FIRE, FEAR AND FRIENDS –
Vengrai Parthasarathy
When Wind and Fire, two of Nature’s elemental forces join hands, insignificant Man has but to bow before it. I was woken up from my beauty sleep on the fateful Monday morning and told that I had but thirty minutes in which to pack up and leave the place in a hurry. San Diego was on fire and flames were said to be moving less than a few hundred yards from our doors! There was no time even to think. I assembled the things which came readily to mind, like change of clothes, ID, passport, some documents and medications. Nothing more.
Fear gripped our hearts as we saw the blue sky turning a fierce red. Fire was stalking everywhere, as far as the eyes could see. We were running for our lives, not knowing where. As evacuees, we were part of a cavalcade of cars loaded with people; and the procession was slowly, very slowly inching forward though there was no criss-crossing autos, cycles , cross-cutting etc., with which we are familiar. . There were hardly any pedestrians because every home here has a car and even two or three. It was all a uni-directional flow. ‘Spreading like wild fire’ was. no more than a figure of speech till then. Now I know. Flames spread every where, aided by bone-dry vegetation, crackling bushes and wooden houses. The flames was fanned by the Santa Ana winds at 100-mph which kept changing directions. Red hot embers flew from tree top to tree top to house tops. The noble fire brigade was on the job but the sheer magnitude of the task of containing fire spreading over hundreds of acres was mind
Choppers too were on the job of dousing the fires but it was largely unavailing because they could not fly low enough to reach their targets. Tanker planes showered fire retardants and here again the winds blew them away. We did not know where we were going. Some arrangements had been made by the authorities to take the evacuees to the Qualcomm stadium and to vacant school buildings. The prospect of being huddled up with hundreds of others was forbidding. The cell phone which I always held to be an ubiquitous nuisance was to be our savior. A friend who had watched on TV the wild fire spreading to our area invited us to his home. A great sigh of relief. Then another friend opened his doors for us.st but that proved to be a short lived spell.
We, including the host, had to leave the next morning as their area too was now in danger. A Dentist friend allowed the five families to use the clinic for a night’s stay. The next day we moved again, bag and baggage, children and pets. Under the given circumstances nothing can be perfect. .but things were as good as they could be–call it chaos but it was orderly chaos. That is saying a lot. The best possible efforts were taken and shifting strategies to meet shifting wind patterns of unrelenting fire and wind were devised. After five days of horror, it was over. Ash, ember and debris was all that was left behind.
A word about communication – over the TV channels and Radio and Internet and telephones, constant updates, locality-wise, were given out continuously. In such emergencies as fire and earthquake communication is never adequate but here it was superb. A word also about the spirit – the ‘we are all in it together’ spirit was shown by everyone, the fire fighters, the police, the national guards, the volunteers, neighbors—everyone.
Common peril brought to light the fraternity of strangers helping each other. How is one to look at this unworldly tragedy of great magnitude in which thousands of people were uprooted, thousands of acres of trees burnt and many a home reduced to ashes.. It may have been Nature’s ‘Grand Plan’ as some one put it. But it brought out the best in man, restoring one’s faith in the essential goodness of people, particularly in times of adversity. Rebuilding and rehabilitating work are going on apace.. Well, we were the fortunate ones. No place to go but Home which, thank God, was there, still very much there and beckoning us..
Truly, there is no place like HOME! The San Diego FireStop Approximately 16 Mandyam Families live in San Diego and almost all of them were evacuated. The fires started on Oct 21st, and raged through the city and the county fanned by strong gusty Santa Ana winds (Hot winds that blow over the desert and come to the city).