely and we’re able to find some news there.
….but nothing of Phoenix. Where in the world is our mayor, or news, any semblance of what’s going on. Anger erupts for a bit and then subsides. How do you stay angry with destruction of this magnitude. At this point it’s progressed to simple sadness. Our town had almost no emergency system, so many people had no warning, the fire moved too fast and the system that we thought was there…wasn’t. I knew everything that was going on with Ashland from Tuesday morning. I knew when Talent was threatened. The rest…
We are all trying to figure out how to deal with things mentally, and we are all dealing with some aspect of PTSD. It would be easier if we have some idea of accurate information…or even knew where to go for information. It’s telling when your friend who works for the police force hasn’t been supplied the basic information that others are able to glean through various unofficial channels.
We have no idea when our area, untouched by fire, will be downgraded from level 3. We understand the lack of personnel that is present, and the needed safety checks. It doesn’t much help when you’ve been able to be present and then can’t get back in.
Day 5 & 6
Andi and I are still able to walk into check on our house and Dave & John, our neighbors, report that they’ve started to see unfamiliar people every now and then. Great…things have settled down to the point where looters have decided to come to the area. Our neighbors on Hartley have also dealt with them recently. Frank was on his quad at the 99 end of Hartley watching a caravan of 6-8 vehicles (with motor home and trailers attached!?), saw them reach the impassable barricade (after moving the barricade at the Colver end of Hartley), and saw a guy hop out and head across Waldo’s property. “Look at this guys, the weed-eater is nearly pristine condition!” Thankfully Frank was there watching things…
Jon, near our place on Elm, mentioned that he saw a light shine through the back of our property. He headed over to check on things and thankfully no one had stayed around. Andi and I exchange looks. Great…looters. To be blunt, what the fu*@($& fu$* fu@#. We try to figure out a way to further secure our property. I was able to charge the lithium work light while we’re cleaning the house. We find our old “candle” tea lights that we used for our wedding. They go in the house windows. We put a blanket over the French doors and place a few tea lights in the openings, slightly obscured, so there’s light that looks like candles, but isn’t obviously little tea lights. We don’t yet start up the work light as it would be out before it got truly dark. Hopefully this will work.
It’s only 5:30 and we’re headed over to our nightly gathering with friends: time to come together, support each other, experience a bit of our normalcy. Thankfully this is our core group that has isolated since Covid started, though at this point most thoughts of Covid are out the window. We have immediate death and destruction. The pandemic seems so far away in a time like this. We all catch up, cry up. Andi and I get to meet our goddaughter for the first time. We spend the evening watching a calming but awesome English gardener and his show, and I wish I could remember the name.
On the way home we decide to stop at the park and walk in. It’s a gut feeling – get more light in the house. We’re able to make it over, set things up, and make it back while avoiding the roving patrol vehicle. We check in with Jon, everything is calm. We head back and try yet again to get some semblance of this thing called sleep. It’s there, somewhere. One of these days I might not be so exhausted that it feels real.
We hear statistics, and they simply get worse…and worse…and worse. It’s to a point where I almost feel numb. Then the limit is reached and the sobs start. This morning it was in the shower. As I write those ducts start to edge towards brimming over. I take a moment to compose myself, to orient myself, and continue on. It’s not that the feelings aren’t there or I’m trying to avoid them. It’s that there’s only so much you can experience before you have to find a way to work. I compartmentalize. For good or bad, it’s a strategy. I recognize it. I recognize that at the end when I can afford the time more completely I break down. Those are the shower moments, the sitting in the backyard moments, the long hugs with friends who truly understand you to your soul and where everything must come pouring out. It’s like work in medicine. You have to be able to at least at some level hang the coat of life up at the door and help others. It’s what we do. It’s sometimes why people don’t understand that we in healthcare are people too. .
It brings to mind experiences my work and front desk dealt with the day after, on Wednesday when we closed all our clinics. We had people who were absolutely livid, yelling on the phone livid, that they could not get in for their regular appointment. They could not believe we were closed. They could not comprehend that the providers they wanted to see were being directly impacted by or were directly involved with other staff who were being impacted by the fires.
Really…
…we’re that self-centered? I don’t get it. People pour their souls into helping, they deal with more trauma in a day than most people will experience in a month, shared trauma that they have to absorb, analyze, treat. …and the vitriol comes out? Granted, this is a very small portion. There will always be that small portion. But I don’t get it. Outside of a psychological disorder how can a person interact with the world in that way? I truly hope they have a disorder because if they don’t …sigh… whatever power they believe in help them.
The mind wanders…and wanders back to all the images we’ve seen this past week that will forever be etched in my mind. The one that hurts the most right now: two of our good friends standing in front of the remnants of their home, holding each other turned away from us.
We hear over 1600 homes burned between Talent and Phoenix, and 600 of those are attributed to Phoenix. We know in our guts that has to be a severe undercount just from looking at the aerial videos. In 2018 Phoenix had a population of 4602 people. I assume that’s not including mobile homes at the bare minimum. 80% of Phoenix students displaced. If you assume 3 people in a household, which for a large number around here is a very conservative assumption, that’s over 39% of the population homeless.
I don’t have words for that. It puts it in such a different perspective. So much of what burned up were higher density areas of manufactured housing and apartment housing. There is no capacity within this valley to deal with something of this magnitude. Entire communities within our cities have been decimated. The thought of rebuilding is staggering.
How does one person figure out how and where to be of the most support in an effort like this…?
Bear Creek Estates, looking north at the Phoenix/I5 intersection