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By 6:25 a.m., my fate was sealed.
That morning, 10 miles from my front door in Paradise, California, a poorly maintained power line owned by Pacific Gas & Electric arced, dropping molten metal into the brush at its base and starting a fire.
At the time, I was rousing myself and my high-school-age younger son and preparing to drive him to school in Chico, ignorant of the turn my life was taking. We saw smoke. We assumed it was another brush fire, like so many familiar to those of us living on a forested ridge.
The power line ran across a side ravine of the Feather River Canyon. That ravine, steep, rugged, accessible only by foot, had burned in a previous forest fire 10 years before. So that morning, Nov. 8, 2018, it was filled with both the uncleared detritus of the old fire and a decade’s worth of dense growth leeched of moisture from another unusually long California summer. In fact, the brush was at its most parched all year, that morning being one of the final dry days before the winter rains began about a week later.
The fire’s embers were fanned and lifted by the howling wind pouring through the Jarbo Gap of the Feather River Canyon, as it does every day between roughly 2 a.m. and 10 a.m.
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Comments
Disaster
I, or anyone who has never been in such a situation, can only imagine what you went through. May your future be serene, you have already been through hell!
You are most correct in your premise that, until it strikes, disasters occur someplace else, affect someone else. And you are oh so correct, Never say NEVER! Many people looking down the list will dismiss many of these items... Can't happen here! Right?
Well, don't be too quick... The Midatlantic area (where I live) is seismically stable, we don't get earthquakes, right? ... August 23, 2011, 1:51 PM, a magnitude 8.5 eathquake 90 miles southwest of Washington, DC. And, surprise, that stable tectonic plate does not disipate shocks well.
Tornadoes happen in the south and midwest, flatland, not in the Appalachian Mountains, right? ... May 17, 2011, 8:10 PM, an EF1 tornado touches down about a quarter mile from our house.
Thankfully, neither of these incidents had anything other than very short term impacts on our lives but... what if things had been just a little different. And, as I write this, I suspect that these near misses may actually tend to reinforce our belief that it won't happen to us. So to rely on the cinema for some sage advice, Never Say Never Again!
Quake
The 2011 earthquake you speak of was a magnitude 5.8, thankfully not an 8.5.
However, yes, disaster can strike anywhere and it always pays to have a basic plan in place. One source is ready.gov and there are many other websites with useful advice for disaster preparation.
Thank you!
Thanks for the correction! Nothing like a numerical typo to really screw things up...
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