This was written on Monday, October 22, 2007, the day of the evacuation from Encinitas
Smoke. Lots of thick brown smoke. Red tinged.
I awoke this morning to the sound of gusting wind. Double paned windows rattled. The flat top roof above our bedroom whistled. The scent of fire. A sky half blue, half completely packed with noxious smoke. Swirls of wind.
I knew the fire was out there last night, licking its wounds, but plenty far east. But this morning the fire was enraged, and much closer. Angry at the world's indifference to nature's ways. Small fires are so much nicer. A tidy little burning of underbrush. A lightening strike smoldering for a while.
But so many acres of dry weeds and introduced eucalyptus stands. And so much wind gusting in the bone dry Santa Ana air. Stirring up a frenzy of potent combustion. Trees bursting into flame. Bushes fried by a passing wave of fire.
Have to go. Can feel it with each charcoal breath I take. Black soot filling my home with each door opened.
"Mommy, is the fire going to burn our house? Do we need to go? Should we go now, Mommy? Mommy?" Not sure what to do. Or where we will go.
My 9-year-old daughter has put a yellow ribbon on our dog's collar. "Just in case there is another dog at the rescue shelter that looks just like Ben, and has the same collar, so we will be able to tell its Ben."
We try to pack the essentials, and then feel we have time for a bit more. What to choose? Photos. But so many of them in so many different boxes. Just have to take some of them. Jewelry. Some activities for her in case we get stuck in traffic on our drive out.
I can't get the video camera to work. How does it work?! I want to get images of our home in case it is gone when we return. Images for posterity, and insurance claims. The still camera works. Flash. Flash.
My dear friend, Polly, opens her home to us. Even to Ben, though Polly is not a "dog person." Point Loma. So far from the fire and the horrendous black smoke. So surreal to be a 25 minute drive from our house. No smoke, no strange red sun. Was it our imagination?
- Karyn Ostfeld
