“Unbelievable.”
Kevin walked into the house Tuesday afternoon and asked if
I’d seen the smoke. The very word “smoke” conjured up images that my mind
wasn’t ready for. I stood in the driveway and could scarcely take it in. An
enormous, monstrous cylinder of dark smoke rose up out of Black Forest, little more than five miles from our house. I immediately felt like I’d been punched in the
stomach. What couldn’t be really was. Our city was on fire again, just 50 weeks
after the most devastating wildfire in Colorado history. Unbelievable.
There’s good déjà vu and then there’s this kind. This is the
nightmare variety. It consists of smoke so thick you don’t dare open the
windows or go for a walk. Mandatory evacuations and temporary shelters.
Military helicopters and jets flying overhead. Now-familiar terms like “slurry”
and “duff” and “red-flag warnings.” Local news stations broadcasting 24/7, and
households that come to a screeching halt at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. to watch the
latest update: How many houses were lost in the night? What will the wind do
today? What’s the level of containment? (We’ve learned to rejoice over 50
percent but expect 0 percent.) Then finally the Type 1 Incident Command—the
feds who only give attention to the nation’s most terrorizing fires—moves in to
take over. By now they feel like trusted old friends.
There are the same nagging logistical questions we had last
June: Do we push ahead with the birthday party? Do we still go to the
orthodontist? Is it life as usual even when it feels like a war zone? And is
that disrespectful to our neighbors who have lost everything?
The same sticky theological questions arise, as well: Have
we stirred up your wrath, Lord? Or is this simply life in a fallen world?
But this fire is markedly different for my family. Last year,
we lived in the Shome, a world away from the terror that played out on the west
side of the city. This time, the fire is in our back yard. The planes are
flying right over our heads—it would be spectacular if it weren’t so scary. We
lost power and water for a day and a half, and I learned to operate a generator.
The evacuation zone, still voluntary at this point, is an easy bike ride away
for even my child with training wheels.
So I find myself in the surreal position of walking through
the house, tossing the kids’ medals and artwork and home movies into boxes,
trying to hunt down the wedding video and the title to our house, all while
questioning the sanity of what I’m doing. Really? Is it going to get this far?
In my neighborhood? That’s crazy. All I’m doing is creating a lot of work for
myself.
But that’s the old way of thinking, the June 22, 2012, way
of thinking. We’re people who live in a post-Waldo Canyon world. We’re
people who have seen the impossible happen.
During this morning’s press briefing, a reporter asked our
sheriff if he thought the interstate was in danger of being shut down. He
paused, gave a sad, war-weary laugh, and said something like this: “A year ago
I said there was no way it would get that bad, that the highway would certainly
not be shut down, but it did and it was. I’ll never say never again.”
So I keep packing. Unbelievable.
