Gut Wrenching

Since the fires broke out all around Santa Rosa on Sunday night, we have been in voluntary evacuation. The mandatory evacuation order for our area came this morning at 5am. This is a picture of the scene at the corner of our street, Wildwood Trail, and Los Alamos Road. I don't even know who took it, but it was sent to me by one of the neighbors. I always meant to take a picture of this corner, but it never seemed interesting enough....

Although the winds were calm here in Sebastopol last night, giving us some optimism, they came up again in the North Bay hills and fire broke out on Hood Mountain behind our house. Dana and Jim saw the flames as they drove back to Sebastopol.

The daily briefings from the fire, police and sheriff departments aren't specific enough to give us any information, so we continue to sit, walk the dogs and wait...sleeping seems to be a reasonably good coping mechanism ...

We start desultory conversations about what if? and what next? But they tend to dwindle out when there clearly are no answers. It is difficult to maintain a single train of thought or complete a single task without coming up against the same unanswerable question.

We try to keep up with friends in the area, but there are at least 14 different fires burning around Santa Rosa. Ours is just the latest. Everyone is scrambling to save themselves, their families and their pets . The winds are unpredictable and changing.

When the power came in in our neighborhood yesterday we felt optimistic, but then it went out again, presaging the police driving around the whole area telling people to get out. Dana and Jim were home for just about long enough to check our homes and retrieve our mail. Amazingly, it had been delivered. Ironically, it contained our property tax bills...

The good news is that support is coming in from across the country ... there are three thousand firefighters, along with bulldozers, helicopters and air tankers. As some fires are brought under control, extra personnel are shifted to the active fires. It is difficult to express our gratitude to these selfless warriors. I hope we will get the chance.

And all we can do is wait....It's exhausting....