The Oregon Fire isn't in Oregon

There’s something tough about getting back to normal after an emergency.  It’s flat out uncanny to put up the coffee cups, start the laundry, and get back to the desk.  I’m sitting here playing Concentration with Connor, and realizing that I have none.  We had gone down to Sacramento to celebrate Dan’s birthday, and celebrate we did!!  (Tequila was involved). So we creebled back up the hill and were just pulling into our adorable and much missed mountain cottage when we turned a corner and saw a huge plume of smoke.  Not good.

 It’s been so dry here, that the slightest blaze, especially in a strong wind like we had last night, blows quickly into a wildfire.  Back in 2001, a wildfire had burned very close to the town and taken a number of houses with it.  Some of the folks chained three caterpillar bulldozers together and dug a firebreak around the town.  The winds changed and the town was saved.  Last night it started on the west side of town and blew pretty much  behind the high school and along the airport.  If there had been a lot of houses there, it would have been tragic, but back there is the dump, and the airport is a natural fire break.  Still, folks were nervous to see what would happen, but our local leaders and CalFire were on it.  They were calling it the Oregon fire, which I’m sure was confusing our New York friends, who were pretty sure we’d moved to Weaverville, California.   It still looked like Apocalypse Now over there, with bombers and helicopters dropping flame retardant, and folks moving around packing up or exchanging updates under the blood red sun.  If you’ve never seen a forest fire, it looks like a tornado sucked up smoke, opened up the ground, and spewed fire and fury.  I kept watching for flames on the nearest ridge.  I saw only smoke and that creepy, hellish sun.

A friend of my mother-in-law’s drove over to tell us that they’d evacuated one block over.  We grabbed the cats, shoved them in carriers, threw the backpacks and suitcases back into our green Honda CRV - the Road Frog - and headed up the hill to my in-laws.  You see, they’ve done this before.  Mom was packing up quickly, grabbing essentials, and us.  After a half-hour’s consultation on the direction of the wind and the burn, it appeared that rather than scooping across town, the fire was blowing NW to NE, and heading towards us.  I’m sometimes good in an emergency, but I wasn’t sure if we were staying there or leaving, and Mom was very clearly getting more anxious to leave by the minute.  So was I. 

Then Dan spoke up and mentioned that the town Supervisors were setting up evacuation at the grade school behind our house, so it would probably be best to evacuate back home.  We gathered Dan’s folks and headed over where with their truck and Papa’s police radio.  He also has done this before, but was hard to pry off his mountain.  I was glad that he were there with us, and his radio.  After a restless couple of hours pacing and listening to the street closures on the radio, we washed the child, put him to bed, and all started to bed down.   Mom and Papa were good sports and let us make them a bed out on the living room futon.  I think mine was the last light out, but as soon as the adrenaline left me, I pretty much passed out over my book.

We kept the cats in, so they danced on our heads all night.  Fig, the Siamese, was especially bad, moving in behind the curtains and talking and crying nonstop, like a hysterical Jerry Springer guest.  I woke about every two hours, but the first at 1:30, thinking someone was banging on the door.  It was just my father-in-law kicking a chair on the way to get a drink of water.  Poor man.  I came out of the bedroom like a jack in the box wielding a flashlight and pulling Dan behind me because I was sure it’s time to jump in the Road Frog and tear ass to Redding.  But no.  Just me, on high alert.  The rest of the night passed uneventfully except that each time I looked out the window, there was smoke in the streets and it smelled like fire. The cat finally settled down around 4 and so did I, then Bean crawled into bed with us, kicked us in the kidneys a few times (as a sleeping seven-year-old will) then settled into the boneless sleep of children. 

We slept til about a quarter after seven, when I couldn’t take anymore and got up to find Dan checking the emergency site on his phone.  All was well, it seemed, the fire had moved North, and we’d only lost one barn, no houses, the hospital hadn’t had to be evacuated, and no-one had gotten hurt.  The town was safe, we had coffee and toast, and everyone went off to work.

So I’m off to go empty the Road Frog and start the laundry.  Cause, well, the emergency is over, and if we do need to hit the road, we should probably do it with clean clothes.  Oh, and on a side note, it seems we need to refine our evac plan cause I was going to leave my computer and all of my photo albums.  I now get to empty the car and put everything back.  Glad it was a false alarm, but also glad that we were ready to leave so quickly, and with the essentials:  our family, our cats, a few family photos, and the envelope where I keep the passports, birth certificates, and Social Security cards.  My dignity, it seems, can be easily left behind.  Man, I’m tired, and now I’ve got to find a better place for the photo albums.