Life in Fire Country

 

We live in fire country, and maybe it has always been this way, a little. But now “fire season” has officially entered my vocabulary as the fifth season of the year. It ushers itself in, sometimes as early as May, and can linger through November, maybe even into early December, if the rains take a long time to arrive

I grew up in this area and knew that fires were a possibility when I was young, but not like this. There was a string of fires near my home back in the 1970s, but they were minor and eventually authorities figured out that they were started by a local firefighter who needed work.

Also, my parents never seemed to worry about their homeowners insurance or how much it would go up every year, something that regularly concerns me. They never thought that their fire insurance might suddenly be canceled, which has happened to many homeowners in our area. This, perhaps, is my biggest homeowner fear of all. I see folks flocking to our local community Facebook pages to ask if anyone has information about insurance companies that might possibly write them new policies. Many of them end up on the California FAIR Plan, which “provides basic fire insurance coverage for high-risk properties when traditional insurance companies will not.” The FAIR Plan website itself admits that it is “an insurer of last resort.”

My homeowners insurance recently renewed for another year. I am eternally grateful that my insurance company, State Farm, has continued to insure my home, even though it is in a wildfire prone area. It was luck, basically, that my mom worked in a State Farm office before she married my dad and was loyal to the company throughout her life. This meant that my sister and I used State Farm as well, since we almost always did what my mom recommended when it came to adulting types of things—like car insurance and, eventually, homeowners insurance, too. What if she had worked at a different insurance company before marriage? Almost every other insurance company in our area started canceling all their homeowners policies years ago.

Most people around here have an app on their phones called “Watch Duty.” You can set it to alert you to when a fire breaks out near you. I have Placer County and Nevada County alerts, and the last few weeks have pretty much received notices every day of fires breaking out nearby. Last Saturday, I was home, happily puttering around and thinking about making a plum crisp from the plums on my backyard trees, when my phone dinged with the ominous Watch Duty sound.

Generally, I check my phone, see that the fire is nowhere near my home, and go about my business, all the while hoping that wherever the fire is, it is contained quickly. The powers-that-be tend to give new fires names, and the names usually have something to do with where the fire started. Last Saturday, it was the “Flat Fire.” It’s never good when the latest fire takes its name from the town where you live.

So I stopped thinking about washing and drying my plums and baking my plum crisp. I left everything by the sink and went outside, where I saw smoke. Soon there were fire trucks and sheriff’s patrol cars zooming up the street. Fire planes and helicopters arrived. My Watch Duty app sent updates, as did my local Facebook community group. I checked my Apple Watch to see what my heart rate was doing. It was up about twenty beats a minute from my normal resting rate. Helicopters flying overhead and smoke in the sky you can see from your back deck—that will do it for sure.

I spent a good part of the day with my eyes fixed on the sky, watching the smoke, the helicopters, the fire planes circle overhead. I thought about my photo albums and wondered why I’d never taken time to digitize the ones that meant the most to me. I think about doing this every year during fire season but somehow never follow through. Will I do something about this soon? Maybe. It takes a nearby fire to remind me of how quickly everything can change—if the fire was to get out of control, if the helicopters and fire trucks weren’t able to stop it. I think about recent fires that ripped through neighborhoods in Spokane, Washington, destroying hundreds of homes, or a fire in a nearby California county last week that burned more than 10,000 acres and caused one death.

It was an exhausting day, a day when I didn’t do much except check my Watch Duty app and look for posts from my neighbors on my local Facebook page. I did not finish getting my plums ready for my crisp. It took a few days before that crisp got made.

At the end of the day, I was grateful to be home at my dining room table with air conditioning. We were able to open our windows and enjoyed a sky that was mostly free of smoke. That seems like a bit of a miracle, actually. Three cheers for CalFire, for the resources sent to control our fire—for the bulldozers, fire crews, helicopters, and planes. It was a sight to behold, right from my back deck.

Last weekend’s nearby fire was not the first one that has affected our town. I remember at least three others that started nearby, all of which resulted in either voluntary or mandatory evacuation orders. This one was mild compared to those. But I have a “go bag” handy and theoretically am ready to leave anytime.

My parents never had “go bags”; that’s how much things have changed in such a short time.

I love where I live. I don’t want to live anywhere else, but I am not a fan of fire season, this newest calendar season of ours. I spend these days with my phone handy, waiting for the next Watch Duty alert. I’m grateful for all the fires that CalFire puts out quickly, which this season has been most of our local ones. I’m ready for rain, though. Rain and cooler weather, the end of fire season: they can’t come quickly enough.