Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Marcie's First Brush Fire

Yeah, what a nice first, eh? In other parts of the country, people have first hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, thunderstorms. Here in Southern California we have brush fires and earthquakes. I'm not a big fan of either, of course. But I'm not much for tornadoes and hurricanes either.

Casey's first brush fire was in October 2003. It was huge. It burned for days. It took out entire neighborhoods and shut the city down. Casey was 9 months old. I was in my first semester of law school. No one left their homes without masks on, and even that was rare.

We voluntarily evacuated to Jason's parents house when the fire started blowing in our direction. No one told us to, we just did. I remember being amused by the items we loaded up on our car: laptops, photo albums, TIVO. We returned home that night, but the brightness of the fire shone out on neighborhood streets. And there was soot everywhere. I never felt afraid, just irritated by Nature's rage and interruption into my otherwise pretty serene world.

You can catch some photos of the devastation, along with the basic story here. Here's some more information about the conflagrations.

I'm sure Casey doesn't remember it, despite his amazing memory. But it's in his baby book.

And today, there was a brush fire near Jason's parent's house. There are several news stories on it, but this one pretty much explains what happened. Stupid arsonist. I was at school studying all day (shocking, I know-- and I'm still here at school now!), and the street leading to where Marcie and her grandma are was closed off by police all afternoon. It's been opened, and Marcie's grandpa told me she and Grandma are just fine. I got the impression they voluntarily evacuated, but I didn't even ask! Silly me. . .

What an eventful day for Marcie. As if she even knew it was going on . . .

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