Escaping California’s Wildfires with a Pregnant Wife and an Empty Tank of Gas

• April 9, 2018
• File Under Fire Hazard

Prologue 

A few months ago I bought one of those cheesy writing prompt journals at Barnes and Noble called, you’ll never guess, 300 Writing Prompts. It’s filled with questions ranging from the mundane to the profound, and some that are so dumb they make me angry like “Do you like or have facial hair?”

As I read back through the journal recently one question, however, proved eerily prophetic:

Question: If your home was on fire, what would you grab before escaping?

My Answer: As I sit here packing our things to move into a new apartment I find myself not giving a rip about any of this stuff. If our place was on fire, I’d make sure my wife Christi was ok then grab some sticks and marshmallows and make S’mores over the open flame of junk.

You know that saying, “Be careful what you joke about —it may come true?” Let’s just say I may never joke about fire again.

Monday, October 9th. 3:30 am.

I wake up with the strangest feeling. Like something is wrong. I can’t shake it. I lie in bed, can’t fall back asleep. I have a feeling inside like the scene in a suspense thriller where you know you’re about to jump out of your seat. But the feeling never finds release.

I get up, look out the window, see nothing out of the ordinary. Our back porch, trees. Normal, but not. I lie back down. Suddenly, the fan on our dresser stops. The power flashes off and on. I hear a rustling noise outside. I get up, walk into the living room and open the front door.

Smoke.

Someone outside yells “fire!” People are running toward their cars, toward the street, away. I wake Christi up, “There’s a fire, we gotta get out of here.”

Adrenaline. Mind racing.

If your home was on fire — or perhaps your entire neighborhood — what would you grab before escaping?

I can’t find my glasses, with hands shaking put contacts in each eye fast. Throw on pants and shirt. Grab whatever I can get in one hand from my bathroom cabinet; throw random clothes in a bag. Christi grabs our folder with passports and birth certificates. My camera and computer in a grocery bag and we’re out of the door.

The dog!

Right, she’s at a kennel just outside of town. We were away for the weekend, supposed to pick her up tomorrow morning. She’s ok, we hope.

We get out to the parking lot and from behind our apartment, we see black smoke billowing, the ominous glow of red flames rising.

Too close.

Christi, 5-months pregnant with our first child, wraps her face with a shirt to breathe. We knock on doors, yell “Fire!” No answers. We get to our car and look at the road in front: total traffic gridlock. We pull out to exit the back way, see flames.

Some decisions in life you agonize over, some are easy: don’t go that way.

We join the line of cars inching away, our heads turning back and forth. How soon will we have to ditch the car and run? Cars slowly moving, air getting better, then worse, then better, then worse. That’s when I notice: we have about a 10th of a tank of gas.

Expletives like an inferno.

It’s amazing how quickly your brain does math in a crisis. I instantly crunched an important number: the cost of the car we just paid off and how certain I was we were going to have to leave it behind.

Cars moving too slowly. How is this happening, move! My eyes shift from the road, to smoke, to gas gauge, to road. I can’t speak. Christi praying.

There’s an unusual calm over all the cars. We’re in shock, disbelief. Moments ago we were in bed with a case of the Mondays, now normalcy a dream. The woman in the car next to us is talking to herself. Next to her is a car packed to capacity with random household goods and a person in the back seat holding a television. A kid on a bike rolls up and blocks traffic so his friend driving a car can swerve into the open lane.

Mental note: make more friends with dudes on bikes.

An hour and a half in traffic. The whole neighborhood trying to get out. Every street full of cars funneling in the same direction: away. Over 90-minutes to get down a street that takes 20 to walk. We’ve gone less than a mile. It feels like that dream we’ve all had where we’re trying to run away but our legs are too heavy to move. How soon will black smoke be joined by red flame?

God, please protect our child.

Windows up, AC off to conserve gas.

How soon do we run?

We idle and inch toward the intersection. Three choices: turn right, presumably in the direction of flames (no thanks), turn left into more gridlock, or go straight into dark country roads.

We go dark and gun it.

Air fresher, eyes stinging less. We’re away, windows down, we can breathe. And perhaps most urgently…we can pee.

I’d like to pause and formally apologize to the owner of the vineyard in which we relieved ourselves. In normal circumstances, I would never think of christening your fields of grapes with the fruit of the vine. But, fire.

5 am.

We need gas or sayonara Subaru. No phone service. Emergency calls only. Internet touch and go. We’re able to pull up a map for a hot minute and figure out how to get to the nearest station. Christi scribbles the directions on a receipt. We turn around a few times to avoid traffic. Miss a turn, go back. We make it. It doesn’t open until 7 am and the line is already down the block.

There’s another station up the road. How close is the fire? We have no idea.

Do we chance it or sit for 2 hours? We go for it, I can’t idle anymore, I need motion. I’ve never been so happy to see a sign that says, “Rotten Robbie.” The line is down the block, slowly moving. And so we sit. Windows up to keep the smoke smell at bay. So much for motion. After 45-minutes we finally pull into Sir Rotten’s gas euphoria.

I’m not quick to define things as miracles. I think the word is overused and often abused. Life itself is a miracle, but one could argue a gas light coming on the very moment your car pulls into the station after dodging a fire for 2 hours despite your tank being WAY low…is something of divine octane intervention.

Remind me to write Subaru a thank you letter. Also, remind me to always FILL UP MY TANK WITH GAS.

We inch toward the pump, fill up, and park to get our bearings. Rotten Robbie’s humble convenience store is in full-apocalypse mode. Packed with people stocking up on water, bread, and pizza flavored Combos talking a mile a minute to anyone who’ll listen.

The shock wearing off, reality setting in.

A woman tells me she thinks her home is gone. Two friends cry and hold each other. A husband and wife wearing jackets over pajamas stare into space. A man waving his phone desperately trying to get service. A woman bangs on the door and tells me to hurry up in the bathroom.

Where’s a vineyard when you need it?

 7 am.

Radio on.

Multiple fires everywhere. Zero containment. Unprecedented damage. The worst fire in California history. Highway 101 a parking lot.

Radio off.

Get to the city. The long way, anyway but the 101. Text my brother. Message fails. Text again and again and again and…watch the road!

Expletives.

8 am.

Slowly make our way down Highway 1. I normally love this drive, not today. No Vacancy signs flash, beach parks overflow. People finding respite where they can. Dazed looks, families huddled together. Do they have a home to go back to? Do we have a home to go back to? Nobody knows. There is no rich or poor, we’re a new class, the displaced and unraveled. The air has an odd off-brown hue, making everything look like a sepia filter.

Is that another fire?!

No, It’s just the sun’s reflection on the horizon. Sirens in the distance — or is it in our heads?

9 am.

Sparse internet, erratic phone service. Text to brother goes through. We’re coming to our niece’s birthday party in San Francisco two weeks early. Make a Facebook post so our families don’t freak when CNN falsely reports all of our deaths for high ratings.

WE HAD TO EVACUATE SANTA ROSA DUE TO NORTHBAY FIRES. CHRISTI AND I ARE SAFE.

11 am.

Have we really been in the car for over 7-hours? We stop at Shoreline Marketplace just outside of the city. I’ve never been happier to see overpriced organic produce in my entire life.

Wifi, phone service full-bars. Calls to family, yes, we’re ok. Phone friends, are you ok? Yes, thank God. Whose house is gone?!

Everyone in the store is talking at once. Stats are flying like Cirque du Soleil on crack. How many houses? 3000. That can’t be right, the numbers too high. 3000 homes and over 40 dead. But, we were just there, this morning, hours ago, moments ago. How is that possible? That can’t be true. Coffey Park? That’s right by our apartment. We just took our dog there last week. We walked, only a few minutes. All those homes? Those beautiful homes with the park in the middle? It can’t be right. Is it all gone? No. Yes. No way. I’m afraid so.

Denial, disbelief, anger. The stages of grief, not nice and neat, flash-flood simultaneously like a storm.

Noon.

Golden Gate Bridge. Towering pillars across kingdom threshold. Open arms, welcome pilgrim. I’d kiss you Italian style if you had cheeks.

12:45pm

Arrive at my brother Mario’s. It took us over 8-hours to drive what normally takes 70-minutes. Our little niece is surprised to see her Tio and Tia. We hug, we commiserate, we laugh to fill the silence. We might be staying with you guys for a while. Like, a long while. Do you have any clothes I can borrow…and perhaps an entire meal of food?

Anything except pizza flavored Combos will do.

We crash on an air mattress and hope to God it was all a weird dream.

Tuesday, October 10, 2017. Operation DEZ.

After reliving our experience several times on the phone to concerned friends and family and going back and forth on what to do next, we decide if we can’t have a home we need to at least have our dog. We find out the kennel where she’s staying is ok and none of the dogs were hurt.

We set out to get Dez, our 10-pound Chihuahua terrier, and to see if our place is still standing. We do our best to prepare ourselves for the worst. We find little comfort in telling ourselves it’s just a rental, an apartment we’ve only lived in for a few months. Sure, many of our possessions are replaceable, but so much isn’t. Family pictures, home movies, letters from my dad who passed away. Treasures you assume you’ll have in a box forever. Keepsakes the best fire insurance policy can’t bring back.

Someone tells us the Walgreens across the street from us burned down and now there’s little doubt our place is no longer. If the neighborhood to the north and businesses just south are gone, what’s in between has little hope.

Arriving at the kennel we’ve never been happier to see Dez’s sweet little face. We adopted her weeks earlier at the Bay Area Pet Fair and she instantly became the queen of the castle. Our hearts tore when we dropped her off and she watched us leave through the fence. Thankfully, all is forgiven and she’s excited to be back with her pack, oblivious to yesterday’s tragic events.

“Well Dez, let’s go see if we still have a home.”

We drive slowly into a smoke-hazed Santa Rosa. Few cars are on the road. First-responders and face-masked citizens walk the street. Young men and women in National Guard uniforms pace intersections.

It feels like driving into a city after war.

Traffic lights are down, power is out. We creep slowly toward our street. Everything familiar, but different. Changed. A light mist of ash covers our car. Then we turn and see it.

Walgreens. It’s still there.

Last week, waiting for a prescription, I couldn’t escape it soon enough. Now I could run down its aisles yelling “Merry Christmas” like Jimmy Stewart.

Another tough lesson learned: don’t believe everything you hear in a crisis.

We exhale a sigh of relief, like breathing again for the first time, as we look across the street. We see a line of apartment buildings, one of which is ours, standing proud but looking like it had too much to drink the night before. We’ll take a hung-over home over a demolished one any day.

 

Aftermath

Writing prompt #183: What is a sure-fire way to distract you from the task at hand?

Fire. Fire is a sure-fire way to distract me from anything…hence the word fire in sure-fire. I can’t think of a single task more important than avoiding fire. Unless you’re a firefighter. Then you better not be distracted by fire otherwise we’re all in trouble.

We gather a few things from our apartment and return to San Francisco for two more weeks. As the raging fires are slowly contained we hear story after story. Some heroic —firefighters working hours on end despite losing their own homes — some horrific: people posing as first-responders, telling the vulnerable to evacuate, and robbing them blind.

We decide it’s best for Christi and our baby-to-be to spend another week in Michigan with her family while the air clears. Dez and I return to the apartment. Smoke slowly lingers like fog, outside smells like a campfire. I stand spaced out in our kitchen, sipping coffee and staring at the floor. Exhausted mentally, physically, spiritually. One question repeats in my mind like a broken record: How many people would love to be having a boring morning in their own kitchen right now?

Later that day I’m told by a neighbor that if it weren’t for the large open field in back of our apartment, a nature reserve where firefighters were able to contain the rising flames, our place would have been leveled. I feel survivor’s guilt — a strange mix of sadness, gratitude, empathy, anger, and a loss for what to do next.

Mr. Rogers famously said, “When I was a boy and would see scary things in the news my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You’ll always find people who are helping.'”

I used to think that was just a nice corny sentiment until I experienced it first hand. Our old friend in the cardigan sweater knew what he was talking about.

I read recently that after the Great Chicago Fire —which took place on October 8-10, 1871, almost exactly 146 years earlier than the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa — the ash and debris from the demolished city was pushed toward Lake Michigan and became the foundation for what is now Grant Park. They took a horrendous situation, and from the devastation, made something beautiful.

That’s our job now. With every act of kindness, we push slowly the ashes of what we’ve been through toward creating something that fire can never destroy.

 

For pictures of the incredible efforts by first-responders to contain the fire visit https://weather.com/photos/news/napa-valley-tubbs-fire-photos

 

• California
• California Wildfires
• Coffey Park
• First Responders
• Rebuild Coffey Park
• Rotten Robbie
• Santa Rosa
• Sonoma County
• Subaru
• Tubbs Fire
• Vineyards