Page 24 - Anna Doxie first new format

Flames of Devastation

By Brandon LeValley

It’s been several months since the fires ravaged our
community, and some of the small birds have returned,
the ones barely large enough to duplicate the size of your
thumb. The hill directly behind our house is not one of the
places where they’re likely to find refuge; looking more now
like the surface of Mars. We were lucky, only two houses
that back up to our same hill were lost, the rest of us saw
in horror how the whole hill was engulfed in flames as we
escaped in our cars to seek safety. Starting out more like a
stream that raced across it, we could see it out one of our
arched windows in our Master Bedroom. It struck me as pe-
culiar how it acted, as if it defied all common laws in nature,
where order is given a certain predictability, even direction.

This wasn’t anything like that. It was as if the
devil had found its outlet and sought out destruc-
tion with an opportunity it’s rarely given, because
the whole of our town was suddenly and devastat-
ingly overtaken by it. Spared and fortunate were
most of the residents by what the city had learned
from the previous “Cedar Fire” four years earlier,
24 by sending out reverse 911 calls to alert us of the
oncoming fire. I’d read about fire before, from eye-
witness accounts from fireman, how the fire takes erupted and suddenly surrounded their home. That delicate
on a life of its own. sanctuary of security has been shaken and we wonder how
long before they’ll feel safe again.
Until you actually see it and are caught in the wake of it,
can you fully appreciate it and the fear it instantly instills. In spite of all this, a sense of community has been strength-
It explains how whole blocks can be wiped out, while a ened by this. Where a customary distance between resi-
single home in the middle of it is spared, or like in the same dences has often kept people from speaking with one
subdivision in a mirrored cul-de-sac, how all the homes another, now the shared experience has given them some-
were spared except just one. You could have said that it’s thing in common, and a sincere concern for those whom
the Santa Ana winds that contributed to the fierceness of have experienced the same. A sense of perspective has
the fire storm, you could have said it was the low humidity developed, where all those things that were so desperately
and increased temperature and the unusually dry period important, have now been given their due balance, and
that had left most of our countryside susceptible, but it still an overreaction to circumstances is now weighed against
requires a flame or an ember; power lines that may have those things that now seem so much more valuable; family,
been stretched too long to arc and spark a fire when the home and friendships.
winds came up; or an unattended fire in a campground that
may have been left too long. There are those, for reasons I’m looking at things differently. It’s caused me to slow
that it takes a psychologist to sort out, who start these fires down and acknowledge that the randomness of this di-
outright, and this too brings about its own firestorm of sorts, saster could have just as likely taken my own home, and
that drags out years in prosecution and rehabilitation. there’s no reasonable explanation that can account for
why any home should be lost, or singled out as mercilessly
Our blackened community won’t likely forget this event, as it was. One needs only to drive through a few of these
it stays alive in the hearts and minds of those residents stricken neighborhoods to appreciate this revelation.
left to rebuild, who had a lifetime of memories and pos-
sessions stored up in their homes. And what of the night- Editor’s Note: Many of our readers and staff were deeply affected by
the wildfires. Several of our communities have come together to help
mares left to linger in the minds of our children, who wake rebuild and support those who lost so much. To learn more about those
in the middle of the night thinking that another fire has organizations visit our website at www.sandiegowoman.com/resources
March/April 2008