By Doug Simao
In the weekend of Nov. 15, my wife Kate and I decided to escape Orange County,Yorba Linda to be specific,to San Francisco for some rest and relaxation.
In charge of the household we left our daughter Katy and her boyfriend Christian, our 20-year-old son, Joey, and Allee, our level-headed 17-year-old daughter.
Allee is a tough teen, someone who can handle herself in emergency situations. Besides, what could possibly happen in a few short days?
Saturday morning, on Allee’s way to rehearse with her band (she plays bass in a heavy metal group), she phoned to say there was a fire in the distant hills. She said it was just over on the farthest east side of Yorba Linda.
We shrugged off her call and told her not to worry,the flames were miles from our home. The danger was remote.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” we assured her. “But thanks for letting us know.”
An hour later she called again, this time in a panic. The unthinkable had happened: The fire that was once a small blaze on a remote hill was now a full blown wildfire practically in our backyard.
“Don’t ever go out of town again!” she said.
At that moment calls started to come in from our other kids affirming what Allee had relayed,there was a huge fire bearing down on our home.
I can’t describe the sense of dread and helplessness that seized us when it sunk in that we were over 400 miles away. Under the best of conditions, it was a six-hour drive, and flying could take nearly as long. In six hours, a fire of that magnitude could burn through hundreds of acres and homes.
We switched from vacation mode to emergency response, calling neighbors and monitoring the news and Internet. Soon the inevitable became obvious. We exhausted several surreal hours talking our neighbors and kids through a list of what to save from the house as they surrendered our home to the impending danger. Friends and family and neighbors came with trucks, even a trailer, to take out of harm’s way what would be most difficult to replace: family photos, personal files, artwork, musical instruments, original music scores, vintage studio microphones, original session tapes, laptops, backup drives,and about a third of our wine cellar. They finished packing just as the police came down the hill and issued the evacuation orders.
Everyone on our street was required to leave Saturday, just before 6 p.m. But by midnight, my son Joey, a couple of his friends and a few neighbors went back to our homes, doing what they could to keep them safe.
The raging fires didn’t seem as threatening as the embers floating in the air. Water hose in hand, someone stood on each of the rooftops facing the barren wash and eucalyptus trees behind our homes, a natural barricade that usually represented privacy instead of tinder. As burning embers hit our trees or those nearby, the rooftop brigade hosed them down.
Saturday was a long day and night, but Sunday morning brought beautiful, mostly clear skies. Fortunate for us, but sadly for others, the fires had shifted direction and were now burning away from us.
Kate and I finally got a flight on Sunday, arriving at John Wayne Airport at mid-afternoon. Talk of the fire and those who were the worst affected was everywhere. At the airport, gas station and the local market, folks were chattering about who they knew and how they were suffering.
At about 7 p.m. on Sunday, Kate and I took the kids out to dinner. Joining us were several of the friends who helped in the evacuation. It was a celebration of sorts, a thanksgiving for surviving the fire, for friends, for family, for the things that matter.
About an hour into dinner, Joey received a phone call. We heard him say in shock, “Are you kidding me?” Disbelief spread across his face.
“We gotta go,now!” he said. Apparently a new fire was burning, and this time it was literally in our back yard.
We raced home to find several fire engines on our street and two others in the wash behind our home where a smoldering ember, or perhaps an arsonist, had ignited a fire. To our relief it was not in our yard.
Within an hour of the engines arriving, the flames were extinguished. We stood around coiling up hoses and talking with neighbors about the latest incident in the long weekend.
As the weekend closed and the normality of another work week rolled into play, the fires in Southern California were downscaled from critical to bad to safe. In the end, except for a good scare, some evacuation damage and a mess to clean up, we were completely spared by the fires.
So many others in Yorba Linda and elsewhere were not as fortunate. Too many lost too much and everyone in our neighborhood knows someone who, although grateful for the most precious gift of life, must find a way to keep going and start over.
Simao is president of technology consultant Narratus Inc. in Placentia. He and wife Kate also are philanthropists.
