The spark hit the dry brush at 1:10 p.m. on Monday, September 9.
In the school pick-up line at 1:55, parents, kids, and teachers were already abuzz with the news. We could see the smoky haze drifting down from the high country. We could smell the choke in the air.
Driving my children home, we passed a park with a wide-open view of Trabuco Canyon and Santiago Peak. A huge, dark-gray plume rose into the sky. The kids chattered happily in the backseat. They hadn’t noticed yet.
Isn’t that so much of what parenthood is? Seeing the trouble before your children do and discerning when and if and what to tell them? Deciding how to best prepare them?
I tucked the kids, still unaware, into their rooms for quiet homework time and settled myself in at the kitchen table, the room’s large windows overlooking the blazing hills.
“Can we help?” I texted friends who live in an evacuation zone, watching on the fire map as their neighborhood switched from the orange of voluntary evacuation to the red of mandatory. They needed someone to take their cats, so I confirmed with my husband Daryl that we could take a couple.
(Both Daryl and our oldest son are allergic, but when things turn life-and-death, they were willing to take some Benadryl and tough it out.)
“We found someone else to take them all!” the friends texted, moments after I offered.
We reached out to a neighbor who doesn’t have air conditioning. It had been 106 for days on end, and he repeatedly assured us that he was fine. But now with the air turning to ash, windows must close.
“Want to hang with us?” Daryl asked. “We have a guest futon!” The man told us he would be traveling for the next few days anyway, his home already sealed.
There’s this pressing feeling, when a wildfire starts to blaze out of control so close to home, to do something.
But for those who weren’t yet under evacuation orders, there was not much to do. I packed our go-bag—a laundry basket filled with clothes, toiletries, some food and activities for the kids, pet supplies for our middle kid’s two mice—and then I stood in the kitchen watching the fire.
In times of crisis, I find myself desperate to know what will happen. It’s why pundits and prognosticators, charlatans and false prophets flourish in tumultuous seasons. Tell the lies the people clamor for, and they’re apt to love you.
The New York Times recently profiled Alan Lichtman, a historian who has successfully predicted the outcome of 9 out of the last 10 presidential contests. “The Prophet of Presidential Elections is Ready to Call the Race,” the headline promises.
It’s a goofy, entertaining opinion piece, sure, but it also speaks to our desperate need to know.
At the table, I made calls and took notes for an article I was working on for my Presbytery’s e-News. The specter outside my window made it hard to focus.
“I’m sorry,” I asked an interview subject more than once. “Can you repeat that?”
After the calls, I paced. I wanted what I couldn’t have, what no one but God has access to: knowledge of the future.
I needed someone to tell me for certain that my friends in the hills wouldn’t lose their home, that the winds wouldn’t shift and send the fires galloping our way, that the blaze would be put out by morning so all the children who hadn’t had outdoor recess or sports practice for days because of the extreme heat could finally go outside to play.
I needed to know that we would all be okay.
In this world you will have trouble, Jesus tells us, and yet somehow I am still always surprised.
In the hallway, I switched on our portable air purifiers. Back in the kitchen, I cut up apples for the kids and spooned peanut butter into bowls.
From a distance, a wildfire smoke plume seems to move at a snail’s pace, nebulous towers of dirty cotton. Watching it reminded me of the Smoke Monster from the TV show Lost, ominous and malevolent.
No one ever knows what will happen next.
Late that night I took our oldest out into the cul-de-sac to see the fire. We stood in the middle of the darkened street and watched the bright line climb the mountainside, its color vivid as neon.
“It’s so beautiful,” he said. “And so terrible. Like a siren.”
By the next morning, the fire had grown to an 8,500 acre blaze—then 10,000, then 20,000 acres—threatening homes in Riverside County as well as Orange. Crews worked around the clock with bulldozers, fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and ground forces. The source of the fire was pinpointed to a public works crew. At least two firefighters fell ill with heat exhaustion, the same gear that protected them from fire smothering them in the high environmental temperatures.
Our kids went off to school, chattering as they packed their lunches and brushed their hair. Then our younger son noticed that the winds had shifted.
“It’s blowing the other way!” he chirped, pointing. “But wait… are there people’s homes on the other side of the mountain, too?”
“There are,” I said. He sobered immediately.
“Well, that is not good for them. I wish it could be good for us and good for them.” A summary of the Gospel’s hope from the mouth of an 8-year-old.
As Daryl drove the kids to school, I returned to my perch at the kitchen table, answering emails and gazing up at the hazy sky.
In John 16, Jesus tells us that we will have trouble in this world. But he doesn’t stop there.
Take heart, he continues. Perhaps that is the real answer we need when we demand to know what happens next. We aren’t given a map or a play-by-play of all that will unfold before us.
But we are given One who will walk beside us.
Take heart.
One final note: If you live in fire country anywhere in the United States, I highly recommend the free Watch Duty app. It’s updated regularly by state and county fire professionals and lists individual fires, containment percentages, up-to-the-minute evacuation zones, and shelter information for both people and animals.
You can download it here, or anywhere you get your apps.
Thank you updating us! I live in the Deep South, and the fires are so far removed from me that I don't think to pray unless an ash cloud hits us. I will be faithful to pray
Thank you for sharing this experience with us. The very sobering realization is that few places in the country are entirely immune from wildfire threat. Praying for you, your family and your congregation.