LA is Burning
Monday, October 22, 2007
I returned to LA to what is likely the worst outbreak of fires since I moved here three years ago. There are six different areas that are burning, where people are being evacuated from their homes, uncertain whether or not they'll return to something still standing. Some of them are being described as the worst fire outbreaks ever.
Can you imagine? I mean not like, "I know. That's so awful" imagine. But really and truly imagine. It's horrible enough to think about a fire starting in your own home. When I was a little girl, I used to have a recurring nightmare about a fire breaking out in our house. I would wake up in a cold sweat, grateful that I was lying in my bed in the middle of a pitch black house. But can you imagine miles and miles of scorching flames blowing wildly out of control , hopping over mountains and canyons so quickly that no one and nothing can catch up. Where all you can do is leave your home and hope and pray that everything will be OK?
I am very much an "everything happens for a reason" kind of person. But these forces of nature - the rain that we need to live our lives that turns into floods and tsunamis, the fire that warms us and reminds us of winter and hot chocolate and family that turns into these raging monsters - I don't understand the reasons these things happen. Is someone somewhere trying to prove something to us? Perhaps it's a reminder that we, with our guns and wars and hatred and power struggles, are really just little peons who wield zero control over the strongest force of all - Mother Nature. That's what I tell myself at least as I watch people lose their homes and even worse, their lives. Because I don't understand the reason. I can't think of one possible reason why this would happen.
I'm lucky - right now, the fires are nowhere near my home. For now, my family is safe and my home is safe and for now, I only need to have concern for all of the people that are being effected. But I can smell it and I can feel the winds blowing. And I'm watching it on television like everyone else that lives in other parts of the USA saying "Did you hear about the horrible fires in Los Angeles?" But then you start to know people who are being told to evacuate...and it hits closer and closer to home.
It is always amazing to me when people ask what I would try to rescue from my home if, God forbid, it were on fire. From the second I was aware of the possibility of a fire in our home as a child, I have always known the answer to this question. There has only ever been one thing in my home that has felt irreplaceable to me.
Pictures.
Years and years of memories wrapped in several albums. A single picture brings me back to a place or a person or a moment. With a single glance, I can taste that moment like it happened yesterday.
Someone I spoke with this morning said they had gathered all of their investment information, their taxes. I was impressed with their practicality but my answer didn't shift - not even for a moment. If I had the opportunity to rescue some object from my home in the event of some insane and inexplicable natural disaster - it would be my pictures.
Posted byMeesh-elle my Belle at 3:50 PM
