On Sunday night around midnight, smoke started pouring into Santa Rosa. I walked outside and recognized the smell. I’d taken a two-week camping trip through Oregon this past summer, and forest fires occupied a distinct spot on my olfactive memory shelf. I walked back inside, away from the red moon, to do a quick Internet search for “fires near me,” as if I expected to find a Yelp page. The only relevant information I could find was a CAL FIRE entry on the Atlas Fire in Napa—200 acres, 35 miles away. I resumed watching an episode of Jeopardy. I felt safe enough to fall asleep.
Three hours later, my mom and I were driving south through the smoke and ash. We didn’t have a destination — just a direction. The fire started north of us and had worked its way south. Somewhere outside of Tiburon, we stopped in a parking lot, desperate for more information. On a local talk-radio station, KSRO, the DJ opined that October 9 would be historic for the citizens of Sonoma County. Even after listening to the reports, I struggled to create a mental map of where the fires were and where they weren’t.
This was a type of fear I had never experienced before. It was the type of fear that physically hurt. I was scared of losing not only the dots on the map but the whole map itself.
By 5:30 a.m. I was in Palo Alto, still seeking more information. I learned about damaged neighborhoods, wind direction, drivers running red lights, neighbors saving their families and each other, people losing everything and people offering everything. But still I couldn’t find accurate maps this early. I saw helicopter footage by 9:00 a.m. but was unable to discern the geography. Some people said it was nearly contained. Some said the entire city would be gone.
These fires were unimaginable and traumatic. Instead of sleeping in my bed, my body and mind constricted with loss. It didn’t hit me all at once, but the names of family and friends living in affected areas collected one by one and clogged my emotional drain. Days ago, I had jogged through neighborhoods that, bit by bit, had been blown away. This was a type of fear I had never experienced before. It was the type of fear that physically hurt. I was scared of losing not only the dots on the map but the whole map itself.
Growing up in the Information Age has instilled in me an innate logical fallacy: that if I can know as much as there is to know about any given topic, there will be a safe way in which I can navigate it.
And I soon realized the futility of the emerging statistics. Ingesting the “projected” data did little in the way of offering security. Even later, the efforts to quantitatively justify our own fight-or-flight instincts came in the form of neatly packaged assurances — containment-level percentages, red-flag warnings, advisory evacuations. But none of it made me feel safe, probably because peace of mind can never be reduced to a number.
Growing up in the Information Age has instilled in me an innate logical fallacy: that if I can know as much as there is to know about any given topic, there will be a safe way in which I can navigate it. Yet the more I knew about the fire, the less capable I felt. It was like if instead of allowing a contestant on Jeopardy to buzz in, Alex Trebek just continued reading one self-contradicting clue from an insidiously massive square, and the contestants were unsure whether to interrupt him or just, like, walk off the stage and back into the green room. People who went to bed the previous night and had all the same resources as me weren’t saved by information.
I now know that pretty much everything is more fragile than we’d care to admit; that the feeling of boredom is a privilege of safety; that there are people who give literal shirts off their backs to strangers.
As I sat in my car listening to the people I love lose everything, there was no program for my left brain to run. So the only analysis I could rely upon in the days to follow were these emotional axioms, many of which I had always understood. But it’s only now that I can claim to actually know them: that existence is not a guarantee of existence and that one life is never more valuable than another life while, simultaneously, also never being any less valuable. I know the feeling of safety is increasingly determined by external measurements, when often the best gauge might be my own human ability to assess risk, and that perhaps our pursuits to feel safer can result in a disconnect from those protective senses. I now know that pretty much everything is more fragile than we’d care to admit; that the feeling of boredom is a privilege of safety; that there are people who give literal shirts off their backs to strangers. I now know that we have the resources to provide shelters and food and hygiene to those of us without it, but until it becomes the operative social mode, we choose not to follow a course of action which would almost 100 percent guarantee an increase in the likelihood of those people continuing to exist. I know that it is possible to cry until dehydrated and then still cry some more; that life is worth both fighting and flighting for; and that we will feel guilt for our own safety in times of tragedy, even though that is the one thing that we should always remain overwhelmingly grateful of.
I am wildly lucky. Others weren’t. This fire still burns, and there is still so much to be done (if you are interested in helping in any way, please, please visit sonomafireinfo.com), but I strongly urge you, if you are currently safe, to take a moment and simply appreciate it. Good. Now go get an emergency-preparedness fanny pack together if you don’t already have one.
