LJ Idol Survivor: Challenge 1: Quest for Fire

[flipflop_diva]

The sky is blue when she locks the front door behind her, a short list clutched in her hand. The farmer’s market to pick up some vegetables. A stop at the grocery store for milk. A detour to pick up her favorite ice cream.

If she times it right, it won’t take more than thirty minutes.

--

The sky is turning gray when she heads back down the road to home, the vegetables and the milk and the ice cream tucked safely in the back seat. She watches the swirls of smoke billowing into the air and hopes everyone is safe.

(Little does she know then that a gender reveal party has just gone disastrously wrong. Little does anyone know then that this is just the beginning.)

--

The sky is almost completely clouded over by the time her best friend rings the doorbell a few hours later. She invites her in, and they chat excitedly. They have many plans — wine to drink, a steak dinner with fresh vegetables to make, ice cream to eat, a hot tub to relax in and a lot of talking to do. In the morning, they are going to go shopping.

They don’t spare much though for the sky darkening above them.

--

They can’t see the sky hours later when they settle into the hot tub, but they can’t see any of the stars that usually dot the world above them either. They can smell the smoke though. It fills the air and their noses and causes their eyes to water a little.

They make it through a glass of wine before heading back inside. There, they turn on the news and watch the coverage of a fire that is less than a mile away and completely uncontained.

For the first time all day, they begin to really worry.

--

They wake up early the next morning to a house that is beginning to smell of smoke. They walk outside to the front yard — the woman, her husband and her best friend — and all they can see is smoke. All traces of blue in the sky are gone.

They don’t see flames yet, so they still have time.

--

They are already starting to pack — fear and uncertainty taking over — when there comes a loud pounding on the door. They glance at each other when a loud voice yells, “Police!”

They answer the door to find a police officer on their porch. They are now officially in an evacuation zone, and everyone needs to leave. The fire is getting closer, and if it jumps the ridge, they will be right in its path.

They say they are already packing, and the officer thanks them. They don’t close the door yet. Instead, they watch as the officer walks over to their driveway and marks a huge X on it in chalk. The Xs mean they were talked to face to face. The driveways without markings mean there was no answer or they haven’t gotten there yet.

They go back inside. Almost immediately the phone starts ringing. Friends, family, children. “Are you okay? Do you need somewhere to stay? How close is the fire? Please stay safe!”

--

She looks around at her house, at her clothes, at her photos, at everything she has accumulated over an entire lifetime.

This is a moment she has thought about for much of her life. What would she take in an emergency? What does she need? What doesn’t she need? She thought she knew, back when it was hypothetical. She had a list and an answer, ready for whenever the time came.

The time is here, and now she’s unsure. What do you take when you might lose everything else? What do you want to hold on to and what are you okay losing? The clothes in your closet? The china passed down from a grandmother? The art projects from a grandchild that now hang on the refrigerator?

She’s always been a realist, always been pragmatic. She starts with her clothes, her toiletries. A friend of a friend who lives out of the danger zone has an empty freezer they can use so they pack up the meat they just bought the other day.

They grab the computers and the tablets and the picture frame that flashes through photos.

Her husband walks around, from room to room, taking pictures of all the photos hanging on the walls. They can’t take those, but at least they won’t lose the images. Their wedding day. Family reunions. Children as they grew up.

They have three cars they can use — two of theirs and her best friend’s. SVUs all three of them. They can get a lot in.

They start bringing suitcases and boxes and bags out to the cars, filling in every possible space. They’re focused on being fast, on being thorough but she can’t help but look at everything she’s leaving behind one last time — what if she never sees it again?

Finally, they are ready. There is nothing left to pack.

Her husband isn’t going to leave. Not yet. He wants to stay “until I can see flames,” he says. She doesn’t like that idea — the power keeps going out and his phone is hardly reliable in the best of times — but he is stubborn, and she knows there is no use arguing with him.

She kisses him goodbye and tells him to please, please be safe, and he laughs and says of course he will.

She and her best friend head out. The world is hazy by now, smoke everywhere. They don’t have to drive far before they can see the flames, before they can see roads blocked off from traffic.

They turn in the opposite direction, head to her best friend’s house an hour away.

--

The next two days pass more slowly than any day has ever passed. They watch the news almost non-stop. She answers calls from more friends and more family. She texts her husband constantly and he replies when he can.

He’s fine, he says. He’s safe. He’s cleaning ash out of the pool. No, he doesn’t want to leave.

She pulls up her neighborhood Facebook page and joins in to the conversations. The fire hasn’t jumped the ridge, but the wind is supposed to pick up, and nothing is safe.

She barely sleeps, lying in the dark and worrying, about her husband, about their life. What will they do if they have to start all over again? Where will they go? Will they stay here or go somewhere fresh?

She doesn’t have answers. All she has is fear.

--

The third day dawns with good news. The wind is dying down and the fire nearest them is being contained. It looks like they are going to be safe.

She and her friend watch the news and scroll Facebook and talk on the phone to concerned friends and family, but the fear lessens and she feels like she can breathe again.

Thirty-six hours later, the evacuation order is lifted. Their area is safe. The fire has been stopped.

She and her friend get back in their cars, still loaded with all their stuff, and head back to her house.
The unpacking process takes longer than the packing did.

“Let’s not do this again,” her husband grumbles.

She hopes they never do.



Non-fiction. This is my parents' story. The El Dorado fire, which started at a gender reveal party in a forested area, was right by their house. It was a terrifying few days!



Thank you for reading! This was written for a new adventure in the therealljidol world — Survivor Idol! You can see all the entries here. Voting should be up on Monday night! I'm on the Luzon tribe!

Comments

[adoptedwriter]

Omg! I have 2 cousins in the Denver / Longmont area. So scary. You captured the experience very well.

[flipflop_diva]

Thank you so much! And eeep. I hope they are okay. All the fires are so scary, and they just seem to keep on coming :| It's horrible.

[gunwithoutmusic]

Wow; I can't imagine how scary that all must have been for them. I remember some of my LiveJournal friends on the west coast posting about the smoke, and the skies being dark in the middle of the day; it's hard to believe how such a small thing can wreak havoc on so many peoples' lives!

I'm glad everything ended up being okay for them, though. I would probably be like the husband, saying, "I'm not leaving until I see the flames!" Probably not the smartest move, but I totally get it.

[flipflop_diva]

Oh, I know, those pictures were all so crazy! It looked like the apocalypse was happening.

Yeah, I wish my dad would have left — obviously it worked out fine — but he isn't a big fan of staying at other people's houses, so I think that had a lot to do with it too. That, and he's super, super stubborn!

Thank you for reading!

[bsgsix]

This is so fearful - even more so because it's true. I'm so sorry that happened to your parents, and the fear ALL of you must feel is outrageous (and all because of a party, nonetheless). I feel as though you've captured the horror very well through your very clear and evocative imagery.

I'm glad everything is okay (in the end, anyhow), but still. Terrifying, and very well-told. <3

[flipflop_diva]

Thank you so much! I'm glad it came across as I intended. I didn't want to overdo it but I definitely wanted to convey the fear and uncertainty of those days.

It's so awful how it happened. I mean, all the fires are terrible, but when it's a lightning strike, it's just bad luck, but when it's a party ... you just want to know how people can be so stupid.

[megatronix]

You did well capturing the emotion of it, the questions that race through your mind. My mom was a bit obsessed with fires, so she used to say stuff like that a lot, like basically mental fire drills. She always told me to trust the pets to get themselves outside and not go looking for them. (She knows me so well, lol!) So the effect is that I think of it a lot, like what would I take. But even so, I'm sure it's wildly different in the actual moment. I'm sorry your parents were in the midst of that, and that so many people had such scary times with that. We had smoke up here in the greater Seattle area from our 3 hours away fires, it must be absolutely horrendous with the flames that much closer. I'm glad they're safe!

[flipflop_diva]

Thank you so much for reading and your lovely comment!

I don't live in California now, but I grew up there, and my mom would always talk about like in earthquakes. Like if one was so bad and damaged the house and we had to leave what we would take. And it was always like important documents, photos, make sure we get the dog ... but yeah, actually having to it is just a whole other thing. I hope I don't ever have to.

[eeyore_grrl]

I think gender reveal parties are... squicky at best, but let's not set fire to the world!

[flipflop_diva]

Right? Plus these people did it in the middle of a really dry forested area where it hasn't rained in weeks. (I keep thinking about this poor kid. Will they grow up knowing their parents burned down acres and acres of land and a couple people lost their houses all so they could know what sex you are?)

[minikin25]

This was thought provoking piece. There are so many people affected by this.

[flipflop_diva]

Thank you! And there really are. It's way too common an occurrence these days.

[murielle]

Your description of the events put me right in the middle of it. I was so anxious for her husband!

So well written! Brava!

[flipflop_diva]

Ahhhh, thank you so much!! It feels weird to say I'm so glad, but I'm glad it drew you in! Your comment means a lot <333

[bleodswean]

Nicely told. The fear and uncertainty take their toll. Glad your parents had a good ending to this story.

[flipflop_diva]

Thank you so much! I'm really glad they did too. I stared at a lot of fire maps those few days.

[n3m3sis43]

I'm glad your parents are okay! <3 This must have been so scary for them. You did a really good job conveying that fear to the reader(s).

[flipflop_diva]

Thank you so much! I'm glad it came across. I haven't really written much before where I've had to convey fear so I'm happy it worked!

[uselesstinrelic]

I was really surprised by how much it built a relatable connection to your mom when you wrote the part about them drinking in the hot tub and going in out of, I presume, annoyance. That they went to bed and didn't really find out until the morning is one of those things you realise happen all the time. I think we think about experiencing a disaster as something people are actively aware of, but the reality really is that it hardly feels real at the time because it was just so... normal a second before! Just that part in general really took it from an outside view of a story of the fires to really being able to see the real human part in your writing. And, getting us set up that way before you go into talking about having to make sudden choices about life memories... that made that part hit. I've read writing about people being in a fire and having to make choices and seeming emotional, but I'll be honest, I haven't usually understood. I usually just think, 'geez, why are they so upset? it's just stuff. I mean maybe the pictures would suck to lose, but like, it's just things.' but being in the empathetic headspace before I got to that section made it really hit home how unsettling and disempowering the situation would feel. And how many things there really are that are more than just 'things' for one reason or another in a very big way.

I think I'll be listening to people talk about fire loss pretty differently now. And I'll also be making a list of emergency grabs for Just In Case!

[flipflop_diva]

Oh wow! This is such an amazing comment! I'm so, so, so glad that it worked for you.

It was definitely eye-opening for me too in a way. Like I've always thought it would be awful to lose everything — mostly because of the time and effort it took to get everything — but to be on the phone with my parents when they were going from room to room trying to decide what they could actually fit in the car and what was the most important was a crazy surreal moment that I hope never happens again.

But ahhhh, this is just the greatest comment. I keep reading it over. Thank you for leaving it and for reading <333

[uselesstinrelic]

Awww :D yay!

[swirlsofpurple]

This is so vividly and brilliantly described, the anguish so visceral. Can't imagine how that must feel, having your parents go through that. Thank you for sharing.

[flipflop_diva]

Thank you so, so much!!

It was definitely scary. My sister and I live 1,000 miles away from them, so it was this weird combination of terror and helplessness. Though obviously it was way worse for them since they were going through it!

[alycewilson]

When you told me you were going to write about your parents' experience, I thought it would be a good idea, but you've outdone yourself. The tactile details, the decisions they had to make, the feeling of being in danger and not being able to control the situation, all of it came through perfectly. Nicely done!

[flipflop_diva]

Awwww, thank you so, so much! And I'm so glad -- it's their experience and not mine so I was really worried about doing it justice, but yay, I'm so happy it worked for you!

[halfshellvenus]

and watch the coverage of a fire that is less than a mile away and completely uncontained.
The part that shook me was that they went to bed after this. What on earth?!? Fire can spread so quickly-- you don't want to be asleep if it suddenly rushes toward your neighborhood.

And you don't want to stay behind, either. There was a family up in Oregon that decided to wait until morning when the father would be back before they would all leave together, and the fire got closer during the night. They got up early and tried to get out, but not all of them made it. :(

I'm so glad your parents are safe, and I'm cursing the family that started that stupid fire. I'm not a fan of 'gender reveal' parties anyway, but setting off a forest fire with one of them is the ultimate transgression. :(

[flipflop_diva]

The part that shook me was that they went to bed after this. What on earth?!?
Right? My sister and I didn't actually know this was happening until Sunday morning when the evacuation order came in. I think I got the news alert about it maybe really late Saturday but it didn't say where and I didn't read it, because why would I think it would be super close to my parents?, so on Sunday when they were relaying this story of the night before, we were just like 'What were you thinking?!?!?' And then my dad who would not evacuate. I was super worried about something happening at night because by then the police weren't going to come back to check on anyone to make sure they were out.

In the end, the fire stayed that mile away and didn't come closer, but it felt like a super close call! Fires in general are just so, so scary.

Thank you for reading and commenting! And I'm still cursing that family!

[halfshellvenus]

Yes, your Dad--OMG! What was thinking? He was going to stare it down and scare it off? !?!

I have family up in Portland, and one sister lives out toward the East where they had to move their extra vehicles and pets and start packing, and then keep an eye on the evacuation map to see if they'd gone from "Be on alert" to "Evacuate now!"

They didn't actually wind up having to leave-- the winds died down a little, and stopped blowing toward the city-- but it was scary for several days.