Hi. OK. Yes. There is another fire. No, this one is not too close to my barn, but it is very close to many people I know barns. Some of who came screaming in the driveway with horses for an unplanned sleepover today for who knows how long because who knows if they even have a house anymore. No time to pack a toothbrush. Didn't even ask about her cattle. Dogs made it into the truck and that was about it. Because the fire on her property and just spreading like, well, wildfire. Like neighbor's house burning up as she is shoving horses into the trailers. This is fire no. 3 in Santa Cruz County this month. This one we hear 5 fires all started by maybe arson or maybe a vehicle being towed making sparks. We hear all kinds of things. Am I freaked out by it? Uh, yeah, you could say that.
This one is hitting too close to home, in an area full of small ranches and just spreading fast through the hills. Where cars and firetrucks can't get through and roads are blocked and where the police at the barricades are not letting you in with your horse trailer no matter how hard you are screaming to get in because you have to get your animals.
Or you are in Lake Tahoe on a nice vacation and you still don't know if anyone pulled your horses off your property and your dog was in the house and you can't find the house sitter.
Or you are at work an hour away and your 10 year old is at home with the horses and gets the mandatory evac call and you have to get home. Somehow magically through all closed roads and not knowing what does a 10 year old do if she has to get out fast with the horses? And a mean dog that bites?
Or the fire is flaming in the trees in your yard and your dog is inside and you leave your car at the roadblock and just start running with police chasing you but you get to your house and get the dog and the firemen are saving it. And car is gone when you walk back down, towed off somewhere. But you tell me that you don't really care right now.
All these, phone calls I fielded today, trying to handle all of them with calm and grace and smarts and maturity when really I was just like totally freaking out.
Did you ever dream that you were a dog agility super champ except then it switched and you were at some germy, grungy, derelict seaside park in the dark and the carnies were actually drug addled zombies that were shambling after you with hammers and their big teeth? And then as you're trying to escape your way out from under their oily, horrible claws by clambering up a rat infested palm tree, you're all, this is about dog agility like, how?
2 comments:
This is all very scary. I watch the smoke come up over the hills, over and over, it seems, and I wonder who I know who is going to have their world as we know it end in flames and ashes. And I hear about people tossing their dog and their laptop and one photo of their parents into the car and racing out ahead of the fire and then that's all they have left, and I wonder, what would I throw into the car? And I think, thank goodness I live in the flatland suburbs and it can't happen here. And then, watching the smoke come over the hills, I think about the Oakland fire where at least one local agility person lost her house but thank goodness not her life like so many other people did in that fire, or a couple years back that Santana Row fire in San Jose where the flying embers ignited houses all over the neighborhood and the emergency dispatchers didn't believe them because they knew that the fire was at Santana Row and not out in all the neighborhoods, and how many flatland suburb houses burned then?
I'd imagine that it is hard to get a grip when looking this stuff in the face.
I would be freaking out, too.
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