been awhile.
21 Jun 2012 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouWell, the bombshell update is that we came within about twenty feet of having our house burn down from an electrical-cable-started brushfire. Fortunately, it was middle-of-the-day, and (since our house is pretty much blind to that side of the woods) we had a sharp-eyed and -nosed neighbor who first thought it was a midday barbecue... then thought twice and came down the street to see. She banged on our door as she was calling 911, then ran to our neighbors and alerted all of them, too. It couldn't have been more than three, four minutes from her call to the fire trucks' arrival, but my gods, it felt like the longest and most terrifying moments of my entire life.
Crazy enough, my first impulse was to grab a picture of my great-grandmother off the wall (why? it's scanned, and my sister has a copy), and the next reaction was to turn off my computer. Whut? Apparently, logic is not my friend when panicked. Then I headed to the backyard with a hose -- because thinking clearly also is not in the cards. I think I was there for a minute, before the water pressure dropped too far (because CP had turned on the longer hose, in the front yard), so I went back inside to grab the dogs and get them into the car. When I came back out with a cat, next-door neighbor was there and asked if she could do anything, so I just handed her the cat and went back inside for the youngest cat. (Middle-cat was outside, keeping himself well away from the chaos, fortunately.) Took a lot of chasing, wrestling, and some serious scratches and one pissed-off hobbit-in-a-box later, I was walking out the front door as the fire trucks pulled up.
If you've ever done a sport that has sprints at the end -- running, biking, whatever -- you know how sometimes time doesn't seem to make any sense? The average race for my sport was about six minutes. Fifteen hundred meters: two minutes for a five hundred meter start, two minutes for the five hundred meter body, two minutes for five hundred meters of sprint. Well, give or take thirty seconds wherever. Thing is, I can distinctly recall races where it felt like the sprint alone was twelve minutes. Time lengthens, stretches, doesn't mean anything anymore, when that much adrenaline is in your system. Standing in the yard watching the flames eat up the summer grasses, I couldn't tell if they were coming at me fast, or slow, or frozen, or if I was there fifty seconds or five hundred seconds.
I'm not sure if it's consolation that the fire chief's comment (as they were wrapping things up, afterwards) that the timing was really close. Five more minutes... he waved in the direction of a coming storm. Rain, I said. No, he said: wind. And the wind was heading cross-creek, right at our house, which meant if the neighbor hadn't reacted as fast as she had, and the fire department weren't literally a mile up the road and a quarter-mile to the left, the storm's vanguard of high wind would've hit that fire and shoved it right up against our house.
Yeah. Yikes.
(Yesterday, CP said something about how if an electrical cable is going to snap off and hit dry grass and spark something, why didn't it happen during a storm when there's rain? I said, better at 1pm on a Tuesday than 1am on any night. If it'd been middle of the night, by the time we'd realized, it would've been too late.)
Anyway, talk about having things wake you up to putting life in perspective. Of all the things that I wanted to grab, or thought I should grab, in a split-second decision standing there trying to figure out where I'd put the leashes (more like spinning in place in a total panic trying to find the leashes) I realized the priority was to get the animals out. Anything else would be gravy. But the animals were one thing that required no compromise. Which should probably be an obvious decision, but it's wierd, it's like your brain goes through the revelation anyway, in that moment.
Amusing footnote: as I realized the most important duty (while CP was outside with the hose) was to save our four-legged children, Sachiko ran back to her bed then reappeared for me to put on the leash. I barely noticed. I got the dogs outside, pretty much dragged them both across the zapping invisible-fence-line (didn't have the motor coordination to remove collars as well as put them on), shoved them into my car, rolled down the window, and ran back inside for the cats. Only later, when the firemen gave us the clear, did I realize: Sachiko had grabbed her stuffed frog and had been holding it in her mouth the entire time. Clearly the priorities are the same for everyone in this house: save the babies! Even the stuffed ones.
Fifteen minutes later, we had large drops of rain coming down. It rained later that night, and again for about a half-hour yesterday. I still haven't walked out to see the empty lot, or the size of the burn scar. All I know is that CP's comment was that the fire wasn't halfway across the lot like my adrenaline-crazed eyes had thought. It was more like fifteen feet from our property -- and our house is only about five feet more from that point. Another five feet and the fire would've hit dry two downed trees, and a dry old fence after that. The firemen literally arrived in the nick of time.
Very, very, lucky.
Crazy enough, my first impulse was to grab a picture of my great-grandmother off the wall (why? it's scanned, and my sister has a copy), and the next reaction was to turn off my computer. Whut? Apparently, logic is not my friend when panicked. Then I headed to the backyard with a hose -- because thinking clearly also is not in the cards. I think I was there for a minute, before the water pressure dropped too far (because CP had turned on the longer hose, in the front yard), so I went back inside to grab the dogs and get them into the car. When I came back out with a cat, next-door neighbor was there and asked if she could do anything, so I just handed her the cat and went back inside for the youngest cat. (Middle-cat was outside, keeping himself well away from the chaos, fortunately.) Took a lot of chasing, wrestling, and some serious scratches and one pissed-off hobbit-in-a-box later, I was walking out the front door as the fire trucks pulled up.
If you've ever done a sport that has sprints at the end -- running, biking, whatever -- you know how sometimes time doesn't seem to make any sense? The average race for my sport was about six minutes. Fifteen hundred meters: two minutes for a five hundred meter start, two minutes for the five hundred meter body, two minutes for five hundred meters of sprint. Well, give or take thirty seconds wherever. Thing is, I can distinctly recall races where it felt like the sprint alone was twelve minutes. Time lengthens, stretches, doesn't mean anything anymore, when that much adrenaline is in your system. Standing in the yard watching the flames eat up the summer grasses, I couldn't tell if they were coming at me fast, or slow, or frozen, or if I was there fifty seconds or five hundred seconds.
I'm not sure if it's consolation that the fire chief's comment (as they were wrapping things up, afterwards) that the timing was really close. Five more minutes... he waved in the direction of a coming storm. Rain, I said. No, he said: wind. And the wind was heading cross-creek, right at our house, which meant if the neighbor hadn't reacted as fast as she had, and the fire department weren't literally a mile up the road and a quarter-mile to the left, the storm's vanguard of high wind would've hit that fire and shoved it right up against our house.
Yeah. Yikes.
(Yesterday, CP said something about how if an electrical cable is going to snap off and hit dry grass and spark something, why didn't it happen during a storm when there's rain? I said, better at 1pm on a Tuesday than 1am on any night. If it'd been middle of the night, by the time we'd realized, it would've been too late.)
Anyway, talk about having things wake you up to putting life in perspective. Of all the things that I wanted to grab, or thought I should grab, in a split-second decision standing there trying to figure out where I'd put the leashes (more like spinning in place in a total panic trying to find the leashes) I realized the priority was to get the animals out. Anything else would be gravy. But the animals were one thing that required no compromise. Which should probably be an obvious decision, but it's wierd, it's like your brain goes through the revelation anyway, in that moment.
Amusing footnote: as I realized the most important duty (while CP was outside with the hose) was to save our four-legged children, Sachiko ran back to her bed then reappeared for me to put on the leash. I barely noticed. I got the dogs outside, pretty much dragged them both across the zapping invisible-fence-line (didn't have the motor coordination to remove collars as well as put them on), shoved them into my car, rolled down the window, and ran back inside for the cats. Only later, when the firemen gave us the clear, did I realize: Sachiko had grabbed her stuffed frog and had been holding it in her mouth the entire time. Clearly the priorities are the same for everyone in this house: save the babies! Even the stuffed ones.
Fifteen minutes later, we had large drops of rain coming down. It rained later that night, and again for about a half-hour yesterday. I still haven't walked out to see the empty lot, or the size of the burn scar. All I know is that CP's comment was that the fire wasn't halfway across the lot like my adrenaline-crazed eyes had thought. It was more like fifteen feet from our property -- and our house is only about five feet more from that point. Another five feet and the fire would've hit dry two downed trees, and a dry old fence after that. The firemen literally arrived in the nick of time.
Very, very, lucky.
Long Story Ahead
Date: 22 Jun 2012 12:54 am (UTC)A very good friend of mine was in the Oakland Firestorm in 1991. She lived in the Parkwood Apartments, which were directly west of the Caldecott Tunnel, and the first inhabited area to go up. She was coming home from a early-morning appointment and saw the fire on the east side of the freeway, ready to jump. The parking lot there was a one entrance/exit number, with a tiny gate shack. The guard would raise or lower a wooden arm to let you in. She wisely decided to park on the street so she wouldn't have to negotiate that very poorly planned bottleneck.
After she parked, she saw the flames were that much closer and was in a panic. She grabbed her Emergency Papers Envelope (all good Californians have one), then she grabbed some dumb stuff like underwear and the like. Then she started knocking on doors, because she realized no one else was leaving.
Neighbors roused neighbors, and mostly everyone cleared out okay. It was very close, though, and 25 people in the subsequent fire area were not as lucky.
She lost everything. She was a soprano with the San Francisco Opera Chorus, and had not only rare antique sheet music, but also a lifetime of opera, symphony and ballet programs saved up. All gone, along with all of her clothes, household goods, knickknacks, etc.
Her friends and family sheltered her while she got back on her feet, and I think she did some kind of media interview. Strangers replaced her fine arts programs out of their own collections, and she even got back some of her antique music. Clothes, household goods, all of that was donated back to her.
Glad you were able to avoid all that.
The good news is that it really made her re-evaluate her life; she has studied Buddhism and Native American shamanism, and has some very interesting spiritual experiences. The word "spirit" used to just make her chuckle cynically, before the fire.
And do I have an Emergency Papers Envelope? No. Know what, though? You've reminded me that maybe I should.
Sorry for the long story. Very happy to hear you're okay.
Re: Long Story Ahead
Date: 22 Jun 2012 04:18 am (UTC)Re: Long Story Ahead
Date: 22 Jun 2012 02:52 pm (UTC)What else? Pedigree papers? A list of current medications? An extra set of keys to everything? A thumb drive with the absolute essentials backed up on it? Grandma and Grandpa's wedding picture?
Looking at the list, it would probably be wise to keep all those documents in a fireproof safe, instead of just in an envelope. Then again, I keep that info loose in my files as it is, so bringing it all together in one place wouldn't be that big of a change.
Or, you could spring for a safe deposit box and put it all there.
Kudos to you for being so prepared. I kept my kit in my car trunk, so I had it with me wherever I went. (I did keep my emergency papers at home, though. Wouldn't do for them to get lost if the car got stolen.) Now that I've lived in Oregon all these years (since the 1989 earthquake, which, nothanksleavingnowbyebayarea) I've gotten a little lazy about preparedness.
no subject
Date: 24 Jun 2012 04:37 am (UTC)It's a running joke about zombie apocalypses in my city, so CP had always written off emergency packets as related to End Times or some such never-gonna-happen. But your post (and a few others here and elsewhere) replying with the California reminders have made us start talking about what we'd put in the packet, where we'd keep it for easy grabbing, and what else we'd consider priority to save. Above and beyond the animals, that is.