fires have changed
When I was a kid growing up in the California canyons, I used to fall asleep with my pillow in the window — watching the fires come across the mountain.
My bed was right up against the wall with the window, I’d be lying in my bed, with the shade up, and my pillow in the window frame, watching that red and gold glowing line in the night on a crest across a valley as I fell asleep. There would be a news program I could hear faintly, coming from the living room down the hall. My parents staying up late into the night watching the TV to hear whether or not it was time to leave.
They were not very good about that stuff. But then again, fires were not the same back then. Fire moved slowly. You could watch some dumb TV and be informed enough to know whether it was time to leave. Or at least they thought so.
Fire is very beautiful. From a distance. Just that beautiful gold and red line on the crest of the mountains across the valley. When you are a little kid, too, you don’t know the devastation that fire is bringing. You do know your parents and everyone on the news are like bees buzzing. But you don’t know exactly why. You just know if it comes too close you’re leaving. And when I was a kid, it never came that close. It was always just the gold and red magical line coming over the mountain across the valley — that always stopped.
The thing is, those fires were different. They didn’t leap miles at a time. They didn’t form fire tornadoes. I know this. I checked. I asked my dad, Were the fires like this before? Did I just not know because I was a kid? And he said, No, they weren’t ever this.
Fires have changed.
These are not our grandparents’ fires.
Storms are like that I think. The hurricanes coming. Like Helene. Like Milton.
These are not our grandparents’ storms.
These are vicious huge storms. You can see them from space. And they are not survivable. Not like the storms of old that I hear stories about, when people had hurricane parties and sat them out and drank fun drinks and lit candles and were fine.
These storms bring surge. The type of surge that took Fukishima down. Not from an earthquake, but with a storm, a storm itself gathering so much power it just picks up and sweeps the ocean before it to eat the land.
These storms crush everything in their path.
And when they leave?
Anybody left alive is just there with no electricity and no water and surrounded by debris and dead bodies and waiting for help that can take weeks to come because the devastation is so substantial and so enormous, it takes days and weeks and years to even begin to fix anything.
Don’t do that.
Don’t sit Milton out now for the short term. If you survive it, you will also be sitting out Milton for the long term, with no power, no water, surrounded by bodies and debris.
And the mud. The mud that is filled with everything deadly and everything toxic that washed out of every garage in the state.
And the mold. The mold is coming.
If the flood doesn’t kill you? The mud will. And if it doesn’t kill you? The mold will.
Don’t do that.
Run.
And if you cannot run?
Go to high ground.
Go to high ground now.