Smoke on main street during evacuation
My wedding dress and 300 DVDs. That is all I had when we evacuated our home. It’s what I had left of my belongings after our home and all of our possessions burned in the wildfire.
On the Saturday morning of September 12, 2015, I watered my garden full of amazing vegetables that were almost ripe enough to harvest, while my husband drove an hour to the city to buy a giant new cage for our bunny. The kids were quietly playing video games, and by noon I had most of my chores done and was shampooing my carpets with the front door open when I saw a fire on the mountain. Nothing I hadn’t seen before, but this time it was pretty close. The fire was about nine miles away, to the west in the next town, Cobb Mountain. Just as I walked out to my front yard to get a better look at the fire, my best friend’s mom drove up to my house in a panic, looking for my friend. She told me her house just burned down and she couldn’t find her husband. She told me everything was burning. She needed to use my phone. She had none of her belongings with her. Just her, and her car. I tried to calm her and let her know that she could stay at my house as long as she needed to and we would find her family together.
My best friend, who volunteers at the fire department quickly came to console her mother and take her to their family. She told us that the fire was growing and all of Cobb Mt. was evacuating. She said she heard the power was going out everywhere, so I drove the kids to town to get pizza and waited in line at the gas station to fill up while we watched the fire growing and the lines of cars packed full to the brim leaving town. I was the last person to get gas before the entire town’s power was off. People were scared and angry that they didn’t get gas.
Melissa and her children watch smoke cloud from fire
The kids and I drove to the high school parking lot where the girls’ soccer team was having a championship match. We sat in the car, ate pizza and watched in confusion as the flames quickly slipped down the mountain towards our town. The fire was getting bigger and much closer. We watched the giant planes fly directly over us and drop fire retardant. We could feel the water from the helicopters dropping water on the fire. We watched droves of cars passing through town. It was full of people trying to find somewhere to meet, find family members, find friends and gain an understanding of the unbelievable situation. There were trucks with people and livestock in the pick-up bed, people were carrying their kids and belongings in their arms. Still, it didn’t feel real. It felt like we were watching a movie, except we were in it.
We went home to discover my husband finally got back from the city. He was on the roof of our house assessing the distance of the fire and told us we needed to start packing things to evacuate. He said the sheriff shut the road down coming into town and he was the last car to get through. He and the kids packed some items while I went to tell the neighbors to evacuate. Most of them did not take my evacuation warning seriously and planned to wait for a fire department official to tell them. My sister who lives in the next town, called me and told me that the fire was at the edge of our family home that we grew up in along with our family restaurant. The restaurant was a source of income for our family as well as the immigrant family who ran it. She told me she drove through flames to make sure the restaurant staff evacuated and tried to get things out but was only able to get an antique desk from our family home that had a few photos in it before it was too late. She told me she and her family were evacuating from their house butthe phone system went down before I could find out where she and my niece and nephew were headed. The road to get to her was closed and I couldn’t help.
Melissa’s daughter during evacuation
At home, it was hot, and the daytime sky was dark and ominous. Large ashes started raining down and the wind whipped the branches from our large oak tree back and forth like it was a sapling. I could hear the fire, it was exploding and rumbling; I could see the flames and feel the heat. At that moment, I walked into my house, looked around at my family who was frantically packing, looked at my freshly shampooed carpets in my living room and shouted, “I don’t need any of this, let’s go”. We fed the goldfish, locked the front door of our house and loaded the 5 yr old, 13 yr old and 15 yr old kids into the car along with our bunny, our dog, my wedding dress that my husband had grabbed, and the 300 DVDs he and the kids packed up, and headed out of town.
We passed abandoned cars and groups of people standing around. Some with their pets and their kids. There were dozens of people I knew, standing in town hugging and crying. I passed a lady crying who had her two goats on a leash. I couldn’t help. We had no idea where we were going, but there was only one way out of town now due to the road closures. Hundreds of cars full of people were trying to get through a two-lane highway to travel the 34 miles of winding mountain road to the next town for safety which took us three hours. While we sat in the line of traffic moving at a snail’s pace, we watched the flames get closer and closer and I watched as my kids’ faces became more worried than I have ever seen them. I couldn’t help. My 15-year-old son asked, “what do we do if the flames catch up to us?” I matter-of-factly replied, “We run.” He and I locked eyes and gave a head nod, with a hard swallow, and the mutual understanding that none of us would survive that scenario.
It was late evening by the time we arrived at a friend’s house out of town and asked if we could stay with them for a couple of days. They graciously invited us but, I felt nothing but helpless and a burden. The rest of the night, we obsessively took to our cell phones to see social media posts and talk about what had or had not burned down, unvetted news of how big the fires were and that three towns were evacuated and hundreds of people asking if anyone had seen ‘so and so’. I still did not know where my sister and family were and just before my cell phone battery died, I created a Facebook group to hopefully find my sister and have others find family members. I didn’t know if my neighbors evacuated. I didn’t know if my house was still standing. I didn’t know where to find any information. I didn’t know anything.
Melissa’s home on the new channel
After a sleepless night on the floor without a toothbrush or pajamas, I woke to my friend saying the news was on about the fire. I walked in to see my home on the news. It was burned down to the ground. I knew it was my home because our car was sitting burned in the driveway and my 5-year-old daughter’s swing set was standing in the backyard. Burned, but standing. Oddly enough, it was a relief knowing that our home had burned down. It was a relief because before, I didn’t know what my next move was. I was confused and scared and completely had no control of anything which is something I had never experienced. Knowing it was burned down felt like control. I couldn’t control that my house burned down, but I felt like I could control what happened next. I started making a three-point plan: Go to a restaurant and feed the kids, inventory our finances and belongings and find a place to live.
Turns out, I couldn’t control any of it and our remaining worldly possessions consisted of my wedding dress and 300 DVDs. Oh…and the giant new bunny cage. Needless to say, these items were not helpful during our evacuation which lasted for more than a month, during which we stayed with friends for 11 days before the evacuation orders were lifted and the disaster survivors could go sift through the useless rubble of our homes. We bounced from one friend’s home to another so as to not burden them for too long. We went to the evacuation shelter at the fairgrounds to see our community and friends; we could get food and information there and have a place to ‘be’ while we had nowhere to go. We celebrated my daughter’s sixth birthday at an acquaintance’s home while evacuated, then camped in a pop-up tent trailer in a driveway and slept in a garage until we could find a rental which was double what we were paying before the fire. I look back at all the things I wish I had packed from my home. Things like the photos I can’t get back, a bulky savings account, clothes, a cell phone charger, my documents. I wish I had pre-planned a place to stay an d packed phone numbers and addresses. Oh, and how a pillow would have been a fantastic luxury during that time.
I wasn’t able to go back to work for quite a while, so our now single-income family had to only buy the absolute necessities while trying to live a ‘normal’ life going to work and school. Losing all of your belongings really narrows down the list of necessities that are important. Somehow things like underwear, a laundry hamper, a can opener, a pen, paper and nail clippers become very, very important, while a wedding dress and DVDs seem only like a huge waste of space when you are living with five people and two pets in a small two bed pop up travel tent trailer. And the giant bunny cage. Having to spend money on replacing birth certificates and car registrations or other documents to prove we exist and prove we live somewhere was stressful. Learning to be grateful for donated ill-fitting, mismatched clothing, cheap restaurant meals with no dietary fiber or nutritional value, donated gift cards with a value left of $3.24 to random gas stations miles out of town, was stressful. It was all too humbling. Becoming aware that resources were becoming scarce, and that nobody cared what needs remained now that the fire was out and the news channels were on to the next story. It was stressful, isolating and unimaginable.
Melissa’s daughter with rubble from their home
I never thought the fire would get all the way to my home. Nobody did. Not my home. It could never happen to us. But it did. This experience launched me into working in the disaster field. You see, the 76,000-acre wildfire that consumed my home, 1,080 other homes of my neighbors and friends, 118 square miles of land (2.5 times the size of the city of San Francisco) and changed the lives of everyone in three small towns was the first large destructive wildfire in rural California. The emergency personnel were not prepared enough, the resource providers were not prepared and didn’t know how to help and the residents thought it could never happen to them. It has happened in my area several more times since 2015. Over 60% of the land mass in my county has burned along with many more homes. It keeps happening and I hear stories after stories of people who didn’t think it could happen to them. I work in the disaster field now and hope that sharing my experience can be a lesson of what not to do, and help provide an understanding of how to be prepared for a disaster.
Our Emergency Preparedness Response and Recovery program supports vulnerable communities when disaster strikes. We provide both immediate support through our CWS Kits and Blankets program, and long-term support by partnering with local organizations to get affected individuals the care they need to get back on their feet. To help us continue this work, you can donate here.
Melissa Reece is a Senior Program Officer of our Emergency Preparedness Response and Recovery program.