It was not the best day for a wildfire to break out near my home this week.
The best days for fires to break out? Saturdays and Sundays, I think. Because I’m usually home and can obsessively check my WatchDuty fire notification app and YubaNet, a local news service. I can see the updates as they flow in. WatchDuty will show me how the wind is blowing: if it is a strong, gusty wind or a slight one, and (more importantly) if it is blowing the fire in my direction or away.
If I am home and the authorities notify us that we need to evacuate, I can load the car with my Go Bag and a few keepsakes. In the past I’ve remembered my Mom’s and Grandma’s handwritten recipe notecards, the Don Quijote and Sancho Panza bookends that I bought in Guatemala. I can make sure I grab my laptop and charger, my journal. Our pillows. Sometimes I’ve remembered to throw the dirty clothes in a trash bag and toss them in the back of the car. A survivor of the Camp Fire, the one that destroyed the town of Paradise a few years ago, gave that tip since the dirty clothes are “the ones that you wear the most.”
But the fire that started near my home this week did not start on a weekend. The Lowell Fire broke out Wednesday morning on the Nevada County side of the Bear River and never threatened any structures or prompted evacuations. Still, though. It was terrifying to walk outside with the dog on a regular weekday morning, in a bit of a hurry because I needed to head to work, and smell smoke: always the first clue that something is amiss. Then I saw planes flying overhead; a few minutes later, two fire engines screamed past my house. There was smoke blowing our way.
It’s a terrible way to start the day.
Because then I have to decide. I am supposed to work, and work is not really an optional activity—not if I want money to pay for my house which is smack dab in the middle of fire country, and also my fire insurance, which is (for now) still active and hasn’t been cancelled. If I leave and the fire grows, odds are good that I won’t be able to get home again. They’ll close the freeway.
