3 posts tagged “fire”

It still doesn't feel quite real. Like the fire's just beyond tangibility. 'It hasn't sunk in,' isn't the right way to put it, though I'm not sure how I should put it. Maybe, 'it hasn't been absorbed' yet. 

We were so fortunate. I don't think it gets any closer of a call than this...

Those last pictures are as close the closest the fire got. The pile of char is what used to be our jacuzzi.   to save some typing, this is the message I've been sending people who ask how our home is:

Our house is okay. We lost all but 10 trees, our jacuzzi :( , and a bit of our deck. I left the sprinklers on as many trees as I could and my dad stayed last night after his shift in SD to fight it off as best he could with some of the other firefighters.
A house right below ours is nothing but a foundation and a spiral staircase, our neighbors granny-flat is history, and a house across our revine charred to the ground as well. We were really, really fortunate to have such minimal damage.
Thank you for your thoughts. It means the world.

The house right below us was incinerated, so seeing our home intact makes me even more thankful.

It's been wild. My family's got some work ahead of them. Here's a link to more pictures if you so desire.

    I've thought on occasion, "What possessions of mine, can't I live without?" Of course, my guitar. My first and only possession that I've truly fallen in love with. Everyday I pick her up and play her for as long as I can -- until My fingers are raw or I have to go back to work. "Then," I think, "my laptop." My trusty hunk of technology that not only holds pretty much all my music, but holds the past four years of school work. The rest of my stuff, like my clothes, my bed, my books, my CDs, my vinyls, my car... to me, they're disposable. 
Today I was faced with that defining question. This time it wasn't rhetorical.  This time I didn't get caught smoking or doing something stupid. These fires were headed toward my home.  I really had to pack up and go.
We started early, before the 'reverse 911 call', so we had more time to collect what we wanted to save. I grabbed my baby, my laptop, my clothes, my favorite books and DVDs, a bottle of Jameson and a bottle of absinthe, some pictures, my dad's 1967 Harbour surfboard, my grandpa's '22, my bong, and two bottles of wine that my parents bought me.
    We left with the help of my parents' friends and headed to my mom's friend Colleen's place. Garret and I decided that we needed a Slurpee and to check on the house, so we headed into town then back to our place.  We got there and saw the smoke, black and ugly, billowing only a mile or so away.  We tell our mom and Colleen that we should get going, 'cuz Colleen's isn't safe either.  A typically thirty minute drive took us two hours to get out of Fallbrook.  The traffic was insane -- we took Olive Hill to Sleeping Indian, a way we thought would be the opposite of where everyone else was going, through Camp Pendelton. We were wrong, though I'm sure no other route would have been any faster.
    It's almost surreal. Fake. I felt like I was on XTC -- distant but oddly focused. The drive out of town could've been compared to running on a treadmill.
    My dad was working out in Alpine doing whatever cops do -- direct traffic, inform residents of evacuations, protect property, what-not.  My uncle's been up in Malibu fighting the fires there, but I haven't heard from him since this morning.  This is the closest it gets to home, I suppose.
    About thirty minutes ago, my dad called from Fallbrook at a friend's house (about to be evacuated) and said that it looked like our grove's hillside's on fire...

    Fuck.

    That's as far as I know.
    I'm staying at my aunt's with my mom and brother. I think my dad will be joining us later tonight. I just hope that my parents will be okay. I'll certainly be upset if my home is devoured by hell, but my parents will be devastated. They've poured so much of their blood, sweat, and body into this home, I can't stand to think of how they'll feel.
    The kitchen was on the verge of being completed, the entire living room and dining room had been remodeled, my room was added on, the fireplace was completely reconstructed, the exterior repainted, the gardens and deck rebuilt and tended, and two hundred and fifty avocado trees fertilized and pruned.  Everything in and on and surrounding that house was built, designed, and cared for by my family -- more so by my parents.
    This is unreal. This is life. This Jameson is doing me good. I'm glad I packed it.