The Fires

It feels like we are beginning to pull out of the worst and scariest part of these wildfires. I'm grateful that I live in a town about 20 miles from the nearest fire zone. We opened evacuation shelters here but did not have to evacuate any neighborhoods ourselves. The first (and worst) night, I woke up and smelled smoke. But I thought the neighbor was smoking nextdoor and didn't realize it was from the fire until the next morning.

The people in the this area are really kind and neighborly and the shelters were quickly overflowing with volunteers and donations pretty early on, I decided that my role would be to support our students, many of whom live in towns to the north most hard hit by fires. I spent a lot of time messaging and calling students on my caseload to make sure they were okay. Three or four of our students did lose their homes and many were evacuated and went to stay with family or in shelters. A couple went to wait it out  in hotels in San Francisco.

I was actually glad to connect with students when I started doing outreach because I was needing some human connection and just to talk with people about what was going on. It was also good to feel useful.  On Monday a few colleagues and I got together and created a tentative plan for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week, then went out to lunch and just processed with ourselves. When we open tomorrow and we're going to have some food for the students and time to talk with one another and participate in a healing circle. Our Director is going to talk about what to expect in terms of feelings and experiences and when someone should get help. We're also going to do some meditation and mindfulness. So definitely a soft start.

I can't believe over 40 people died. I felt horrible when I heard two people had been found, then the number kept rising all week. Apparently the fire just moved so fast because of the wind that some people didn't have time to get out. A lot of these folks who died were older, in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. On Monday, my Director pointed out that many neighborhoods in this beautiful area have a lot of retirees. I was initially thinking it was only because of mobility and communication issues. I do still think that's sadly a piece of the puzzle, though. It's such a loss. Secondary losses include hundreds of thousands of acres of wildlands, several thousand homes and structures, and several wineries and vineyards, which are key to the local economy.

So glad historic downtown Sonoma didn't end up burning. The Firefighters are huge heroes who held the line there and many other places, preventing additional loss. Praying for families who lost loved ones or homes and for the ongoing recovery process.