2025

On the night of Tuesday, January 7, when Watch Duty showed that aerial support was ending on the Palisades Fire due to high winds, our hearts sank. Clearly this was going to be a widespread disaster. We kept glued to the scanner. No one knew it was going to take out much of PCH and the Palisades. Then there was the Eaton Fire. And fire after fire after this for weeks, fortunately not as damaging, but still exhausting and frightening for the entire region, which had never seen anything like this. Now, we were the lucky ones. One of the smaller fires cropped up near us, when a deranged woman threw a cigarette into the brush, but was put out quickly as the winds were not too high at that point. Another started by arson nearly put us in the evacuation zone, but again was put out by valiant firefighters. Our power was out most of the month, we were doing what we could to help friends, neighbors and strangers all over the county round the clock, we suffered bad colds, we worried and prepped round the clock, we missed meetings, we comforted concerned loved ones, we felt the fragility of this place, we remembered that there is no getting used to catastrophic fire. But our air was clean all but one or two days, the canyon where we lived remained untouched by fire, the greenery stayed beautiful, we had a working battery and generator that kept us connected to the internet, and our house progressed instead of getting destroyed. Our sense of purpose deepened all the more to help others walk the walk of post fire recovery.