City on fire

My heart is going out to Southern California today, and especially to my family there, including my cousin Tracy, the fire chief for the city of San Diego. Reading about the fires is devastating, and I'm always struck by the number of details that have to be considered in these situations, such as how to evacuate hospitals and jails, where to house evacuees, and how to gather resources quickly to fix the problem. Ideally there's a plan in place well before anything happens, but there still has to be an incredible amount of flexibility and quick thinking involved.

I've never experienced anything like what San Diegoans (San Diegoites?) are seeing this week. Growing up in Rhode Island I was in two hurricanes, Hurricane Gloria and Hurricane Bob, but for me they were nothing more than adventures. It was exciting to put tape on the windows, stock up on food and water, light candles, sleep in the living room in a sleeping bag, and climb around on the fallen trees the next day.

The closest I've come to a real natural disaster was Hurricane Rita right after I moved to Houston in 2005. No, please, don't look it up. You'll see that although it was slated to hit Houston in a big way, it actually brought nothing to the city but torrential rains and a bit of street flooding. However, Rita came only a few weeks after Katrina hit New Orleans, so there was an understandably alarmist attitude toward the storm. My roommate at the time managed to get a flight to Oregon to visit her family, so had I stayed in Houston I would have been all alone in my house. I hadn't been in Houston long, and I didn't know anybody very well. We were in the first week of rehearsals for Boris Godunov, and we had to call the entire chorus of 80 to tell them that rehearsals were canceled. The mood at the opera house was tense because everyone was remembering Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, when there had been huge amounts of flooding that wiped out a lot of costume and set stock.

Everyone was evacuating, so I decided to drive to Dallas to stay with the Best Friend. After I left work, I waited in line for 45 minutes at the gas station to fill up my tank, packed a few belongings, and set off on I-45 North. The drive to Dallas generally takes 3 1/2 to 4 hours. It took me 21 1/2 hours to get there. It was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. I went through every emotion imaginable, from utter despair to hope to fear. I don't think I hit acceptance until I could see the Dallas skyline. People on the road were crazy, too, probably because they were experiencing all the same feelings I was. Everyone was driving on the shoulder, but then emergency vehicles would need to get by with their sirens blaring, and the jerks on the shoulder would have to merge back into the lanes. It was a nightmare. I managed to get all the way to Dallas on one tank of gas, which is lucky, since there was no gas to be had on the way. I stopped only once, at Wal-Mart (it takes a natural disaster to get me to go there), to buy a cell phone charger and use the restroom. Otherwise, I was on the road the whole time, crying on the phone to Nathan and my parents, and trying not to be too freaked out by what I was hearing about the storm on the radio. Once I arrived in Dallas, it all felt like a bad dream, but for the incredible soreness in my left leg from hours of stop-and-go traffic driving a stick shift. I hung out with my Best Friend for several days, shopping, going out to eat, and cursing the weather reports, and when I drove back to Houston it took about 4 hours.

I only wish the fires in San Diego could have such a happy ending. I'll be thinking of California this week, and wishing for some of the chilly weather and heavy rains that we've been seeing here in Houston to travel west.