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It was the morning after Election Day, and the first thing I noticed was hoping for a distraction from the previous night’s commotion. I received an email from my brother-in-law. There was a fire near my mother-in-law’s house.
But over the years, many fires have diverted from homes in Somis, a rural Ventura County town between Moorpark and Camarillo. Thomas Fire in December 2017 and Maria Fire in October 2019. Both are disasters on someone else’s property, not hers.
The wildfires in November 2024 will be different. The Santa Anas River was blowing hard that morning, and my mother-in-law’s property was dangerously downwind, perhaps a half-mile from where the fire started.
My first thought was, this is a big problem.
His next thought was to make sure that Kit, beloved grandmother to his children and matriarch of his wife’s family, had escaped. I called. She was at a Starbucks in Camarillo (which was scheduled to be evacuated in a few hours due to the alarming spread of the fire). Her long-time partner Ian was leaving.
They were safe – mission accomplished. The same goes for the two desert tortoises, who are now living as shelters in the backyard of the Alhambra Palace.
However, the fate of their home and neighbors looked very bleak. Later that day, a fire map posted on the Watch Duty smartphone app (which anyone living in a flammable area must download) showed that much of the area, including her property, was fully engulfed. It was shown.
I’m used to looking at wildfire maps for my local mountains to figure out which trails are on fire and which hiking trails are off-limits because it takes time for the land to heal. Sadly, it’s a common occurrence in Southern California.
But now I know how incomparable it is to see a creepy pink blob shadowing the part of the map where your life takes place. It’s about 25 acres of rolling hills full of fresh chaparral that my wife’s parents bought decades ago and transformed into idyllic California. A ranch with a lemon grove and stables.
It’s the house my wife grew up in, where I took my prom photos, and where I cared for pets that are revered as legends to this day.
The place where my wife and I were married 18 years ago, with the tree marking the burial site of her father’s remains. My kids are now free to run around with their cousins after Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.
Miraculously, the small house on the property still stands, so my mother-in-law and her partner have shelter (other neighbors lost even more). But much of what made the place home has been lost.
From what I could tell after visiting the facility on Tuesday, the fire was highly volatile. It came within a few feet of the house. It was so close that it was so hot that the window frames warped. Don’t ask me why the metal melted and the double-glazed windows broke, but the wooden house didn’t catch fire.
What remains of nearby structures are but ghostly evidence of its existence. Toxic ash piles, concrete scaffolding, metal furniture frames – to take my word for it – were once part of a relaxing and meditative outdoor environment. Many of the lemon trees remain as if they were untouched. Others were completely annihilated, and the hills on which they stood turned black and dry. In a separate office, Ian kept photos of the damage to his old home from the 1990 Santa Barbara wildfires. That office and that photo are gone.
Still, in the midst of the disaster, my mother-in-law and her neighbors are seeing the community coming together, the flames being contained, lost pets being evacuated, and advance notice of whether others have escaped. He told us about the people he had visited and the homes he had saved. by firefighters and those who had to remain at the scene.
“Everyone was looking out for everyone,” race car driver Trevor Huddleston said. The family owns land nearby and also happens to be the manager of the historic Irwindale Speedway. On Tuesday, he showed me the damage on his land. His family’s home still stands, but the fire destroyed many of the avocado trees (or, in Huddleston’s words, “green gold”) that had produced record amounts of fruit the previous year. In a strange stroke of luck, firefighters were able to access a well on his property because a new concrete driveway had just been completed.
Don’t get me wrong. Many people lost everything in this fire, definitely more than my mother-in-law. But where she lost her sense of safety, she and her neighbors strengthened their sense of solidarity through simple but heroic acts of kindness. In troubling times, when powerful forces are trying to pit people against each other, it’s a good thing to hold on to.
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